Accounting Automation Software Is The Key To Competitive Survival
Worth more than $512.9 billion and counting, the ecommerce industry is more profitable than ever. And with nearly 215,000 businesses in the market, it’s also more popular than ever. In fact, in 2018 alone, ecommerce represented 14.3% of total US sales. The low barriers to entry and increase in Internet access allow entrepreneurs worldwide to promote and sell online.
Ecommerce now includes media, medication and health, apparel, electronics and more. This means the competition is stacked. And even the savviest merchants struggle to attain growth and profits.
That’s why sellers looking to increase inbound cash flow need to start by recording all outbound expenses. It’s easy to do with accounting automation software from Webgility. Ecommerce merchants can track their sales, inventory, and expenses from multiple sales channels on one dashboard. When bookkeeping becomes convenient rather than time-consuming, online sellers can act on insights quickly to reduce costs and scale their business.
Since 2007, ecommerce sellers have trusted Webgility accounting automation software solutions to record inventory and maintain timely bookkeeping. As a result, they save time on data entry and watch their business grow.
Small-Town Business, Big-Time Growth
In 2008, Mike Herlinger founded mountain biking clothing and gear outfitter Club Ride Apparel in Ketchum, Idaho. Herlinger kept his books on NetSuite at first. But after several years of expansion, unifying data between NetSuite and the warehouse became too complex and error-ridden. The company leadership began to notice a problematic pattern. So did customers.
Marketing and e-commerce Sales Manager Taggart Spenst knew that Club Ride needed to address its process to continue progressing in their industry. There was inaccurate inventory, over-selling, and unsustainable manual data entry practices. Spenst began seeking a better method. He needed to communicate sales orders from Shopify Plus to the warehouse, convey tracking numbers to customers, and manage inventory between sales channels.
After signing up with Webgility to connect with their NetSuite and Shopify Plus accounts, ROI was nearly instant. In a month, Club Ride saved 50 hours on data entry and decreased order-processing time down to one hour. Club Ride achieved accurate accounting, inventory, and shipping with Webgility—all while increasing order volume by 20%.
New Perspective from Financial Understanding
Dr. Becky Bailey founded Loving Guidance, Inc. in 1996 to empower young people through social and emotional learning. 40 countries over 20 years later, she is a well-known educator and expert in childhood psychology. And, Loving Guidance’s workshops and the Conscious Discipline curriculum had gained popularity across the global education community.
With growth, of course, came administrative hurdles. To continue to broaden their reach, the Conscious Discipline team partnered with Shopify to add a shopping cart to their website. Conscious Discipline steadily marketed and sold in additional digital channels. But before long, data entry into QuickBooks proved time-consuming. This led to inconsistent inventory information across business tools and processing times averaging nearly 2 weeks.
When Shopify recommended Webgility for a cross-channel syncing solution, Director of Operations and Human Resources Marta Santo was hesitant. She’d been disappointed by accounting automation software solutions in the past, “I don’t mind admitting [it]—we were so nervous to push that button!” Santo remarked. “When we went live and it worked, that was the true a-ha moment.”
With Webgility connecting their business tools into one platform, Loving Guidance saw immediate benefits. Processing time was cut from 2 weeks to 24 hours, accurate inventory tracking happened through 2-way inventory sync, and bookkeeping was timely. The leadership team also gained a newfound business perspective from Webgility insights.
Armed with a more thorough financial understanding of their business, Santo and Operations Manager Philipp Russel can predict sales and adjust costs as necessary. As a result, fees and costs that once impacted the business and its customers have been reduced,d leading to higher gross margins company-wide.
Bookkeeping That Pays For Itself
For years, Sharni Vaughan, mother of four, had used cloth diapers for her children due to their low environmental impact. She liked the quick and easy clean-up involved with removable inserts for cloth diapers. They became a staple in her and many others’ parenting practices by the mid-2000s.
So she joined the market. In 2008, Vaughan founded The Nappy Shoppe in Allen, TX to manufacture and sell her own inserts. She dubbed them G-Flappers and found instant commercial success. Using Zen Cart for her website and Amazon and Etsy as her primary digital sales channels, Vaughan had great tools. Endicia Dazzle was chosen for shipping management and QuickBooks Premier for bookkeeping.
But as order volume increased, Vaughan found The Nappy Shoppe 8 months behind on entering their invoices into QuickBooks. The manual bookkeeping process was no longer scaling at a pace even with an employee dedicated to data entry.
Vaughan registered for Webgility’s 15-day free trial looking to see detailers of her finances and speed up shipping times. Its functionality was clear from day one. “Within a week of the trial, we realized that Webgility would be well worth it, and took the plunge and purchased it,” Vaughan recalls.
Within two weeks, she adds, “Webgility had paid for itself.” Since signing up for Webgility, The Nappy Shoppe regained 52 hours of labor weekly by automating shipping and entering orders into QuickBooks. Vaughan reassigned employees to other areas of the business where they could further impact growth.
Taking Back Control With Webgility
Decision-makers at Club Ride Apparel, Loving Guidance, and The Nappy Shoppe faced scaling challenges unique to each of their businesses. They all sought software for accounting automation to solve different sets of complex problems. Webgility’s flexibility, dedicated customer service, and empathy for their users combined to a solution for all.
Webgility customers can expect to take back the control they thought they had lost forever. It happens with automated accounting: united inventory logs across channels, identification of hidden costs, and fast order processing time. And with the extra time and money saved, ecommerce merchants are free to focus on maximizing profits.
