For most small businesses, the accounts package sits at the centre of everything. Xero and QuickBooks are by far the most common in the UK, and both are excellent at what they do. The problem is what happens around them: customer details typed in from a CRM, invoices created from job sheets, payments reconciled by hand and sales figures copied into spreadsheets for reporting.
Both platforms offer well-documented APIs, which means other software can talk to them securely. Connecting your website, CRM or operational system to your accounts can remove a surprising amount of repetitive work.
What can be connected to Xero or QuickBooks?
Common integrations we build or recommend include:
- Customers and contacts. When a new customer is added to your CRM or signs up on your website, they are created in Xero or QuickBooks automatically, with no retyping and no duplicates.
- Invoices from completed work. When a job is marked complete or an order is placed, an invoice is raised with the correct items, prices and tax codes.
- Payments. Online card or Direct Debit payments are recorded against the right invoice, so your accounts show what has been paid without manual matching.
- Products and pricing. Price lists stay consistent between your website, quoting tool and accounts.
- Reporting. Sales and outstanding balances can be pulled back into a CRM or dashboard so your team can see a customer’s account status without needing access to the accounts.
Ready-made connectors versus custom integrations
Both platforms have app marketplaces with ready-made connectors, and tools such as Zapier or Make can link many popular apps without code. These are often the right place to start, and if one does what you need, use it.
A custom integration becomes worthwhile when:
- Your system is bespoke and does not have a ready-made connector.
- You need specific rules, such as different tax treatment for certain customers or splitting a job across several invoices.
- The volume of transactions makes per-task automation pricing expensive.
- You need reliable error handling and a clear record of what was synced and when.
Photo by Jakub Żerdzicki on Unsplash
What to plan for
Integrations are only as reliable as the thinking that goes into them. Before building, it is worth agreeing:
- Which system is the “source of truth” for each kind of data. For example, customer details might be owned by the CRM and payment status by the accounts.
- What happens when something fails. Connections can drop or data can be invalid; someone needs to be told, and the sync should retry rather than silently skip records.
- How existing records will be matched up so you do not end up with duplicate customers on day one.
- Who has access. Integrations use secure, revocable authorisation rather than shared passwords, and should only be given the permissions they need.
Involve your accountant
Your accountant or bookkeeper should be part of the conversation. They will know how invoices, tax codes and account codes should be set up, and they will be grateful for cleaner data at the end of the year. A short conversation early on can prevent a lot of tidying up later. They can also advise on how Xero or QuickBooks tracking categories should be used, so reports from the integration match the way they already analyse your figures.
The result
A good integration is invisible. Work flows from enquiry to job to invoice to payment without anyone retyping it, and your accounts are up to date every day rather than at month end. Our software and financial integrations service connects accounts platforms with websites, CRMs and bespoke systems. If you are spending hours moving numbers between systems, tell us what you use and we will tell you what is possible.
