Integrating with the Accounting System
A really important part of building a web app is determing how billing/invoicing will work, and how that integrates with your accounting software. We use QuickBooks so we have to integrate DropSend and Amigo with it.
The above photo is Nick (our accountant), Mo (our bookkeeper) and me talking about how Amigo invoices and payments will be imported into QuickBooks. Here’s how we’re going to do it:
- Amigo uses the Secure Trading API to charge Advertiser’s credit card
- Amigo sends out HTML email invoices to Advertisers
- Amigo spits out invoice data to an Excel sheet which is automatically emailed to our bookkeeper
- Our bookkeeper uses a custom program (written in VB) that imports that Excel sheet and creates invoices in QuickBooks
- Amigo uses the Paypal API to pay the newsletter owners
- Our bookkeeper logs into Paypal and downloads the record of transactions in Excel format
- Our bookkeeper uses a custom program (written in VB) that imports that Excel sheet and creates receipts in QuickBooks
Sounds like a nightmare. I wonder if you’d considered using the QuickBooks API to manage this instead? Any reason why you decided not to go this route?
Comment by Elliot Smith — June 22, 2006 @ 10:55 am
Have you guys seen this? Might be worth a look:
http://www.nsoftware.com/ibiz/quickbooks/technologies.aspx?sku=bbc4-u
Comment by Terence Pua — June 22, 2006 @ 2:39 pm
It’s not a nightmare at all. It’s basically all automated :)
However, thanks for the suggestions. We’ll have a look into them.
Comment by Ryan Carson — June 22, 2006 @ 4:35 pm
Wow, this is awesome. I love how you’re doing things.
Comment by Arik — June 22, 2006 @ 9:46 pm
So, basically you push advertiser to pay by card and publisher get paid by paypal. What about publisher who doesn’t have paypal? What about advertiser who choose to use paypal?
Comment by orca — June 23, 2006 @ 10:55 am
In order to get paid, newsletter owners will have to sign up for Paypal. It’s easy and free and much less hassle then having to cash a cheque.
Comment by Ryan Carson — June 23, 2006 @ 12:58 pm
Have a look at this, might be useful: http://www.bigredconsulting.com/aboutebaylink.htm
Comment by kazesoze — June 24, 2006 @ 6:14 pm