
CartSpan Accounting E-commerce Integration
by Noverhead Software LLC
E-commerce integration for Sage 50 U.S. Accounting and all desktop versions of QuickBooks Accounting. CartSpan connects 17 popular E-commerce platforms including Amazon and Walmart Marketplaces. Use CartSpan to automatically import your online orders into accounting to eliminate time-consuming and error-prone re-entry. CartSpan will also push pricing (optional) and inventory back to your E-commerce system, giving your customers a near-real-time view of product availability so that you don’t over-sell.
CartSpan has been actively providing integration services for QuickBooks Desktop and Sage 50 Accounting since 2011!
Everything starts with an honest conversation.
Our phone number is prominently posted at the top of our website and all of our implementations begin with a brief conversation about your business requirements. In this conversation, we honestly assess whether or not CartSpan is a good fit for your business process. We do this because we value your time like our own and nobody likes surprises. In the overwhelming number of cases, CartSpan fits the need perfectly. Where it doesn’t, we’ll do our best to steer you in the direction needed.
We are with you from the beginning.
Our implementation process is very structured and optimizes the time spent preparing and implementing. Rather than turn you loose with a download to try and figure out on your own, we will work with you personally to get everything installed, configured, and running. After our brief conversation (mentioned above), we will send you a worksheet and additional supporting materials to get started. Once that preparation is complete, we will log-in remotely to assist with installation. The installation process takes only 1-2 hours depending upon complexity of your imports.
We completely remove the risk.
CartSpan remains one of the few products that doesn’t require any of your money up-front. That’s been our policy from the beginning. You pay nothing until you are satisfied with the way your imports are behaving. We also remove business risk. All start-ups begin with a back-up of your accounting company file for safe keeping. When we start, we start small and import one or two representative orders into the system to determine transactions are posting to the correct accounts. If not, we can remove these transactions, tweak configurations, and re-import until we get it right. Only after we have resolved any such configuration issues, do we import a larger number of transactions. The absolute worst case scenario is that you restore from backup if any major configuration changes need to be applied.
CartSpan is packed with features that save you time, enhance customer service, and promote solid business practices. At CartSpan, we’re ‘business people’ first and believe technology should serve to that end. This means that you will find us very receptive to all suggestions, large or small, as to how we can better support your unique business processes. We are an agile and flexible organization with respect to the evolution of CartSpan. So, if you don’t see functionality that your business requires, please contact us so that we may discuss the possibilities of collaborative development.
Order Import – Key Points of Integration
Import as Order, Invoice, or Receipt – CartSpan supports import as either an Order, Invoice, or Receipt. The order number flows directly to the order or invoice number in QuickBooks, Sage 50, or FrontAccounting. Please note that import as ‘Receipt‘ is currently only available for QuickBooks installations.
Additionally, CartSpan can direct the transaction-type based upon the customers role/group coming from the shopping cart. For instance, if you want all of your ‘wholesale’ customers to be imported as ‘Orders’ and have all of your ‘Retail’ customers imported as ‘Receipts’, this is achievable with CartSpan.
Customer ID Handling – With Customer ID management arguably the most problematic aspect of integration, CartSpan offers multiple options for creating the new Customer ID in accounting. When the new customer master is created, you may:
1) Use the shopping cart assigned Customer ID (typically a nondescript integer).
2) Craft the ID from available Bill-To or Ship-To details using a configurable rule.
3) Manually cross-reference the Cart-assigned ID to legacy Customer ID (memorized).
4) Utilize the Store ID in the Cart as the Customer ID (with meaningful cross-reference). *
5) Utilize the Customer Group as the Customer ID. *
6) Assign Customer ID based on the Ship-To State
7) Assign Customer ID based on the payment method
8) Assign all transactions to a common Customer ID
9) Optionally assign all ‘Guest’ transactions to a common Customer ID
* Given significant variance in functionality, not all carts are supported. Please call to verify.
QuickBooks Users Only: CartSpan is the only integration product on the market that can completely ‘regenerate’ your existing Customer Names in QuickBooks to support rule-based ID creation for future imports from your shopping cart. This is often a ‘make or break’ circumstance if your existing Customer IDs follow non-standard or inconsistent naming conventions.
Cash Receipts – If you are importing as an Invoice, you can optionally import a cash receipt, essentially closing out the receivables transaction. The cash receipt is triggered by configurable order status codes. Where supported by the individual cart, CartSpan will apply the CC type and ‘last 4’ digits of the card as the reference. The cash account to which the receipt is applied is configurable based upon the payment method.
PayPal/Bank Transaction Fees – For any payment method that applies a consistent transaction fee, CartSpan can calculate this value and apply it to the payment as a discount. This is accomplished via a configurable formula for each payment method affected. This adjusment is typically applied manually during the reconciliation process; long after the order has been imported. CartSpan saves you significant amounts of time by removing this task entirely.
