Workday Financial Management and Fishbowl integration

What moves between them

The main flow is Workday into Fishbowl. Supplier master records are read from Workday, deduplicated by external ID or name, and written to Fishbowl as vendors. Purchase orders created in Workday are read on a 15-60 minute polling interval, matched to corresponding Fishbowl vendors, and written as new purchase orders in Fishbowl so inventory allocations and receipt workflows can begin. As Fishbowl receives inventory against these POs, those receipts feed back through Fishbowl's own reporting and QuickBooks integration; Workday sees no receipt confirmation because Workday invoice and receipt records are independent.

How ml-connector handles it

ml-connector stores Workday OAuth2 credentials and manages the refresh-token flow, obtaining a new 1-hour access token when a call returns 401. It accepts the full Fishbowl on-premise server URL and port from the customer, validates network connectivity on setup, and stores the credentials for login. Before each sync cycle, ml-connector obtains a fresh Fishbowl session token by posting login credentials. For suppliers, it reads Workday supplier records with date-range filters (typically polling every 60 minutes for master-data changes), extracts name and external ID, checks whether the supplier already exists in Fishbowl (by external ID or name match), and writes new or updates existing vendors. For purchase orders, it polls Workday GET /purchase_orders filtered by date, maps each PO line to a Fishbowl vendor using the supplier ID, and creates the order. If Fishbowl write fails, the record and error are logged with full audit context so the write can be retried manually or re-run in the next cycle. Network interruptions between ml-connector and the on-premise Fishbowl server cause retries with exponential backoff; if the server remains unreachable, the sync stops and alerts the customer to check network connectivity.

A real-world example

A mid-market wholesaler runs Workday Financial Management in the cloud for procurement and general ledger, and operates Fishbowl Advanced on servers in their warehouse to manage inventory, purchase orders, and fulfillment. Before integration, the procurement team created purchase orders in Workday, then re-entered them manually into Fishbowl so the warehouse could track inventory and allocate stock. When suppliers were added or changed in Workday, the data entry team updated Fishbowl vendor records by hand. With Workday and Fishbowl connected, new suppliers automatically appear in Fishbowl within the polling interval, new POs from Workday flow into Fishbowl instantly, and the warehouse team spends zero time on data re-entry - they receive goods against the correct PO and move on.

What you can do

• •Sync supplier master data from Workday into Fishbowl as vendors with external ID matching to prevent duplicates.
• •Automatically read purchase orders from Workday and create corresponding orders in Fishbowl so inventory can be reserved and received.
• •Manage Workday OAuth2 token refresh and Fishbowl session-token login across every sync cycle without manual credential entry.
• •Accept a customer-supplied on-premise Fishbowl server URL and port, validate connectivity, and handle network failures with retries and alerting.
• •Maintain a complete audit trail of every supplier and purchase order record written to Fishbowl, with full error context so failed writes can be replayed.

Questions

Which direction does data move between Workday and Fishbowl?

The main flow is Workday into Fishbowl. Supplier master records and purchase orders are read from Workday and written to Fishbowl. Fishbowl does not have GL accounts, so accounting reconciliation remains separate through Fishbowl's QuickBooks or Xero integration. Receipt and inventory transactions in Fishbowl do not flow back to Workday.

How does ml-connector handle Fishbowl being on-premise with a customer-supplied server URL?

ml-connector accepts the full server URL and port from the customer during setup, validates network connectivity from the integration environment to that server, and stores the credentials encrypted. On each sync cycle, it logs in to that specific server using the customer's Fishbowl user account, obtains a session token, and uses that token until it expires or a call fails.

What happens if the polling interval is too frequent or the Fishbowl server becomes unreachable?

Polling Workday more than once every 5 minutes may trigger tenant-level rate throttling, so ml-connector uses 15-60 minute intervals by default. If the Fishbowl server becomes unreachable, the integration retries with exponential backoff, logs the error with full context, and alerts the customer so they can check network connectivity or server status before the next cycle.