How to connect your business apps

Why the same job gets typed into three systems

Picture a Monday morning at a small homewares shop. An online order came in overnight. Someone copies it into the packing spreadsheet, then creates the customer in Xero, then types the sale in again so the books match.

Nobody planned it that way. Most small businesses didn't choose their software all at once. The accounting software came first, then an online store, then a booking app, then a spreadsheet someone set up to track jobs.

Each tool does its own job well. The trouble is that none of them knows what the others are doing.

So people fill the gaps. A job is booked by email and someone creates the customer in Xero. A supplier invoice lands in Outlook and someone keys it into the accounting software.

Each step only takes a little while, but they happen all day. And every retype is a chance for a typo, a missed order or an invoice that never goes out.

How app connections work: when this, do that

Almost every connection between two apps follows the same simple pattern: when this happens here, do that over there. There are three parts to it.

Triggers

A trigger is the event that starts things off. A new order in your online store, a form submitted on your website, or an email arriving with an attachment.

It could also be a quote marked as accepted, or a new row added to a spreadsheet.

Actions

An action is what happens as a result. Create an invoice, add a customer, send a message, update a row or save a file to a folder.

One trigger can lead to several actions in a row.

Matching records

This is the part that takes the most care. When an order arrives, the connection has to decide whether this customer already exists in your accounting software or needs to be created.

It usually matches on something unique, like an email address or customer number. Get matching wrong and you end up with three versions of the same customer, which is worse than retyping.

Map your data flow before you connect anything

Before connecting anything, draw how information moves through your business today. A whiteboard or a sheet of paper is fine.

1. List your apps. Everything that holds business information, including spreadsheets, shared inboxes and paper forms.
2. Follow one job from start to finish. Where does the first enquiry arrive? Where is it booked, quoted, delivered, invoiced and paid?
3. Mark every retype. Each time a person copies information from one place to another, draw an arrow. These arrows are your candidates for connection.
4. Note who does each step. The person doing the retyping usually knows exactly where it goes wrong.
5. Pick the busiest arrow. Start with the copy that happens most often or causes the most mistakes.

Your map is also handy for deciding what to automate first, because it shows where the effort really goes.

Useful app connections for NZ small businesses

Here are common connections between tools many New Zealand businesses already use. Each one swaps a manual copy for an automatic one.

The tools we connect are Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and Xero. Where another system is involved, such as an online store or point-of-sale, we work from the emails or Excel and Google Sheets exports it already produces, rather than connecting to it directly.

Notice the word "draft" in a couple of those rows. A person still checks the bill or invoice before it's final.

Want to see one of these end to end? Our guide to automating quotes and invoices walks through it. And the weekly business numbers guide shows how connected apps can feed a single summary.

Keep one source of truth for your data

When apps are connected, the same information can appear in several places. That's fine, as long as everyone knows which app is in charge of it. This is called the source of truth.

For example, you might decide that:

• Customer contact details live in your customer list, such as an Excel or Google Sheets file.
• Invoices and payments live in your accounting software.
• Stock levels live in your point-of-sale or online store.
• Bookings live in your booking app.

The rule is simple: change information only in its source of truth, and let the connections carry the change everywhere else.

Say someone updates a customer's phone number in the accounting software instead. The next sync may overwrite it, or you end up with two numbers and no idea which is right.

When a connection fails: errors and alerts

Every connection will fail sometimes. An app goes down for maintenance, a password changes, someone renames a column in a spreadsheet, or an order arrives with a missing email address.

What matters is what happens next. A good alert tells the right person what's stuck and why:

Behind that message sit four habits every connection needs:

• Catch the failure. The connection should notice it didn't work, rather than carry on as if it did.
• Keep the information. Whatever failed should be held so it can be retried, not lost.
• Alert a named person. Decide who gets told, how (email, text or a message) and how quickly. "Someone will notice" isn't a plan.
• Retry and confirm. Once fixed, the stuck items should go through, and someone should check they arrived.

Whoever builds your connections, ask how failures will be reported, who will be told and who will fix them. Then get the answer written into the scope.

Access, security and personal information

Connecting apps means giving one app permission to read or write information in another. Keep that permission as narrow as you can.

• Only pass across the fields the other app needs.
• Use a business account rather than someone's personal login.
• Review access when staff leave.
• Own every login involved, so you're never locked out of your own systems.

If the information includes customer or staff details, the Privacy Act 2020 applies. Our guide to the Privacy Act 2020 and automation covers what to check.

When a spreadsheet is fine, and when to connect your apps

Not every gap needs a connection. A shared Google Sheets or Excel file is often the right tool when volumes are small, one or two people use it, and the information doesn't need to reach anywhere else.

Spreadsheets are cheap, flexible and everyone understands them. It's time to connect when you notice:

• The same details are typed into the spreadsheet and another app every week.
• Mistakes in copying are costing you money or customers.
• Several people edit the sheet at once and things get overwritten.
• You spend more than a few hours a week keeping it up to date.

Even then, the spreadsheet can stay. Often the best first step is simply to fill it automatically, so it keeps doing its job without anyone typing into it.

That's a small, low-risk change, and a good way to see what connected apps can do for your business.

Common questions