In December 2019, when Eden Higgs started his business, selling online studio and recording equipment, he had 50 customers per month. In a year, his business grew significantly reaching the threshold of 1000 sales. This is when accounting became challenging and time-consuming and he needed a better solution to process the increased load of transactions.
He started looking for small business accounting software. He read online reviews and asked for feedback from colleagues or people who might have used the same or similar software. Eden chose the top 3 players on the market. After testing trial versions of each of them, he decided in favour of Synder.
In this study, you can learn the details of Eden Higgs’ case and how he addressed the challenges he was facing with the help of automation software.
Contents:
About the business
Five other employees work in Eden’s company. They sell high-quality studio and recording equipment on Amazon, Shopify, and eBay; they also use PayPal as one of the payment gateways. Customers from anywhere in the world can purchase their equipment, however, they mainly focus on selling to the USA, UK, and Canadian markets.
At first, when I had just started, I was doing everything on my own, including accounting. As the company grew bigger, bookkeeping in Excel spreadsheets wasn’t enough. It was messy and laborious…
Challenge
Eden’s company sold the same items via several e-Commerce platforms, and this is how he described the issues that eventually arose for his company:
About 3 months after launching the business, we started selling our products not only on Amazon, but also on Shopify, and eBay. Little did I know that dealing with our payment transactions would be such a pain! When it came time for tax season, we already had 1100+ transactions per month, so we had to hurry with finding accounting software that would help transfer them to our accounting book in QuickBooks.
“Another problem was that we couldn’t figure out how much we earned via Amazon, Shopify, PayPal, and eBay for the particular product in QuickBooks reports. Every time we wanted to find out, we had to check each sales platform separately and then compare the results.”
Solution
Preparation for tax time is essential to stay in compliance with the law. Business owners have a few choices in such a situation:
- Transfer the payment data to QuickBooks on their own;
- Appoint one of their employees;
- Hire a bookkeeper or an accountant;
- Purchase accounting software that will do everything automatically and seamlessly.
Choosing this accounting software over any other option available to me was quite obvious. I knew it would put all the platforms in one place. All the data would be automatically recorded in my QuickBooks with just one click. Also, I wouldn’t have to wonder how to reconcile bank accounts in Quickbooks, as it would also be done without me lifting a finger!
With the help of the feature, which lets you add necessary platforms to your accounting system, the business owner got his platforms all together and was able to run them more easily.
Eden did not want to deal with multiple product variants for each platform in QuickBooks, for example, “Headphones Amazon”, “Headphones eBay”, etc. He wanted to have just one item in QuickBooks that corresponded to what they sold on all platforms.
I just wanted to see income from the same product on different marketplaces, thus different locations.
There is an easy way to achieve this with Synder and Location Tracking in QuickBooks Online. Our client’s team enabled Location Tracking in QuickBooks Online and created a separate location for each platform.
This feature lets users assign a location to an entire transaction. You can read more about Locations in QuickBooks Online Guide.
Then they turned on Apply locations in Synder and selected the corresponding location for each platform. As a result all Amazon sales are marked as Amazon, eBay transactions as eBay, etc., in QuickBooks Profit and Loss Reports.
Here is a guide on how to apply Locations to your transactions.
Results
Now multiple e-Commerce platforms and payment gateways that the business uses are in one place. The financial transactions are easily synchronized and are shown in 100% accurate Profit and Loss Statements. The Location Tracking option allows Eden to find the most profitable marketplaces and any weak spots in his online business.
I’m glad using Synder is as simple as ABC! And, it’s actually, so fast! I used to spend hours doing things that now take only a few clicks with the software!
Manual work is not only monotonous and boring, but it also increases the likelihood of making mistakes in your records and reports. Automated reconciliation is the solution, as it takes less than 60 seconds, and it’s absolutely correct. Error-free, fast reconciliation is possible, and you don’t have to spend hours doing it yourself anymore.
Reasonable investing in accounting software helped this business owner achieve his main goals: free up his time, spend less money on management and bookkeeping, and make more profit.
At the moment, Eden’s business receives over 2500 payments every month.
Now I can’t not use it! It does everything automatically, and I can receive a complete P&L statement whenever I need it. A big plus is that I can also calculate future expenses and build my business strategy based on this info.
Want to find a similar solution?
Synder is the right solution for those business owners who face the same or similar problems as Eden Higgs. Automated bookkeeping tracks financial activities for e-Commerce businesses. As a result, you can get a flawless synchronization process and precise real-time P&L Reports.
Monitoring and understanding your business finances is essential, because your business depends on the net and gross income it makes, which you can quickly see in your financial reports. Offer your customers multiple payment options and advance your business to a whole new level!
Even if you have different demands, our customizable approach should help you solve any issues you have with your current small business bookkeeping. We recommend you watch Synder’s demo and get a free trial period to check whether it fits your needs.
Do you have a story to share?
Write about your experience with Synder to [email protected] and become the next main character in our user case!
