Inventory errors and disconnected data can eat up to 30% of your profits. If you're running a store, you may already be considering a POS ecommerce integration tool that syncs inventory and sales data.
But before investing in one, you probably find yourself wondering: Will the tool justify the cost? Are there any hidden costs? How do you know if the ROI will be worthy for a business of your size?
In this guide, we’ll cover when a POS ecommerce integration makes sense, the best POS systems you can consider, and how a reliable POS ecommerce tool makes connecting POS systems with any ecommerce platform easy.
If you’re selling on a single channel or have a simple sales flow, an ecommerce POS integration might not be necessary. However, if you’re running a physical store alongside online channels, you need a cohesive tool that unifies all the fragmented systems.
It‘s high time you invest in a POS ecommerce integration if you’re facing the following:
Ecommerce integration with POS systems unifies your inventory, sales, and customer data. To paint a better picture, in this section, you can learn how founders like you have reaped the benefits of ecommerce POS integration.
Manual inventory syncing can lead to stockouts or overstocking. And this means you also risk losing your customers.
For example, a customer buys a product in-store, but another places an online order for the same item. By the time your team manually updates the stock, it’s too late. The customer has already placed an order for an out-of-stock item, resulting in a canceled order, a refund, and frustration. This erodes trust and damages your reputation.
A POS ecommerce integration tool can bridge the gap between your POS system and ecommerce platforms.
Take the case of Rider Shack, for example. When you get featured on Fox 11 News as the "Best Surf Shop in Los Angeles” three times in a row, you become the surfboard king! However, this also means, you will witness demand-surge and ecommerce chaos.
Rider Shack was suddenly staring at 13,000 orders to process every day! Before they could notice, most of their hours were spent on order management and fulfillment. Posting orders into QuickBooks Online and updating inventory levels between the online and retail stores were put on the back burner.
This was when Jeff Glass, the owner of Rider Shack found Webgility. He was able to set up the platform quickly. All systems began talking to each other, and in no time, the inventory between their online store, retail store, and QuickBooks POS was in sync. Jeff was able to eliminate inventory errors and save 15 hours per week spent on inventory management, and $1400 equivalent of manual work.
Epic Mens, an apparel business, struggled to sync its physical store and online sales.
Bookkeeping errors piled up, and reconciling inventory stole hours from their lean team.
Here’s a quick summary of the results:
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Before Webgility |
After Webgility |
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Hard to synchronize the storefront and back office manually |
Automated syncing of sales records and inventory across systems |
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Spent over 80 hours a week on manual bookkeeping and reconciliation |
Saves 80+ hours weekly - equivalent to hiring two full-time employees |
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Struggled to process high order volumes manually |
Efficiently manages 6,000–15,000 orders a month with a small team of 4 |
Your in-store POS shows one set of numbers, and your ecommerce platform shows another. How do you figure out the total revenue and your best-selling products across all channels?
A POS ecommerce integration tool like Webgility pulls all your online and offline sales data into one dashboard.
You’ll have clear visibility into key business metrics such as:
From average order value to tracking expenses such as taxes, shipping costs, processing fees, and Costs of Goods Sold (COGS), you can gain insights into all important metrics over a defined period.
You can instantly compare total revenue for the day, week, or month, see which products are performing best across channels, and even track if your loyal customers prefer shopping in-store, online, or both. You can also take it further and drill into order-level profitability information.
You can use this data to identify trends, set realistic sales goals, monitor product performance, and optimize inventory and marketing.
For instance, by automating QuickBooks entry with Webgility, The Nappy Shoppe, a diaper retailer, saves 17 hours and $140 weekly.
"We are now up-to-date with our finances and have stayed that way," says Sharni Vaughan, its Founder, and CEO.
Many ecommerce platforms offer in-built tools to create discount codes, set sales events, and run targeted campaigns. With an ecommerce POS integration tool, you can make sure your discount or promotional prices automatically sync across your physical store. Whether a customer shops online or in-store, they’ll receive the same promotional offer and loyalty points will be tracked in one unified system.