Customer Prepayments – If you are importing a web order (paid by credit card) into accounting as an order, CartSpan can properly apply a credit on the order itself and also create a transaction that debits cash. Where supported by the individual cart, CartSpan will apply the CC type and ‘last 4’ digits of the card as the reference. The cash account to which the payment is applied is configurable based upon the payment method. CartSpan can receive the customer prepayment as either a ‘credit’ or a ‘short-term liability’ depending upon your individual business process.
Tax Handling – CartSpan allows you to direct taxes to specific codes based upon City, State, or Zip Code. What’s more, CartSpan will detect and allocate taxes to any configured sub-authorities that may be configured for the referenced tax-code.
Address Handling – CartSpan overcomes the challenges parsing of the second address line for billing and shipping addresses from some carts that combine everything into one field. For users of Sage 50 and Peachtree, CartSpan will cross-reference state codes to import a valid 2 character reference.
Item Configurable Options – CartSpan offers special support for items with configurable options. All of the configuration input provided by the customer will be specially formatted and appended to the general description of the item during import.
Bundled Item Support – The seemingly intractable problem of ‘child’ items being exported from the cart without prices is resolved with CartSpan. For fixed-priced bundled items, CartSpan will intelligently allocate pricing across these items. Individual items descriptions are also modified to indicate their association with the original ‘parent’ item.
Many-to-One Item Mapping – CartSpan is the only integration that allows you to create one (or more) ‘phantom’ items in the shopping cart that can be mapped to a single SKU in the accounting system. Moreover, these cart-level phantom items can represent multiple quantities and pack-based pricing for the item mapped in the accounting system. CartSpan manages all price/quantity conversions during the import/export process.
‘Piggy-Back Item’ Support – For those marketing campaigns where you need to easily attach a ‘free’ or ‘complementary’ item to the purchase of a specific product, CartSpan supports easy association of this ‘piggy-back’ item so that it is dynamically added during the import. This is accomplished without any extended or complicated configuration in the shopping cart.
Auto Creation of Items – If your business process is such that you choose not to create items in your accounting system until they are sold on the Website, CartSpan can be configured to auto-create the item at the time of order import. The new item is created using the description and the price of the ordered item.
Discounts and Coupon Handling – CartSpan will create individual line items for any coupons or discounts that are applied to the order along with reference to the individual coupon or promotional codes.
FedEx Shipping Integration – For QuickBooks customers, CartSpan offers special formatting of the ShipTo address so that you don’t have to make any adjustments to support import into QuickBooks’ FedEx Shipment Manager. Additionally, the order weight is conspicuously imported into the beginning of the Memo field so that all you have to do is ‘Cut & Paste’ it into the corresponding FedEx Shipment Manager field. This saves you loads of time in manually calculating total weight of the individual line-items.
Gift Certificates – For those carts offering native support for Gift Certificate sales and redemption, in a GAAP-compliant manner, CartSpan will properly apply GC sales to an ‘unearned revenue’ (short-term liability) account until which time it is redeemed. Please verify that CartSpan supports this functionality in the cart version you are planning to utilize.
Pricing Overrides – Override cart-level pricing with QuickBooks’ pricing by Customer/Item. (QuickBooks Enterprise only!). This functionality is particularly useful if you are selling Business-to-Business (B2B), import as a sales order, and allow your customers to pay later. Your customers will see ‘list’ pricing when they order, but understand that their contracted pricing will be applied on the back-end when the order is received.
Automation – CartSpan can run manually or be configured to import new orders at a predetermined user-defined frequency.
Email Alerts (administrative and operational) – CartSpan can be configured to send email alerts to a system administrator when there are exceptions encountered during the integration. For instance, CartSpan can send notification for when new items are created in accounting.
Pick-List Generation – If your organization deals with external fulfillment services, you can configure CartSpan to send a comprehensive pick-list to one (or more) email addresses. Or, you could simply choose to send the email to an internal resource. The CartSpan generated pick-list has full shipping information as well as any customer comments relating to fulfillment. CartSpan will recognize an item custom field designating stock location (QB Enterprise Only); which can then be sorted upon and used to create a more usable pick-list for warehouse fulfillment operations.
Multiple Stores – CartSpan can import order information from select (multiple) stores within a single Magento database. For instance, one CartSpan customer operating Magento for ‘field sales’ has approximately 55 different companies configured…one for each sales person on the force. As long as you are importing to a single accounting company, there are no additional charges.
Item Price/Quantity Updates – Key Points of Integration
Stock Quantity Updates – Near real-time updates of stock quantity available in response to receiving, invoicing, and adjustment activity in the accounting system. As an additional measure of accuracy, CartSpan reflects the quantity available for sale based upon item quantities on open sales orders. If you take orders that are transaction dated in future accounting periods, CartSpan can be configured to exclude open-orders past a future date (based upon days).
Expected ‘Back in Stock’ dates published to shopping cart – NOTE: This functionality is currently available for QuickBooks and Magento only. Improve your conversions for items currently out of stock! This feature alone has the potential to quickly pay for your investment in CartSpan. Rather than have your customers view an item page simply indicating ‘Out of Stock’, provide them with a definitive date as to when it will become available so they can decide if they are willing to wait. Not only will you benefit from more sales, but you will also cut down on the number of unproductive phone calls from customers inquiring as to when product will be available. Referencing your open Purchase Orders for out-of-stock items, CartSpan does the heavy lifting for you automatically. CartSpan even allows you to ‘hedge’ the number of days for the expected delivery…just to give you an extra measure of cushion in meeting consumer expectations.
