Getting connected
This page walks you through connecting Clockify, a product of CAKE.com, to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, a product of Microsoft, using the Clockify Connector built by Spainlink. Onboarding in the current version is assisted: a Spainlink engineer works through the steps with you, and setup is designed to fit inside a working day once the prerequisites are in place. If you have not yet seen what the connector does, start with How it works.
Prerequisites
Confirm these before the kickoff call. They are what the first call checks, so arriving with them done shortens everything that follows.
| You need | Why | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Business Central online, with a license that includes Projects | The connector posts time to Project Journal Lines and the Project Ledger | Your Business Central administrator |
| An administrator who can install AppSource apps and register applications | Installing the extension and registering the connector’s application both need administrator rights | Your Business Central administrator |
| A Clockify workspace on a plan that includes time approvals | Only approved entries sync, so the approval feature must be available | Your Clockify workspace administrator |
| A Clockify workspace administrator | Creates the API key and confirms the webhook setup | Your Clockify workspace administrator |
| Approvals actually in use | The connector reacts to approval. If nobody approves time today, that is a process change to plan before go live, not a switch to flip on the day | Your team leads |
Getting connected today
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Contact Spainlink at info@spainlink.es. Tell us your Business Central environment type (production or sandbox first) and roughly how many people track time.
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Kickoff call. A short call to confirm the prerequisites, agree who does what, and set a target go-live date. Decision makers do not need to attend the later technical steps, but the people who own your projects and your Clockify workspace should.
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Install the extension. Your administrator installs the Clockify Connector from Microsoft AppSource into your Business Central environment. This creates the setup record and the role center pieces. It changes no data and posts nothing.
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Register the connector’s application. On the Microsoft Entra Applications page inside your Business Central, your administrator creates a card for the connector’s application, grants consent, sets it to Enabled, and assigns the permission set that ships with the extension. That permission set is least privilege: it grants exactly what the connector needs and nothing more.
Note what this step does not do: it stores no passwords and no keys in your Business Central. It only tells your Business Central to accept the connector’s application identity, which signs in through Microsoft Entra like any other Microsoft-managed application.
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Provide a Clockify API key. Your Clockify workspace administrator creates an API key and hands it over through the secure channel Spainlink gives you during onboarding. Never send it by plain email or chat. The key lives in the sync service’s configuration on Microsoft Azure, never inside Business Central.
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Mapping workshop. Together we map your people to Business Central resources and your Clockify projects to Business Central projects, each with a default project task; individual Clockify tasks can also be mapped to specific project tasks. For example, Ana’s Clockify account maps to resource CL001, and the Clockify project “Installation of S-200 Server” maps to project PR00010 with default task 110. Anything that cannot be mapped yet is simply left out; unmapped entries are held for review, never guessed. The full model, with worked examples, is on The mapping model page.
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Dry run. We run a sync in report-only mode. It reads your approved Clockify entries, resolves every mapping, validates every posting date, and reports exactly what it would write, without writing anything. You review the report together with us and correct any mapping surprises while they are still free.
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Go live. We switch the connector on. From that moment, approving a time entry in Clockify triggers a webhook and the entry typically posts within seconds; a scheduled sync every 15 minutes is the backstop. Your first entries appear in the role center within minutes of the first approval.
What to check in the first week
- Watch the tiles move. Received, In Journal and Posted should climb as your team’s approvals come through. Failed should stay at zero; if it does not, each failed entry in the time entries list shows its own error message, which usually names exactly what to fix.
- Spot-check a posted entry. Pick one project ledger entry and compare it with the original Clockify entry: same person, same project and task, same date (the worker’s own calendar day), same hours, same cost.
- Review the sync log. The append-only log inside Business Central records every write and post with timestamps. Reading it in week one builds the habit your finance team will rely on later.
If anything looks wrong, the Support page explains how to reach us at support@spainlink.es.
Self-service setup is on the roadmap. Until then, assisted onboarding is not a limitation but a choice: an engineer watches your first sync with you.