Systems integration is gaining such momentum with the adoption of cloud based software solutions and rightly so as the benefits for business are obvious. Many providers offer open API’s to enable developers to connect their products to other business systems. I have used these myself as access and documentation is good which results in reduced development costs.
The open API nature of cloud based software solutions has lead to companies such as IFTTT, OneSaas and Zapier offering their own solutions to connect and share data between different business applications. The pricing model is inline with other cloud based offerings based on a monthly/volume basis. They often require little technical knowledge to set up and although this may reduce the development work I could charge for as a recommendation to get the most cost effective solution for a client these should be considered.
Xero integration is one of the areas I specialise in and recently I trailed two offerings as possible solutions to getting customer records and invoices for orders processed online in WooCommerce automatically generated in Xero, below are my findings.
WooCommerce to Xero Integration with Zapier
I did not get too far with this test as there was one major flaw with this integration and that was orders with multiple line items are not supported. As the online store sold multiple products with different stock codes (as most do) this killed it for me. Zapier are aware of this and are working to add this functionality in the future.
WooCommerce to Xero Integration with OneSaas
After to signing up to OneSaas and creating free account you need choose the services you want to integrate. After adding WooCommerce you will need to authorize the connection. This requires you to install OneSaas Connect plugin to WordPress which generates a configuration key which needs to be copied into your OneSaas. This is the only techy bit required and OneSaas offer a setup guide here.
The next stage is to add a connection to Xero, again OneSass offer an installation guide here, authorisation is just a case of OneSass getting you to login to Xero, nice and simple and no technical knowledge required.
Next you need to configure what data you would like to sync from WooCommerce i.e. customer records, orders and stock items. You can configure multiple options such as allowing new stock items created in WooCommerce to be added to Xero automatically or have the option to add them yourself to both systems. You then need to match certain fields from WooCommerce to Xero such as the account code you want for sales invoices etc. The only knowledge required here is an understanding of your chart of accounts and what you want to go where.
Once setup you are ready to start to sync your data. Caution is always advised here I’m all for automation but it is sometimes too easy to pull data from one system to another incorrectly. You choose the start date you would like to start pulling data from and away you go.
What I liked about the OneSaas solution is that they have a data section where you can review what has been pulled from each system. This allows the user to check the chart of accounts, taxes rates, stock codes etc have been synced correctly. They also allow you to sync from each connection separately so for example you could pull data from WooCommerce first check it and then sync with Xero. This is useful when first setting up the connection or if any problems arise which unfortunately they did. Every time you sync the data (this can be manual or automated) a report is produced highlighting any errors.
Problems Syncing the Data
All was good we were set up and the customer records and orders from WooCommerce were created in Xero. However we started to encounter some problems, only small to start with such as the customer record was not pulled into Xero so the order errored but this was fixed by running the sync again. But then we started to hit some major issues, new inventory items were being created in Xero for existing stock items as the order number was posted as the stock code and the stock item name became corrupted:
Support
Time to test their support which was not helped by the fact that they were in Australia and i’m in the UK. I can say that there frontline support was helpful however as time went on and this issues was passed to the development team who were working on a fix it became clear a resolution was not coming anytime soon. They did try to resolve this and asked for access to WooCommerce and I also provided data from the database so they could see what was stored against each field. At one point it looked liked we had a solution and we tried again yes the original issues seemed to be resolved however I was now getting some invoices with a VAT rate of 2000% and the order number was missing from the reference field. They offered to fix this but I need a solution that worked for my client and we had to call it a day.
Would I Recommend these Services?
I did genuinely want these services to work, these are the logical next steps in systems integration and there is a need from businesses for them. Small business can set up powerful integrated systems quickly and cost effectively with these solutions and I think this area of the market will grow and become more reliable as time goes on. There is no doubt that I will be using these services in the future it was just a shame I encountered issues on this occasion.