5 Benefits of Integrating Shopify With QuickBooks

With global ecommerce sales expected to increase to $5.4 trillion by the end of 2022, more businesses than ever are cashing in by offering their products online. If you are among this rising percentage, choosing a high-functioning and flexible shopping cart can make or break your operations as you shift into the post-pandemic retail landscape. And Shopify is among the top ecommerce platforms, controlling more than 20% of the ecommerce market share at the time of writing.

The platform has more than 1.7 million merchants, and it processed over $5.1 billion in sales in 2020. Shopify also integrates with more than 3,200 apps that simplify business processes from payroll to email marketing, making its app store one of the most robust available. The one downside? Shopify does not directly integrate with QuickBooks, meaning businesses who want to automate their accounting need a Shopify QuickBooks integration to serve as a connector. 

Before you groan at the thought of yet another app, consider these long term benefits:   

Save Time When You Connect Shopify to QuickBooks

Research from Gallup shows that 62% of small business owners work at least 50 hours per week, with a portion of that time spent on time consuming administrative tasks like manual data entry. If you’re in this position, integrating QuickBooks and Shopify makes sense because you skip the hours of racking invoices and expenses by hand. 

Tracking these transactions is important for business, but you shouldn’t spend much time on these tasks every day. Besides being tedious, manual entry is prone to errors and typos. Taking advantage of a QuickBooks integration saves a lot of time, which you can use to generate traffic, conversions, and sales.

A Shopify QuickBooks integration ensures all your transaction data will be automatically exported and posted to your accounting software. Rest easy knowing your financial records are up to date as you focus on other crucial business tasks.

Maintain Accounting and Inventory Accuracy

Integrating QuickBooks into Shopify also significantly reduces the risks of overselling. Keeping up with fast-moving virtual inventory is hard, especially if you have to update the quantities after every sale. If you still track your inventory manually, you may prefer updating the inventory once daily instead of immediately after the sale.

This exposes your online business to the risks of overselling. Explaining to your customers that you can’t ship the products they already bought because they are out of stock can damage your brand and reputation. You will also lose future sales as customers will most likely turn to competitors for immediate replacement. Unlike physical stores, online customers trust that you display correct inventory quantities all the time.

However, integrating QuickBooks to Shopify updates your inventory automatically after every sale is made. This gives you confidence and peace of mind that the displayed products are actually available and can be fulfilled.

Sync All Your Shopify Data

A Shopify QuickBooks integration also enables merchants to eliminate messy product descriptions across their sales channels. Like with tracking transactions, multichannel businesses spend a lot of time creating and managing their product lists. With so many inputs to enter—product titles, product descriptions, imagery, and category tags, to name a few—manually managing your product listings is not only time-consuming but also creates room for errors, including wrong spelling or poor organization. 

Publishing messy product listings on your site has a lot of drawbacks. No surprises there. Misspellings and disorganization reduce customer confidence in your products, and any difficulty shoppers have when navigating your online store will impact your bottom line. Fortunately, you can avoid these drawbacks by connecting QuickBooks and your Shopify site.

Simply choose whether to use QuickBooks or Shopify as your product database, and use the connector to copy all the information from one location to the other. Launching a new sales channel? Easily upload your catalog the same way. The integration ensures that all the details stay consistent.

Keep Tax Information Organized

Most businesses, especially those relying on manual data entry, struggle with organizing their taxes when the tax season closes in. Some businesses ignore and overlook the consequences of not filing tax returns, while others pass their struggle to accountants—a costly choice. You can avoid all these by integrating QuickBooks into your Shopify site. 

Consider the following:

• Improved data accuracy – Eliminate the possibility of human errors.
• Saves time – Keep your financial data organized, making it easier to trace your records when filing your taxes.
• Money-saving – File your taxes yourself, rather than shelling out for an accountant who charges exorbitant hourly fees. If you do prefer hiring an accounting professional, you’ll still spend less because it won’t take hours to sift through a mountain of invoices and receipts.

Get Better Insights into Shopify Performance

Ecommerce businesses also benefit from the overall performance insights they get with a Shopify QuickBooks integration. As in any other industry, you should monitor your business closely to understand its growth and progress, but this becomes impossible if you don’t have real-time data. That’s why you need a way to see your Shopify sales, income from marketplaces or other sales channels, and business expenses all in one place. Seeing your revenue directly in Shopify is a great place to start, but it’s just one piece of the puzzle. Your cash flow is a far better indicator of your business’ health and longevity. 

Additionally, businesses can formulate effective growth strategies using accurate and updated information gathered from QuickBooks. For instance, you can schedule production and sales once you see how quickly your inventory is moving. You can also evaluate if your marketing strategies are effective based on completed orders after a marketing campaign. That aside, having well-documented income and expenses make it easy to plan your taxes.

A Competitive Edge in a Slim Margin Industry

Overall, having a Shopify integration with QuickBooks gives businesses a competitive edge by keeping them organized, saving time and money, and providing an in-depth look into key performance indicators. By letting technology handle the busywork, online retailers and brands can return their focus to their customers, who prefer shopping with businesses that provide the best customer experience. 

Simplify important tasks with this essential tool for your ecommerce tech stack. 

About the Author: Thomas Glare is a freelance blogger and an online marketer. He writes to help web owners and online businesses to establish themselves on the internet. Thomas provides useful information for beginners and existing website owners to help them have a strong online presence and attract more traffic to their sites.