In order to ensure the team can support you as efficiently and as effectively as possible, we expect all of our developers to have familiarised themselves with the following prior to contacting us.

1. Prepare

• When starting your development with Sage Business Cloud Accounting, you should begin by following the Quick Start Guide, which will take you through the processes required to get up and running and successfully make your first request. This is a key step in ensuring you understand the OAUTH flow and how requests are made.

• As part of getting up and running you will have to register your application with us in order to receive your applications credentials (Client ID, Secret key etc.) please see Create an App.

• Ensure you have access to developer accounts/trials of the software for testing, that mirrors what your customers use.

We recommend you:

• Define a strategy for knowledge collection and knowledge sharing within your business.
• Define a strategy for sharing knowledge learned from any Sage training courses.

2. Use available resources

Before contacting us please ensure you have reviewed all digital resources online before raising a new case. This includes:

• The Sage developer portal site for Accounting.
• Application help provided by Sage for Accounting.

3. Appropriate troubleshooting

You must perform your own troubleshooting prior to contacting us to establish if the issue is data, program or environment specific and it is essential that you let us know of any fault finding/ problem solving processes you have carried out so far.

These are guidelines only but will provide structure around your troubleshooting methodology. If there has been insufficient troubleshooting carried out we will request that further work is undertaken by the developer before proceeding with the case.

• Have you tested your request in Postman?
• Have you tested your request in a different business or trial account?
• Have you tested your request in a different region of Sage Accounting?
• Have you isolated the section of your request that’s causing the unexpected results?
• What exceptions are appearing, and do you understand the details?
• Can any of your colleagues assist you?

4. Support boundaries

The following lists are a quick guide to give you an idea of the type of support we offer. It is not exhaustive but is intended to help you understand how we can support you with meeting our customer’s needs:

Supported

• The endpoints required to reach your desired goal.
• How to get set up.
• Issues with authentication.
• Errors when making requests.
• Application advice when it relates to the use of the API (settings that could impact API responses etc.)

Unsupported

• Development with specific languages, we only support the endpoints.
• Accounting application processes are not supported by the team, for support visit the application help site.
• Any improvements or ideas for the application or API should be directed to the ideas board.

5. Code examples

Our documentation contains test request examples, you will occasionally wish to replicate some behaviour which is not already covered in the documentation. In this case we will endeavour to provide you with a custom example if it is appropriate.

For this reason, we will factor our code so that it is easy to follow rather than most efficient. Please remember that all code examples are illustrative and are not guaranteed to be production safe. It is your responsibility to fully test any software written using our request examples. Where possible we will opt to provide pseudo-code examples to highlight how you might approach the problem as a developer rather than produce a full, working example.

We will often ask to see an example of the requests that show your issue, so we can support you as efficiently as possible.

6. During the case

Wherever possible, please attempt to keep contact throughout the lifespan of a case limited to being from one person. This helps to ensure nothing is missed out and that we are dealing with a key contact working to resolve the issue.

Please refrain from creating duplicate cases for the same query as this adds confusion and may slow down our response.

When asked to provide answers to questions regarding your query or problem, please make every attempt to fully supply the technician with the detail required.

7. Follow up

We would ask for you to let us know if the solution provided resolved the problem, if not what the alternative solution was. This will assist us in helping you, your developers and the community.

For cases where we have requested more information we cannot progress the case until it is provided by you. The team may send you a reminder email in order to progress the case, but lack of a response will result in the case being closed. We would ask all developers to give us the information we need to progress as quickly as possible to ensure a timely solution can be provided.

8. Feedback

You may receive a survey, it is important to us that you complete the surveys with detail in the comments box whenever possible, adding further information to support your scores. The information is essential in helping us to understand what went well during the lifecycle of a case and where we can improve. We appreciate all comments and ensure that they are shared with all involved.

If you have any further comments and feedback regarding the survey process, please email Partner Feedback.

9. Behaviour

We are here to work in partnership with you. Remember, we’re all here to service the customer and we should all have their best interests at heart, striving for extraordinary customer experience.

Please treat us, as you would like to be treated yourself.