Today I’m talking to Marc Kalman and Gennady Kleyner, co-founders of We Integrate, which provides small businesses having one or more Shopify stores an easy, affordable way to seamlessly, and intelligently integrate with QuickBooks Online–giving them more time to grow their business.
I’m focusing a lot on integration right now, because automating integrations between core business solutions can save small businessses a lot of time and money–and reduce the chances that critical data will slip thorugh the cracks.
Before we get into what We Integrate does, I know that you’ve just launched your beta site. What’s the background on starting the company?
Marc
Gennady and I have both been building software solutions for over 20 years, helping businesses both large and small to improve their retail supply chain and operations. Gennady has worked with businesses both large and small, and has extensive experience scaling high performing systems. I have spent the majority of my career helping small businesses with web-based solutions that focus on supply chain efficiency.
We noticed there was a growing number of small businesses transitioning to online platforms as a means to sell their products and services. However the backend systems available to help them run their operations are limited in scope and not fully understanding nor exposing what’s important to the typical small e-commerce entrepreneur. Helping small businesses succeed is our passion, so we decided to take action and do something about it by launching weintegrate.co, which is now in beta.
Laurie
So what exactly does We Integrate do, and what problems does it solve?
Marc
E-commerce is surging. With the volume of businesses turning to e-commerce continuing to be fueled by the trends of online shopping, and in particular the recent impact of Covid-19 this past year, we see global e-commerce forecasts expected to reach nearly $5 trillion in 2021. This represents a 400% increase across the past 7 years, and approximately $550 billion of that coming from North America.
Since the majority of businesses in North America are in the SMB category, this data suggests there will be many businesses that need help integrating their e-commerce stores with an accounting backend. As We Integrate enters the market, we decided to start with 2 of the leading and most commonly used platforms by small businesses. Our first version of We Integrate is focused on near-real-time integration between Shopify and QuickBooks Online, including sales, fulfillments, cancellations, and refunds.
Laurie
Did you talk to small business users about this to get a better idea of what they need?
Gennady
Yes. We have a Steering Committee made up of QuickBooks ProAdvisors and small businesses that use both QuickBooks Online and Shopify. Based on input from them,, we feel we are solving our clients’ most pressing integration needs, which includes near-real-time integration, and the option to load Shopify sales into QuickBooks Online in detail or in bulk.
Laurie
What types of companies can get the most benefit from your solution, and why?
Gennady
We Integrate is the perfect solution for small Shopify stores just starting out, with less than 100 orders a month, and can grow to a few thousand orders a month. Many of these businesses still use manual data entry, which is imperfect and prone to errors such as transposition and omission. At a minimum, this creates additional work where someone has to waste 50 to 100 hours each month manually entering Shopify orders into QuickBooks Online. This interferes with being able to focus on more important aspects of running a small e-commerce business, and is a problem we eliminate.
Another key benefit is that we help keep inventory accurate and up to date between Shopify and QuickBooks Online. Without a near-real-time sync between these systems, small businesses will eventually have inventory disconnects, which leads to customer dissatisfaction issues that negatively mpacts re-orders and monthly subscriptions.
Laurie
How much time and expertise does it take to do the integration?
Marc:
We Integrate is designed to be self-serve, and is easy to setup and use. We have a startup wizard to guide you through the process of connecting your first Shopify store with QuickBooks Online in under 15 minutes. Even the most non-tech-savvy entrepreneurs can benefit from the advantages of what We Integrate has to offer with little effort.
Laurie
You’re in beta now, how’s that going, and what’s the schedule for general availability?
Marc:
Beta is going great! It’s very exciting to see the positive impact clients are already receiving from what We Integrate has to offer. We expect our solution to be generally available to the public by the middle of May.
Laurie
How does pricing work?
Marc
Small businesses can get started for as little as $19 a month. Our pricing model consists of affordable tiers designed to provide up to twice the value as our competitors, to support Shopify businesses as they grow.
Laurie
There are lots of integration solutions out there. Who do you see as key competitors? And how does We Integrate differentiate from them?
Gennady
Our primary competitors are Webgility, A2X and Connex. The difference starts with price. We offer significantly more value, even at our lowest tier. For example, for $19 a month, We Integrate allows you to get up to 500 orders per month, where our competitors typically limit you to 200 orders a month for the same price.
Next, We Integrate provides standard near-real-time integration at all pricing levels. This means as your customers place orders on your Shopify store, just seconds later those orders appear in QuickBooks Online, whether you log into the We Integrate app or not. This is a very important to ensuring you have accurate data in your accounting system when you need it to make good business decisions. The competition is more likely to have integration delays of hours, days, weeks, and in some cases require the manual click of a button.
Another key differentiator is how We Integrate imports the actual sales details from Shopify into QuickBooks Online. Some of our competitors only make batch journal entries. While journal entries sound good from an accounting perspective, it’s not what many business owners prefer. Having sales receipts created in QuickBooks Online, whether in detail or in bulk, empowers businesses to track sales, monitor fulfillments, manage inventory, and have improved visibility to payment reconciliation.
Laurie
Looking ahead, what do you see as the biggest market opportunities and challenges for We Integrate?
Marc:
Small Businesses continue adopting e-commerce initiatives at a rapid rate, which includes expanding the number of stores and marketplaces they sell through, as well as finding new and creative ways to stand out and differentiate in their markets. Having access to accurate on-demand data for making quality decisions quickly and accurately across all channels, will prove essential to maximizing growth, profitability, and overall success in a highly competitive market. We Integrate will be there as the portal that these businesses can rely on to make this a reality.
Looking ahead, we will continue working with our clients to find new ways of helping e-commerce businesses scale and differentiate, inclusive of a multi-channel strategy that centralizes operations, and the tools they need to compete and capture market share.
Laurie
How can SMBs learn more and evaluate the solution?
Marc
Businesses are welcome to learn more on our website by clicking here.
For those that want to kick the tires and give us a no obligation try, we invite them to join us for Beta .
And for those that are not the “beta type” they can submit their information here and we’ll let them know once we’ve reached general availability and they can take advantage of a free trial in production.
Laurie
Thank you both, and keep us postd on the launch!
© SMB Group, 2021
Source: Laurie McCabe’s Blog