Integrating QuickBooks with Your Online Store

Viva Volusion
A popular e-commerce provider, Volusion offers an all-in-one system that integrates an online storefront, shopping cart, search engine monitor, e-mail marketing program and affiliate software manager. Unlike ProStores, Volusion hasn't curried favored Intuit status, but offers solid features to work with QuickBooks. Volusion customers with gold or above plans can rely on "Webconnector," which provides a direct QuickBooks feed, while other Volusion users will have to export data through IIF (QuickBooks) files.

Webconnector exports orders directly into QuickBooks and integrates customers, products, gift certificates and discounts. You can customize orders so they are brought into QuickBooks as sales receipts or invoices and view customers with orders. Currently, Webconnector can't support sub-accounts, imports taxes as items and can't accept negative totals, which means that credits must be manually updated. Those who aren't using Volusion's gold and above plans must rely on Volusion's ability to export orders, customers and products via IIF files. Some considerations when working with IIF files, only the product name and description of the first item in an order goes into the memo field. Also, products can't be updated to reflect new information once they are brought into QuickBooks.

If you currently import data into QuickBooks via IIF files and want to upgrade plans and make use of Webconnector, you may encounter some problems. This is due to the way that the program sends and stores information — a different format that can potentially modify product codes and customer records. For this reason, if you plan to upgrade from IIF files to Webconnector, Volusion recommends that you start a new company in QuickBooks.

What About Yahoo Stores Support?
Despite the popularity of Yahoo, Intuit currently does not support Yahoo stores but has some third-party developer providers in it' developer's network who have created solutions. Without these applications, you're limited to exporting transactions into QuickBooks by relying on IIF, CSV, XML or plain text files. And these limited capabilities are only available with the Standard and Professional plans.

Making the Sale
If you already use one of the six e-commerce providers in Intuit's Merchant Services program, you already have some capability to integrate sales data directly into QuickBooks. If you don't currently have an online store and want to build one that can send sales into QuickBooks, you can evaluate the merits of each Intuit-recommended e-commerce provider or other providers, and choose the one that works best for you.

If you already have a store that isn't hosted by one of Intuit's six e-commerce providers, or your current provider doesn't go far enough to adequately integrate with QuickBooks to your liking, you'll have to investigate whether the benefits of switching will be enough to offset the pain of changing e-commerce providers.

ProStores plans start at $49.95 per month. Volusion's Gold Plan starts at $79.95 per month and the company's Steel plan starts at $19.95 per month. The Yahoo Standard Store starts at $64.97 per month.

Wayne Kawamoto has written more than 800 articles, columns and reviews about computers, new technologies, the Internet and small businesses. Wayne has also published three books about upgrading PCs, building office networks and troubleshooting notebook computers. You can contact him through his Web site at www.waynewrite.com.

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