This ensures consistency, eliminates manual work, and offers customers a reliable cross-channel shopping experience.
To maximize the benefits of ecommerce POS integration, however, you need to choose the right ecommerce point-of-sale software.
We’ve outlined in the table below the top four POS systems to help you pick the one that best aligns with your business needs. Read on for an in-depth analysis covering their pricing, pros, cons, and user reviews of each.
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Software |
Key features |
Pricing |
G2 ratings (out of 5) |
|
Clover |
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Starts at $165/month |
3 stars (81 reviews) |
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Lightspeed |
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Starts at $69/month |
4 stars (290 reviews) |
|
Shopify POS |
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Starts at $39/month |
4.4 stars (321 reviews) |
|
Square |
|
Starts at $29/month |
4.7 stars (794 reviews) |
Clover is a POS system for ecommerce combining payment processing, sales tracking, and inventory management. It’s ideal for small to medium-sized businesses to see an intuitive, scalable POS system.
Note: If you use Clover’s built-in system for physical store sales, inventory updates happen in real-time. However, it may require third-party integrations like Webgility for ecommerce platforms to sync inventory in real-time.
Lightspeed offers two retail POS systems: the R-Series and the X-Series. While both streamline retail operations, they differ in features, pricing, and target audiences. The X-series is better suited for businesses seeking a user-friendly, cloud-based POS system with scalability and flexibility.
Hardware costs:
Shopify POS makes it easy for merchants to keep multichannel sales under control by syncing inventory across all your stores. It’s a good setup for small businesses to handle basic product listings and stay on top of inventory.
Square is a user-friendly cloud-based POS system that offers a suite of tools to manage sales, inventory, payments, and customer data. It works well for small to medium-sized businesses seeking a system with online store integration, employee management, and detailed reporting.
POS systems are great for tracking in-store sales, but when you start selling across multiple ecommerce platforms, they often fall short.
Syncing sales, inventory, and accounting data in real-time across multiple sales channels can quickly get chaotic.
This is where Webgility steps in. It easily integrates with ecommerce platforms and POS systems—like Shopify POS, Clover, Lightspeed, and Square—so that all your sales and inventory data are in a single system.
When Bases Loaded, a sport and apparel retailer, decided to grow its online channels while managing an already thriving brick-and-mortar store, its existing tools fell short.
They needed a solution to bridge their QuickBooks POS with ecommerce platforms. After integrating Webgility, they could easily track all sales and returns, whether made in-store or online.
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“When we started with Webgility, we generated approximately $1.9M in revenue and less than 15 online orders a day, Now, we are over $5.5M in revenue and process over 10,000 online orders a month,”
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Webgility is perfect for businesses seeking a tool that automates the flow of data between POS systems and accounting tools like Quickbooks. It saves you time and reduces errors.
Here is a demo of how to use Webgility’s AI agent for your business.
Annual pricing
Additional charges apply for orders over 250/month or 3,000/year
G2: 4.6 stars (336 reviews)
Whether you’re managing multiple online stores or scaling across offline and online channels, Webgility can keep your inventory and accounting data in check. Plus, it will take your business beyond managing data and help you extract sales and customer insights with AI agents.
Moreover, getting started is simple. All Webgility plans include free one-on-one onboarding with an expert to ensure you hit the ground running.
Get started for free and know why over 20,000 customers have trusted Webgility to help them manage their ecommerce business!
POS–ecommerce integration connects your point-of-sale system with your ecommerce platform, ensuring seamless data synchronization between in-store and online operations.
Choose a POS system that supports ecommerce integration to integrate your POS with your website. Then, connect it to your ecommerce platform (e.g., Shopify, WooCommerce) using built-in features, apps, or APIs: sync inventory, sales, and customer data for seamless operations.
POS–ecommerce integration provides real-time inventory updates, reducing stock discrepancies and letting you track accurate records across sales channels.
Pricing for POS-ecommerce integration typically involves monthly or annual subscriptions, ranging from $30 to $200+, depending on features and business size.