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December 10, 2014 at 7:02 pm #990233Up::0
Hi all,
If you’ve read my other threads, you’ll see that I’m building somewhat of an automated system for my business.
Since I hate accounting/bookkeeping so much, naturally it’s the last thing I’m doing.
I’m already using Zapier for some things like automated dashboards and subscribing all paypal payees to my newsletter so I’m looking to leverage their Magento/Xero integration as well.
My question is, has anyone used these particular ‘zaps’ and do you have any feedback?
I’ve looked at a couple of other integrations, particularly the one by Fooman, but I’m not keen on adding yet another monthly service fee to my growing list of existing ones.
Fooman certainly looks like the ducks nuts but I’m wondering how much of it I really need.
Do I even need a Magento to Xero connection if I’m already doing bank + PayPal reconciliation?
Thanks,
Maclean
December 15, 2014 at 11:18 pm #1176019Up::0Hey Maclean,
How did you go with the Zapier/Xero/Magento integration?
In fact how are you finding zapier in general? It’s always on my list of options for clients but no one’s been keen to take it up yet.
John
December 15, 2014 at 11:30 pm #1176020Up::0Hi John,
I haven’t gone ahead with the Magento/Xero integration yet, am going to meet with my bookkeeper to double check about what my processes need to be.
Zapier has been great though, it’s been flawless in the PayPal > MailChimp integration that I’ve been running for the 14 day trial period, just about to activate on the Basic plan ($20/month) to continue that.
I’m also looking at using the Twilio integration to send an SMS when an order is shipped.
I originally looked at Zapier a few years back when it was quite limited but the options available now are awesome.
As an example, you could use one of the form plugins and from a submitted form automatically create an opportunity in Insightly, send them a text message thanking them for contacting you, submit them to your mailing list and create a calendar reminder to call them – all automatically.
I find with this kind of thing most people think they don’t need it because they can do it themselves. But at $20/month for 3000 automated tasks, considering it probably takes 2 minutes to do each one, you’re getting up to 100 hours of labour for $20!
I’ll report back when I’ve used the Xero/Magento integration a bit.
Maclean
December 20, 2014 at 11:10 pm #1176021Up::0Magento is the king of e-commerce but unless your have 1000 different products and a dedicated server then your going to run into trouble.
I would have thought something like woocommece would have been more of what you required….
December 20, 2014 at 11:43 pm #1176022Up::0John after discussing this further with my bookkeepers they couldn’t see any benefit in hooking Magento in to Xero with my business model. They said that you would want to look at it if you were accepting orders and invoicing before payment so that you could track outstanding receivables etc in Xero however my store is setup so that it doesn’t invoice until payment is taken so I wouldn’t see much benefit.
There’s another benefit in that it makes reconciling orders that are paid with ban transfer easier, but I only take maybe, 3-5 a month so the extra bookkeeping for the other orders would take longer than what I would save for 5 orders.
Loving Xero though, reconciled about 1000 transactions in a matter of hours and have setup lots of rules along the way so that most transactions will reconcile themselves now.
webtechhosts, post: 205372 wrote:Magento is the king of e-commerce but unless your have 1000 different products and a dedicated server then your going to run into trouble.I would have thought something like woocommece would have been more of what you required….
Hi Kyle,
Thanks for your (OT) input however I don’t recall discussing my business, it’s processes or it’s needs with Web Tech Hosts so I’m not really sure how you came to this conclusion?
If you jump in to threads and start throwing around uninformed opinions then you’re going to run in to trouble.
December 20, 2014 at 11:48 pm #1176023Up::0Hatching_It, post: 205374 wrote:John after discussing this further with my bookkeepers they couldn’t see any benefit in hooking Magento in to Xero with my business model. They said that you would want to look at it if you were accepting orders and invoicing before payment so that you could track outstanding receivables etc in Xero however my store is setup so that it doesn’t invoice until payment is taken so I wouldn’t see much benefit.There’s another benefit in that it makes reconciling orders that are paid with ban transfer easier, but I only take maybe, 3-5 a month so the extra bookkeeping for the other orders would take longer than what I would save for 5 orders.
Loving Xero though, reconciled about 1000 transactions in a matter of hours and have setup lots of rules along the way so that most transactions will reconcile themselves now.
