0.24.0

Ascora runs on a connector we build and maintain ourselves, with 46 tools covering enquiries, customers and contacts, quotes with their sections and items, jobs with their labour and timesheets, the price list of supplies, kits and labour roles, suppliers and supplier invoices, and the customer invoices and payments waiting to go to your accounting package.

It follows the shape of the work: a lead comes in as an enquiry, a quote is built and priced for the customer, winning the quote makes the job, hours land on the job, and the invoice and its payments are handed to accounting.

Connecting is a pasted key

Ascora does not offer integrations like ours a sign-in-and-approve flow, so an administrator on your account generates an API key under Administration, API Settings, and pastes it into FloConnector along with the name you want the connection to carry. There is one key for the whole account and it carries full access, so treat it accordingly.

One thing to know before you generate one: Ascora issues a single key per account, and clicking Generate New API Key disconnects everything using the previous one, including this connection. If another integration asks you to generate a key, reconnect FloConnector afterwards with the new one. It takes one paste.

Quotes are how a job gets built

Ascora's API can create a job directly, but it cannot change one afterwards and it cannot add lines to one. So the way to build a job with supplies and labour on it is to build the quote, with its sections if it has them, and mark it won. Ascora turns it into the job and reports the job number. Quotes and jobs are addressed by their number, Q57 or a section like Q57.01, the same way you see them in Ascora.

Updating a customer keeps what you did not mention

Ascora's own update calls replace the whole record, so an update that only mentioned a postcode would have emptied the name, the email and both addresses. We read the record first and send it back with your change applied, so you can update one field and trust the rest. Sending a field as empty still clears it.

Labour on a quote goes through a write-in for now

Ascora's API currently rejects every attempt to add a labour role to a quote, including roles created moments earlier, while the same thing works in Ascora's own screens. We have raised it with Ascora. Until it is fixed, the tool tells you what happened and how to get the same result: add the labour as a write-in line at the role's hourly rate, which prices the quote identically.

Some things Ascora reports as done without doing them

A few Ascora calls answer with success and change nothing: adding an item whose id it does not recognise, and clearing the items from a sectioned quote. Where we can tell in advance, the tool refuses instead of reporting a clear that never happened. Where we cannot, the tool tells you to confirm the quote's total, because the total is the only place a quote's lines are visible.

Two more are worth knowing. A quote that fails to create can still have been created, so the error says to check the quote list before trying again. And marking a customer invoice as sent to accounting is one way: once marked, Ascora no longer returns it, so only mark what your accounting package has confirmed.