If you’re still manually entering orders, fixing invoices, or switching systems to track sales, you’re not alone. Many businesses run into this problem. When QuickBooks and your store are connected well, sales and accounting stay aligned. When they are not, manual work often increases instead of decreasing.
A good link between your store and QuickBooks improves accuracy, keeps data cleaner, and simplifies order management as your business grows.
1. Check Your Workflow Before You Integrate
Integrations work best when they solve a problem for your business. Take a few minutes to ask yourself the following questions:
- Are your orders manually entered into more than one location?
- Are your invoices being manually cleaned up?
- Are your customers/orders/invoices getting out of sync?
- Are you spending too much time double-checking records?
- Are your reports not trusted as much as they should be?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you might have an issue that doesn’t just involve integrating QuickBooks, but rather the order handoff between your store and your accounting software.
2. Make Sure Your Data Lines Up
Unorganized data is where a lot of integrations go sideways. A QuickBooks integration is not going to fix your bad or missing data. In fact, it is simply going to move your bad data around at a faster rate.
For instance, if the same product has one SKU in your store and a different item name or code in QuickBooks, the integration can still send the transaction through, but the accounting side may be harder to reconcile later. The same goes for inconsistent tax settings, customer names, or shipping charge formats.
Crucially, all data corrections should be performed directly within QuickBooks. Think of QuickBooks as the engine for your business and all the reports as the exhaust. If you “fix” one of the figures in a report or spreadsheet, the error will still exist in your accounting software.
To truly ensure accuracy and integration between all systems, log in to QuickBooks to make these corrections. QuickBooks will then automatically reflect the changes throughout all integrated software applications.
3. Start With What You Want The Integration To Solve
Your first step should be thinking about the problem that you want the integration to solve. For some companies, their biggest problem is that they have to do double entry into their accounting and order systems.
For other companies, they need to improve the accuracy of the invoices that they send out, or they need to make reconciliation easier. Others may need to reduce the lag between when they place orders online and when their accounting systems are updated.
The first step, then, is to define what success will look like after you implement a QuickBooks integration. Are you looking for orders to automatically flow into your QuickBooks system? Are you looking to keep customer records in sync between systems?
Every business owner should ask themselves: Can the integration reduce the number of times that your accounting team has to manually clean up the system each week? By starting with the problem that you are trying to solve, you can be sure that the integration will actually help to improve your operations.
4. Decide What Should Sync Between Systems
You don’t have to sync everything between your systems. In fact, automating too much will cause you just as many problems as it will solutions.
Depending on your business, you might want to sync only invoices. Other businesses might also want to sync customer records, shipping information, payment information, and invoice status information between their online store and QuickBooks.
Consider your business and how your back-office software works with QuickBooks to figure out what information should sync between your platforms. Make a decision about what information should sync between both systems before you begin automating processes. Automating too much can cause more challenges than it solves.
5. Reduce Manual Entry, But Keep Controls and Monitoring Where You Need Them
Automation should make your life easier, not harder. One of the biggest benefits of integrating QuickBooks is reducing the amount of admin work you have to do manually. Retyping orders and invoices is a chore that takes up precious team time.
The integration should make it easier to monitor orders and invoices. Automation tools should reduce the amount of manual work involved in order and invoice management, but without removing useful checkpoints in the process. The goal is to automate, but not let your business rely on blind automation.
For more complex ordering processes, it is always better for a business to have an order and invoice management system that offers both automation and manual review functions.
6. Make Reporting Easier and More Trustworthy
If the numbers are harder to trust after the integration, then something is off. An effective QuickBooks integration is supposed to make it easier for the business to gain visibility into its financial situation. However, if the two data sources are continually out of sync with one another, that will make it challenging for the business to trust the reports.
After integrating QuickBooks, your team should be able to answer these questions faster: Which orders have already been invoiced? Which customers have reordered? Which orders still need to be followed up on? If the integration makes your team check more spreadsheets, it is probably not structured the right way.
7. Think About Growth, Not Just Setup
It is easy to build for today. The smarter move is building for what comes next. Any QuickBooks integration will work for the business you have today. However, it should also work for the business you are building.
This is why most businesses need more than just an integration. Logicblock customer services include integrations, migration, customization, support, onboarding, and training. Integrating without these additional services will ultimately impact your business’s operations, from how you report to how quickly you can serve your customers.
8. Choose A Platform Partner That Understands The Back Office
While the front end of an eCommerce store is important, the back office is where many of the challenges are either created or solved.
If your eCommerce platform easily integrates with accounting systems like QuickBooks, you can scale your business without adding more manual work. Logicblock works as a solution for eCommerce businesses to connect their storefront to their ERP or accounting system.
QuickBooks integration and Logicblock support are not just boilerplate technical features but part of what makes an eCommerce platform a system that a business can count on.
The Bottom Line
Integrating QuickBooks with an eCommerce store can be a good idea. However, the decision to do so should be made with consideration for how the software will impact the business.
Focus on the existing business processes. Simplify the data that must be entered into QuickBooks. Automate as much of the data entry as possible while maintaining control over the business processes that are important to the business. Make decisions about the integration that will help the business grow rather than simply operate today.
For businesses looking to automate backend systems and level up their existing services through customization, migration, and more, Logicblock can provide the backend system integrations, support, and onboarding they need to succeed. Get in touch now for a free demo and trial.
