Wave Accounting and Paylocity integration

What moves between them

Records flow from Wave into Paylocity. Wave customers are read via GraphQL and mapped to Paylocity employee records; invoice data is read and mapped to payroll input records tied to the corresponding employees. The sync runs in real time when webhooks arrive and can also poll on a scheduled interval. Wave is the system of record for customer and invoice data; Paylocity employee and pay data are not written back into Wave.

How ml-connector handles it

ml-connector stores Wave and Paylocity credentials encrypted and uses Wave's refresh token flow to maintain access when OAuth tokens expire. On the Paylocity side, it tracks the annual client secret rotation date so credential updates do not interrupt service. Wave webhooks are verified using the HMAC-SHA256 signature in the x-wave-signature header; Paylocity webhook payloads carry identifiers, so ml-connector fetches the full employee and pay statement records via separate REST calls. Customers and invoices are mapped via external identifiers so duplicate syncs do not create duplicate records. The integration handles OAuth token refresh, webhook signature validation, API rate limits, and retries on transient failures, and it logs every record moved in the audit trail.

A real-world example

A small business using Wave Accounting for invoicing and general ledger wants to sync customer names and invoice amounts into Paylocity payroll without manual re-entry. The business manually matched invoices to payroll expenses each month, creating a gap between when invoices were raised and when payroll amounts were finalized. With Wave and Paylocity connected, customer records flow automatically and invoices are matched to payroll line items tied to the correct employee, so the business can reconcile payroll to invoices faster and catch discrepancies in real time.

What you can do

• •Sync Wave customers into Paylocity as employee records with automatic duplicate detection using external identifiers.
• •Map Wave invoices to Paylocity payroll line items and attach them to the correct employees.
• •Validate and refresh OAuth 2.0 tokens for both Wave and Paylocity, and track Paylocity client secret rotation deadlines.
• •Verify Wave webhook signatures using HMAC-SHA256 and process events in real time, with fallback polling on a schedule you control.
• •Maintain a complete audit trail of every customer and invoice record synced, with the ability to replay failed records without duplication.

Questions

Which direction does data move between Wave Accounting and Paylocity?

Data flows from Wave into Paylocity. Wave customers and invoices are read via GraphQL and REST, then mapped to Paylocity employees and payroll records. Paylocity employee and pay statement data are not written back into Wave; Wave is the system of record for customer and invoice information.

How does the integration handle Wave's OAuth token expiry and Paylocity's client secret rotation?

ml-connector uses Wave's refresh token to automatically refresh access tokens when the 2-hour access token expires, so no manual intervention is needed. For Paylocity, the integration tracks the annual client secret rotation deadline and alerts you when a renewal is due, preventing credential expiry from causing an outage.

What happens when a Wave webhook arrives or Paylocity cannot deliver an event?

Wave webhooks are verified using the HMAC-SHA256 signature in the x-wave-signature header and processed in real time. If a Paylocity webhook fails to deliver, Paylocity retries for up to 24 hours; ml-connector also falls back to polling on a schedule you define to catch missed events and ensure no records are lost.