Playbooks: how to apply it
Playbook: stop retyping data between your systems
For businesses where someone copies data from one system into another: orders into accounting, packing lists into the ERP, payments into the books. Five steps to an integration you can trust.
Sound familiar?
- Someone retypes orders, packing lists or invoices every day.
- At the end of the month the books do not match the bank.
- A typo only surfaces weeks later, at a customer.
Step 1. Follow one document through your business
Take an order or a packing list and trace everywhere it is entered. For each step, note who does it, how long it takes and what can go wrong. Tackle first the retyping that happens most often and goes wrong most often.
Step 2. Check what your software can do
Exact Online, Business Central and most web shops have an API: a fixed entrance where another system can fetch and store data. First check whether your software's app store already has a ready-made integration. That is often cheaper than custom work.
Step 3. Agree the rules before anything is built
Without these agreements the same errors come back, somewhere else.
- Which system owns which piece of data.
- What happens when an item code or customer does not exist.
- Who gets a notification when something does not come through.
Step 4. Test with real documents from the past
Have the integration process a few hundred old documents first and compare the result with what was entered by hand at the time. In a trial with packing lists into Business Central we found that the two sides wrote numbers above a thousand differently. That error would never have shown up in a three-line demo.
Step 5. Make every error visible
If an integration fails silently, you only notice when a customer calls. Have it send a notification for every error, and count each week how many documents came through on their own and how many did not. We only noticed after a month that our phone calls were no longer reaching our CRM. Since then every integration reports when it goes quiet.
What it costs
A ready-made integration from an app store costs a fixed amount per month. Custom work means a one-off build plus maintenance. Weigh it against the hours of retyping you counted in step 1.
How we do it ourselves
After a call, our AI phone employee creates a draft invoice in our accounting software. It sends nothing. The invoice waits until someone reviews it.
Frequently asked questions
What if my software has no API?
Then it can often work through an export, a shared folder or email. That takes more checking, but it works. Sometimes it is a reason to switch software.
Who owns the integration?
You do. The code and the keys belong to your own company, so another party can carry on with it.
Read on
In this series
Our approach
From advice to management, with one partner
The same rhythm for every project.
Advice
We start with a conversation, not with code. First clarity on what you need and what you do not.
Build
We build and integrate to measure, with technology that fits you. You own your data and your code.
Manage
We stay involved: monitoring, adjusting and growing with your business.
Which retyping costs you the most?
Call us and we will go through step 1 together.
Call 085 083 5775A 30-minute intake