The customer processes thousands of invoices annually and, due to a regulatory requirement in their country to submit all invoices to the government’s electronic invoicing system, needed a solution for automating the process of sending and retrieving invoices. Manual entry led to delays and errors, while their existing FileMaker-based system initially lacked direct integration due to technical authentication requirements.
To address this, we developed an integration component in Java 8 that provided secure access to the central system using authentication with private keys. The component’s support for SOAP also facilitated data message generation and XML format processing. The first version downloaded unprocessed invoices, enabling automatic handling within the customer’s system. We further ensured compatibility with complex invoicing structures (e.g., multiple invoices with the same number, attachments, and corrections).
For communication between the FileMaker Server and the integration component, we implemented a dedicated HTTP server in Python, which invoked the Java-written component as a command-line tool. To enhance security, we used encrypted communication, with sensitive data passed through parameters to avoid storing unencrypted information on disk, even temporarily.
