Table of Contents

• Foreword
• Purpose of This Feature
  • Purpose of Job Sync with Payroll Systems
  • Capability to Sync Jobs with Payroll Systems
  • Previous PCTY Limitations with Job Sync
  • New Feature Improves Job Sync Capability with PCTY
• How New FCX-PCTY Job Sync Works
  • Sync is One-Way: FCX to PCTY
  • Sync is Per Cycle Schedule
  • Synced Data: Field Mapping
  • The FCX External Links Table
  • Sync Events - Order of Operation

Foreword

Fieldclix (FCX) customers who also use Paylocity (PCTY) as their primary Payroll Tool may gain access to a new capability in 2024.

If you are not already aware of this capability and want to explore when your company may access it, reach out to your Paylocity support team and FCX POC.

This user guide is intended for companies who have access to this capability and want to know more about the problem it solves, how it solves it and how it works, in general.

Purpose of This Feature

Purpose of Job Sync with Payroll Systems

Companies that use FCX for timekeeping value its ability to allocate labor hours and costs to Build Plans (BPs), the central objects that represent each "job" or "project" on which you do work. And FCX provides rich Job Cost Reporting based on these allocations. But sometimes it is needed/desired to carry these allocations over into payroll and accounting systems as well.

Capability to Sync Jobs with Payroll Systems

For companies using pushing FCX labor data to Quick Books (QB) Desktop/Enterprise, PCTY or Empower Prism, FCX has always been able to include Job Allocations in the data pushed. BUT, for this allocation to work, the Job records had to be added into the payroll system by or before the time of payroll sync. Most companies would prefer FCX automatically push these Jobs into the payroll system ahead of payroll, so they would be in-place when needed. This has thus far been possible with QB Desktop and Empower Prism, but not to the same degree in PCTY.

Previous PCTY Limitations with Job Sync

Thus far, PCTY API allowed FCX to add Jobs only in the form of new, simple, 10-character codes without any description or other info attached, at the time of payroll push. This was not ideal, particularly for those companies who need Certified Payroll Reports for work done on Prevailing Wage jobs - PCTY API did not allow us to automatically mark Jobs as PW/Certified and this had to be done manually before or after sync.

New Feature Improves Job Sync Capability with PCTY

The new Job Sync feature from PCTY fixes this problem. It allows FCX to push more robust job records into PCTY, and further, allows us to push said jobs when the BP is started in FCX, ahead of payroll. Note that a BP is “Started” in FCX when the first charge hits the BP (via a Financial Distribution). Most of the time this comes from the first timecard charged to the BP.

How New FCX-PCTY Job Sync Works

Sync is One-Way: FCX to PCTY

This sync is currently mono-directional, where FCX pushes the record into PCTY and keeps it synced, but data on the Job in PCTY does not push back to FCX.

CAUTION

Because PCTY Jobs stay synced with FCX BPs, a change on the FCX side will reflect to the PCTY side on next sync. As a consequence, if you change a Job in PCTY which is synced with FCX in a way that differs from what is in FCX, FCX will overwrite your change on next sync, when it updates the record in PCTY to again match what is in FCX.

Sync is Per Cycle Schedule

The cycle is every 30 minutes by default (like with Employee/HR info), but this is configurable (though a smaller interval is not recommended). This means if you change a BP in FCX, said change should be reflected in PCTY in about 30 minutes.

Synced Data: Field Mapping

Field mapping is configurable, but will match the below in almost all cases. If you want clarification on your field mapping configuration, reach out to your FCX POC.

The following illustrates how BP data in FCX maps to Job data in PCTY by default:

The FCX External Links Table

To understand the below description of the FCX-PCTY Job Sync process, it is important you understand how the External Links Table works in FCX.

There are many records in FCX which may be linked to a record in some external system. Whether a record actually is linked to an external record depends on your company's configuration and the nature of the record in-question.

IF an FCX record IS linked to an external object, the link is maintained with a special record in the External Links table which is based on record IDs in both systems. This matters because it allows the records to usually stay linked, even if some crucial field is changed on one side or the other. For example, if once an Employee record is linked, you can safely change the Employee ID in one system or the other and this won't break the link.

As a caveat to the above, it is sometimes important that certain key fields have matching values during initial sync of a record between FCX and an external system. In the case of the Employee record mentioned above, the Employee ID should match, at least for initial sync, to help the system know which records to link together.

Sync Events - Order of Operation

The following describes what happens during FCX to PCTY Job Sync:

1. First, FCX finds all BPs in Active state which have been changed in any way since last Job sync
   1. Note that ALL Active BPs are selected for initial sync
2. For each BP, FCX checks if there is a valid link to an external record in the External Links table
3. IF the BP is NOT linked, FCX then searches the list of PCTY Jobs for a Job Code that matches the BP#
   1. If a matching Job Code is NOT found, FCX pushes a new Job record into PCTY and adds a Link between the PCTY Job and the FCX BP
   2. If a matching Job Code IS found:
      1. FCX will update fields in the PCTY Job to match fields in FCX, even if data is already in said fields in PCTY
      2. FCX will link the existing PCTY Job to the matching BP in FCX
4. IF the BP IS linked, FCX will update fields in the PCTY Job to match fields in FCX, even if data is already in said fields in PCTY
5. If an unexpected error occurs during Job Sync, FCX will notify FCX Support who will investigate promptly