Case study
Every Shopify order was being typed into FreeAgent by hand. The ask was simple: make that stop. The hard part was making the numbers match exactly.
Vincent and Barn are design-makers of rustic and industrial furniture, based in Wokingham. Like a lot of growing online businesses, their systems didn't talk to each other, so people filled the gap.
Every order placed in Shopify had to be recreated as an invoice in FreeAgent. It was slow and repetitive, and it got worse with every sale.
Pulling the data was the easy bit.
Getting orders out of Shopify is straightforward. We used its GraphQL API to pick up orders, refunds and status changes as they happen.
Getting the figures right at the other end is where these jobs go wrong. If an integration is a penny out here and there, you haven't removed the admin. You've swapped typing for reconciling, which is worse. So we mirrored the rules FreeAgent uses to calculate its own totals, and added VAT adjustment lines to invoices and credit notes where they were needed.
Every order becomes a FreeAgent invoice by itself.
Refunds and status updates come through too, with matching credit notes.
Configured around how their accounts are structured and how their team expects things to behave.
A full reconciliation during testing: every figure, invoice and credit note compared across both systems.
The clever part wasn't syncing orders. It was making the numbers match FreeAgent's own rules exactly, down to the penny. Get that wrong and you create more reconciliation work, not less.
If your team moves data between two systems by hand, there's almost certainly a better way. Have a look at how we do integrations, or tell us what you're working with.
It goes straight to Rob and Jase. You'll hear back from one of us, usually the same day, and we'll tell you honestly whether we're the right people.