Hi Kyle,
Thanks for your (OT) input however I don’t recall discussing my business, it’s processes or it’s needs with Web Tech Hosts so I’m not really sure how you came to this conclusion?
If you jump in to threads and start throwing around uninformed opinions then you’re going to run in to trouble.
HI There,
Thank you for your input – but your talking about cloud accounting software you shouldn’t be talking about Magento.
Kind regards,
Merry Xmas
KyleDecember 20, 2014 at 11:49 pm #1176024Up::0Oh, and John to add to the Zapier feedback I have hit a little bit of a roadblock.
My planned auto SMS on shipment is going to need some Magento modification as the Shipment record merges the Address and Phone Number in to one field as an array.
So when I try to pull the customers phone number to populate the Twilio receiver field I’m getting the address and phone number which obviously doesn’t work.
I’m going to talk to Zapier first about whether I can pick specific data from an array but I couldn’t see a way to do this so I’m not holding my breath.
So, although they do list thousands and thousands of integration possibilities it does look like not all will work easily without modification to existing systems.
If the zap for “Magento Shipment Created” also included order info I’d be fine but for some reason they’re only pulling the shipment record data (I assume to limit the API call)
Maclean
December 20, 2014 at 11:53 pm #1176025Up::0webtechhosts, post: 205375 wrote:HI There,Thank you for your input – but your talking about cloud accounting software you shouldn’t be talking about Magento.
Kind regards,
Merry Xmas
KyleKyle, my thread is about using Zapier to connect Magento and Xero and whether the specific integration is needed if you’re already using PayPal feeds with Xero.
December 20, 2014 at 11:59 pm #1176026Up::0Hatching_It, post: 205377 wrote:Kyle, my thread is about using Zapier to connect Magento and Xero and whether the specific integration is needed if you’re already using PayPal feeds with Xero.And what im saying is that
Magento is like Lego and Xero is like Duplo – They don/t like to connect to each other.
The SQL queries don’t speak well with each other.As for Zapier – can’t comment on how well it can be the bridge between the two. – not heard great reports though, unless they have already created the API for the link.
December 21, 2014 at 12:06 am #1176027Up::0webtechhosts, post: 205378 wrote:As for Zapier – can’t comment on how well it can be the bridge between the two.You probably should have started and finished with this considering my request was for comments from people that had done this before
Hatching_It wrote:My question is, has anyone used these particular ‘zaps’ and do you have any feedback?December 21, 2014 at 12:08 am #1176028Up::0Hatching_It, post: 205380 wrote:You probably should have started and finished with this considering my request was for comments from people that had done this beforeMy point was that i probably wouldn’t have attempted to connect the two as they don’t “play” well….as your finding out…..
December 21, 2014 at 12:22 am #1176029Up::0They connected fine, my bookkeeper advised against importing the invoices though.
The issue I hit was between Magento and Twilio not fitting what I wanted to do.
December 21, 2014 at 12:27 am #1176030Up::0Hatching_It, post: 205382 wrote:They connected fine, my bookkeeper advised against importing the invoices though.The issue I hit was between Magento and Twilio not fitting what I wanted to do.
Which version of Magento are you using community or enterprise?
Community has a lot of restrictions on it – but enterprise if you get the right developer can probably make it work.
December 21, 2014 at 10:31 pm #1176031Up::0Hatching_It, post: 205376 wrote:My planned auto SMS on shipment is going to need some Magento modification as the Shipment record merges the Address and Phone Number in to one field as an array.
….Hey Maclean,
That’s a bugger, although from the sounds of it Zapier is great overall, even if it is having issues in this one part.
There’s a project on GitHub that may help, if you’ve got a bit of time to play with it over Christmas. As always I’d suggest trying it on your development/staging server first, but you’re an old hand so I assume you already know this!
https://github.com/MageHack/twilioIt looks like it was built for CE 1.7, but not that much has changed in the Sales/Order area since that version so it probably won’t need any modifications.
It has an ‘Order Shipped’ event and you can set the message in the backend, including information from the order (product name, order number etc.)note: I haven’t installed it, just briefly looked through the code on Github.
January 14, 2015 at 8:49 pm #1176032Up::0Hey John, thanks for sending this through.
Just got back from 1 month off so will look in to it further!
Maclean
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