Minimum Stock Configuration – If you are oversold in the accounting system, CartSpan allows you to artificially indicate a minimum quantity available in the cart.
Item Price Updates: Standard and Sales Pricing – CartSpan allows you to maintain both your ‘standard’ and ‘sales’ pricing in the accounting system; no need to remember updates between two systems.
Price Markup or Markdown Tools – If you elect to offer more competitive pricing on your website, relative to your ‘bricks and mortar’ operation, CartSpan allows you to configure global or item-specific markdown (or markup) percentages.
Price Rounding – We all know that multiplying existing prices by a given percentage often results in an odd looking value. CartSpan employs rounding rules to bring your price to the nearest ‘0.05’ or ‘0.09’ value; giving you pricing consistency across your site.
Multi-Pack Support – Option to sell individual items as a multi-pack unit (as configured in accounting) and have the appropriate conversion to ‘Each’ applied during the import.
Advanced Support for Assembly-based Product Types – Though you may not have final product assembled for sale, CartSpan can present the amount of final product you can reliably offer. CartSpan will determine available inventory for each item represented on the first level of the assembly and calculate the maximum quantity of the parent item that can be produced. This availability calculation even includes open orders for after-market purchases of affected child components.
Advanced Support for QuickBooks Group-Item Product Type – Though similar in behavior to assemblies, the QuickBooks Group-Item never really ‘exists’ in inventory as it is ‘exploded’ on the Invoice/Order from within the QB user interface. Because of its nature, a Group-Item can’t typically be represented directly by its Item Name in the shopping cart. CartSpan’s special handling of the item type enables this. CartSpan can present the amount of final product you can reliably offer. CartSpan will determine available inventory for each item represented in the group configuration and calculate the maximum quantity of the Group-Item that can be offered. This calculation goes so far as to include open orders for after-market purchases of group components. During the import process, CartSpan will ‘recognize’ the incoming SKU as a Group-Item and convert it to the associated components with appropriate quantities and allocated pricing.
Factor Quantities on Open POs in Inventory Availability – CartSpan allows you to include a percentage of the materials on open Purchase Orders in the quantity available sent back to the shopping cart. This allows merchants to safely ‘hedge’ the representation of their offering so that they do not miss sales opportunities. The ‘hedge’ factor allows a merchant to anticipate for damage-of-goods or short shipments from suppliers.
Support for ‘Stock Location’ Custom Field – (QuickBooks Enterprise users only) CartSpan will recognize an item custom field designating stock location; which can then be sorted upon and used to create a more usable pick-list for warehouse fulfillment operations.
Support for QuickBooks Multi-Warehouse – CartSpan is the only commercial integration product that fully supports Multi-Warehouse functionality offered by QuickBooks Enterprise. CartSpan’s unique business logic will appropriately assign stock location to create a highly usable picklist for warehouse personel.
Pricing
CartSpan’s fixed-price implementation is the most transparent in the market at $495 (US) initially with $249 annual maintenance starting after 12 months. The annual maintenance includes upgrades supporting newer versions of QuickBooks, Sage 50, and post-installation support. See the ‘Support’ section below for details regarding what this covers.
For QuickBooks users only: CartSpan requires the use of QODBC by FlexQuarters, another third-party add-on that allows read-only direct access to the QuickBooks database. This will raise your total cost by a nominal amount. If you are using the Enterprise version of QuickBooks, QODBC is already included at no additional charge.
USERS WITH CLOUD HOSTED ACCOUNTING – CartSpan’s fixed-price business model was originally based upon implementations where the Customer manages their accounting software on their own local computers. This configuration allows for fast and efficient technical support that often includes product updates. Over time, we have determined that some cloud-hosting services disallow user management of installed software, thus increasing support overhead. In such individual case, extended support fees may be charged.
We are so confident in our product that we offer a 30 day money-back guarantee if you determine that CartSpan isn’t meeting the needs of your business. Period. No questions asked. You won’t find a remotely similar guarantee by any of our competitors.
Support
CartSpan conducts it’s support via Splashtop Remote Desktop Support software. We can, quite often, remote into your system within minutes to troubleshoot any issues that you are unable to resolve on your own. If not within minutes, we can usually get to you within the same day.
The effective operation of any integration is dependent upon many factors often beyond the control of the provider. These include version changes in software (E-commerce & accounting) and the users’ obligation to fully understand how the integration works for self-reliant troubleshooting of common exceptions. For this reason, post-installation support (included as part of the annual maintenance) is limited to issues relating to general use and operation. This support does not extend to incidences resulting from 3rd party software modifications that do not appropriately consider total system impact before they are implemented.
Note also that re-installation assistance resulting from Hardware crashes (or other systemic issues) is not included in with annual maintenance. Assistance with installation/configuration on a new system will be billed on a per hour basis.
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