Somewhere in your office, right now, somebody is retyping something.
An invoice that exists in your database is being typed into Xero. A stock level that changed this morning is being typed into your web shop. Hours on a timesheet are being typed into a payroll portal — carefully, slowly, and occasionally wrongly.
This is the problem API integration exists to solve. It's our favourite kind of work at Flare Software, and after 25+ years of building FileMaker systems, it's the thing that transforms a good database into the beating heart of a business.
What "integration" actually means (in English)
An API is simply a doorway that one piece of software opens so another can talk to it. Xero has one. WooCommerce has one. Mailchimp has one. Most modern payroll and timesheet systems have one.
Integration means we teach your FileMaker system to walk through those doorways. Raise an invoice in FileMaker, and it appears in Xero — correctly coded, no retyping. Change a price in FileMaker, and your web shop updates itself. The systems have a quiet word with each other, and the humans get on with actual work.
The practical benefits are blunt and measurable:
- No more retyping. The same information is never entered twice.
- No more transcription errors. Software doesn't misread a 7 as a 1 at 4:45 on a Friday.
- One source of truth. When every system draws from the same well, "which spreadsheet is right?" stops being a daily question.
- Speed. Machines do in seconds what people do in afternoons. We rebuilt one CSV export for a construction workforce client — holiday tracking across a large field workforce — and cut the run time from 10 minutes to about ten seconds. Same data, radically better plumbing.
Integrations we've actually built
Plenty of firms list logos. These are things we've genuinely wired up for real clients:
FileMaker ↔ Xero
Full accounting integration using Xero's OAuth 2.0 API. Invoices, contacts and payments flowing between your FileMaker system and your accounts, so the numbers your team sees match the numbers your accountant sees. Your bookkeeper stops re-keying and starts reviewing.
FileMaker ↔ WooCommerce
E-commerce sync over the WooCommerce REST API: products, prices and stock levels flowing from FileMaker to your online shop. Sell something in the warehouse, and the website knows. Update a product description once, and it's everywhere.
FileMaker ↔ payroll and timesheet systems
Some of the trickiest and most valuable work we do. Payroll platforms often speak SOAP — an older, fussier dialect of API — and we're fluent in it. Timesheets recorded in FileMaker land in the payroll system without a human in the loop, which means fewer payday surprises and much happier Fridays.
FileMaker ↔ Mailchimp
Your customer database drives your mailing lists automatically. New customers join the right audience; lapsed ones drop off. Marketing sends to a list that's actually current, possibly for the first time ever.
Web portals on a FileMaker back-end
Sometimes the integration is with your own customers: a web portal where clients log in, place orders, check job progress or download documents — all reading and writing directly to your FileMaker system. Your team keeps working in FileMaker; the outside world sees a clean, modern website. Nobody needs to know there's a 25-year friendship with a database behind it.
And beneath all of these sits general REST/JSON expertise — the common language of the modern web — so if the system you need to talk to isn't on this list, there's every chance we can connect to it anyway.
How we approach an integration
APIs fail in creative ways: expired tokens, changed endpoints, a supplier "improving" things overnight. The difference between a robust integration and a fragile one is what happens when something goes wrong at 2am.
So we build defensively. Every integration we ship logs what it did, notices when something fails, and fails safely — no half-written invoices, no silently skipped orders. We test against the real API, not just the documentation (the two are related, but not always closely). And because we've been bitten by the sharp edges before, we design around them from day one rather than discovering them in production.
This is genuinely specialist work. Building a FileMaker layout is one craft; making FileMaker converse reliably with a strict, occasionally grumpy external API is another. We happen to love both.
If your FileMaker system needs building or improving before it's ready to talk to the world, see our FileMaker development and FileMaker consultants pages — and once it's connected, our support service keeps it that way.
FAQ
Can you connect FileMaker to our system? It's not one you've listed.
Probably. If it has an API — and most modern business software does — we can very likely connect to it. Send us the name of the system and we'll give you a straight yes, no, or "let us check the documentation and come back to you".
Is our data safe travelling between systems?
Yes, when it's done properly. Connections are encrypted, credentials are stored securely rather than scattered through scripts, and each integration gets only the access it needs — the Xero link can't touch your web shop, and vice versa.
What happens when Xero or WooCommerce changes their API?
Occasionally providers retire old API versions, and integrations need updating. We build against current versions, watch for deprecation notices, and can maintain your integrations under ongoing support so changes are handled before they become outages.
We're already retyping data daily. How quickly can this pay for itself?
Faster than most software projects. Add up the hours spent retyping each week, then add the cost of the errors. Integrations attack both directly, which is why they're often the highest-value work we do.
Do we need a new FileMaker system first?
No. Most integrations bolt onto your existing system. If the existing system needs a little strengthening first, we'll tell you honestly at the free consultation.
Stop the retyping
Tell us which systems aren't talking to each other, and we'll tell you — plainly and for free — what connecting them would involve.
Call 0330 113 0958 or email info@flaresoftware.co.uk. We're a Claris Partner based near Bristol, working across the UK and worldwide.