Connect accounting and your online shop with stock — enter data once

When you connect accounting and your online shop with stock, data is entered once and nobody retypes it after that. An order from the shop reaches stock and invoicing on its own, and your accounts show the same picture as your sales. You don’t have to replace programs that work — you just connect them.

If you sell online, by phone and by e-mail, you’ll know the feeling: the same information is retyped by several people into several programs. Here is what connecting means in plain words, what to map first and what can stay manual.

How do you know you need system integration?

Without integration, a company relies on people to carry data from one place to another. That works while orders are few, but as you grow it holds you back every day. Typical symptoms:

• Orders are retyped. An order comes in from the online shop, by e-mail or by phone, and someone types it into invoicing and then again into stock.
• Invoices are matched by hand. Someone compares payments on the bank statement with issued invoices, and supplier invoices with orders and delivery notes.
• Stock is out of sync. The shop offers goods that are no longer in the warehouse, and you find out while packing — or when an unhappy customer calls.
• Five versions of the same spreadsheet. Everyone keeps the price list or order overview in their own file, and nobody knows which one is current.
• Reports are put together by hand. At the end of the week someone copies figures from the shop, accounting and stock into one spreadsheet for management.

Every retype costs time and carries a risk of error. A typo in a quantity or a price often only shows up when a customer complains or the stocktake doesn’t add up.

What does it mean to connect accounting and an online shop?

Put simply: data is entered once, where it is born, and from there it reaches everyone who needs it. This is the journey of one order in a connected company:

1. A customer places an order in your online shop.
2. The order appears where you process it, and the goods are reserved in stock.
3. Once the goods are dispatched, an invoice is issued and recorded in accounting.
4. When the payment arrives, it is matched to the right invoice.
5. Stock levels in the online shop match what you actually have.
6. The weekly overview for management is built from the same data — no spreadsheets to assemble.

Nobody retypes anything. If something changes — a customer cancels an order, say — the change shows up everywhere. People spend their time on customers and exceptions, not on copying. That is the heart of business process automation.

Orders that come in by phone are entered once, in one place, and then follow the same path. Orders arriving as e-mails or attached documents can be read by AI, which enters the data where it is needed. AI can make mistakes, though, so a person checks important data. Our page on AI integration for companies explains more.

What should you map before you start?

The most important work happens before anything is built. For everything retyped today, answer three questions: what is it, where is it born and who needs it? A simple table helps:

For each piece of data, decide on one place where it is the master copy — the price list for prices, not a salesperson’s own spreadsheet. Every other place takes it from there, so the online shop and the invoice don’t show different prices.

Prepare this as well:

• A list of the programs and spreadsheets you use today, and who works with them.
• Who retypes what, from where to where, and how often.
• Exceptions — returns, part deliveries, discounts for regular customers.
• What costs you the most time or causes the most mistakes today.
• Which programs you want to keep and which you would like to replace.

What can stay manual?

Not everything should be automated. The rule is simple: automate what happens often and the same way every time. Leave what differs each time, or needs judgement, to people — the system just prepares the groundwork.

These can safely stay manual:

• Decisions that need judgement — a one-off discount for an important customer, for example.
• Rare exceptions, such as a complaint that needs a special solution.
• Approving a larger payment to a supplier before the money goes out.
• Checking data that AI has read from documents.
• Things you do only occasionally, where automating them would cost more than it saves.

The aim is not to take people out of the picture but to free them from retyping — leaving more time for decisions and better information to base them on.

What does it look like in practice?

You can see the enter-once principle in one of our projects, Zeleto. It is a purchasing system for restaurants. It compares supplier prices, splits each order between suppliers and shows how much was saved. Recipes and the cost of each portion live in the same system. It runs on the web and as an app for iPhone and Android.

So nobody has to split an order between suppliers by hand, and supplier prices, orders and recipes sit in one system rather than in separate spreadsheets. You’ll find more of our work among our projects.

How do you start connecting your systems?

Start with the one connection that hurts most, not with everything at once. When you connect accounting and your online shop, a good first step is often the path of an order from the shop into invoicing.

1. Pick the one piece of retyping that costs the most time or causes the most mistakes.
2. Map the data behind it using the table above.
3. Ask to see a design of how the connection will work before anything is built.
4. Run it on a smaller scale first — for one sales channel, for example — and check the results.
5. Only once it works, add the next connection.

If you’re weighing up whether connecting your existing programs is enough or you need your own system, read custom software or off-the-shelf.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to change my accounting program or online shop?

Not necessarily. If a program can receive and pass on data, it can be connected — and you find out whether yours can during mapping and design, before anything is built.

What about the protection of customer data?

When systems are connected, customer data moves between programs, so the same rules apply as anywhere else, including GDPR. Agree in advance which data goes where and who has access to it.

What if a connection stops working?

A good connection lets you know when something fails — when an order doesn’t make it into invoicing, for example. When you choose a supplier, ask who will look after the connections after launch.

How we can help

We connect accounting, stock, online shops and CRMs so that nothing is retyped by hand. At a meeting we find out where your company loses time, and we show you a design of the connection before anything is built. Read more about our custom software development or book a meeting.