One of the first things you want to do when you start out with your DIY e-commerce bookkeeping is to set up that Shopify to QuickBooks Online integration. But not so fast! If you rush into it, you could get yourself into some big trouble. In this article, I’ll tell you all about the biggest Shopify to QuickBooks integration mistakes and how to avoid them.
So, you’re a Shopify seller and business is booming, and now you have to deal with the bookkeeping. You get QuickBooks Online and look for an integration in the Shopify App Store, and you pick something at random. It’s cheap and looks easy to use. Suddenly, your books are a huge mess.
You’ve just made an integration mistake… but you’re not alone.
Let’s go over the biggest mistakes that Shopify sellers make when integrating Shopify and QuickBooks Online.
Mistake number one: Free and cheap must be good.
Let’s be clear: you always get what you pay for. Never make a purchase decision based on the fact that a product is free or cheap.
For example, OneSaas is currently free, at least at the moment I’m writing this article. Now, is that too good to be true? OneSaas was acquired by Intuit Corporation, and they’re currently giving away the software for free for marketing purposes. At some point, though, they’ll start charging for it. The question you want to ask yourself is, “Why build your financial systems around something that is free, when you may not be able to afford it later?”
Another popular choice is the Bold app; it starts as free, and it’s fairly low priced. Just like this one, there are plenty other apps that are free or cheap. As I’ll describe in greater detail further on, you always get what you pay for. For most of these apps, that means you’ll be getting the dreaded data dump. More on that later.
Mistake number two: Integration equals automation.
Yes, we live in modern times, and artificial intelligence is taking over. Or at least that’s what the marketers would like you to think. But for now, we are far from fully automating bookkeeping tasks, especially when it comes to Shopify bookkeeping.
Integration will certainly save you time, and it will reduce manual tasks, but it does not eliminate doing your bookkeeping. There are many tasks that either you or a qualified bookkeeping professional need to perform on a regular basis in order to ensure that your books tell an accurate story of what’s going on with your profits.
Mistake number three: All apps are the same.
Shopify to QuickBooks Online integration apps are absolutely not the same. Most apps will send detailed transactions to QuickBooks Online and attempt to manage inventory items in QuickBooks (which is not what we’re looking for).
You should also consider whether an app has a good integration with QuickBooks. Will it allow you to customize the account mapping? If you can’t customize your account mapping, then you have no control over how the transactions are sent to QuickBooks.
A final aspect to take into account is if the app has a good tech support team. Will you be backed up by experts, or are you on your own when it comes to troubleshooting?
Mistake number four: The dreaded data dump.
Oh. No.
As I just mentioned, most apps will send detailed transactions to QuickBooks Online. In this case, all those details are not what we want. All this does is cause a giant data dump, which will clutter up your data, slow down your QuickBooks, and make it nearly impossible to reconcile amounts sold to the amounts received from payment processors.
The problem is that most app developers are not accountants, and they don’t understand that the data that dumps into QuickBooks has to be reconciled for accounting and bookkeeping purposes. As a best practice, you should only use integration apps that send summarized transactions to QuickBooks Online.
The bright side? A2X: my favorite Shopify to QuickBooks Online integration app.
So how do you avoid making these integration mistakes? Use A2X, my favorite app for integrating Shopify and QuickBooks.
The reason why it’s my favorite app and why I highly recommend it is because A2X sends summarized transactions to QuickBooks. That’s just one summary entry per day, instead of hundreds of sales receipts cluttering up your books. They also make it easy to reconcile to amounts received from payment processors.
Finally, A2X has a great support team, and they even have accountants on staff who understand how the data should flow to QuickBooks Online correctly.
A2X gives you an unlimited free trial and also has pricing based on volume of sales as well as sales channels.
You can get 20% off your first 6 months with A2X using this discount code: VM_20_6MON_2021
Closing
I just shared with you the biggest Shopify to QuickBooks Online integration mistakes and how to avoid them. Let me know in the comments if you’ve made any of these mistakes and how it turned out.
If you’d like some help with setting up or managing your books and are ready to work with an experienced and reliable Shopify accounting pro, you can use the following link to learn more about my services and see how we might be able to work together: click here.
In the meantime, enjoy free access to plenty more resources, like my YouTube channel and my free Shopify Bookkeeping Blueprint. If you’d also like to connect with fellow DIY Shopify sellers and professional bookkeepers, come join my Facebook community. You can also follow me on Instagram to get all kinds of tips for DIY Shopify bookkeepers.
Get in touch, and let me know if you have anything else you’d like me to cover. Remember, I’m here to help you.
