Efficient invoicing in Salesforce through an integrated accounting system

Anastasia Pahl

4 min read

From Lead to Cash and beyond!

Regardless of the products or services you sell and the size of your business, at some point you or someone in your team will need to generate an invoice or at least make and record some form of communication to get paid for agreed work.

If you already use Salesforce “out-of-the-box” or have a custom CPQ, you have several options for integrating your invoicing and billing.

For instance, you could create custom objects from your Opportunity object to generate and send invoices through Salesforce, and then transfer that information to your accounting system. The transmission here is usually done manually, is time consuming and quite often not error free.

You could however integrate Salesforce with an accounting system, providing your billing information to this accounting system in order to generate and bill invoices.

The third option would be a combination of both. Here we come into play.

Why Salesforce and sevDesk are the perfect all-round solution for your business.

While Salesforce depicts the entire process of customer communication, from acquiring to creating an order, sevDesk supports the further development of your follow-up processes. In doing so, a whole range of activities that are responsible for smooth business operations but not in (direct) connection with customers are taken into account. These include billing, accounting and inventory management. Salesforce does not have the option of rendering and relies on the integration with a secondary system. Thus, sevDesk represents a common intersection. Where Salesforce ends, sevDesk begins.

In order to exploit the full range of services and benefit from the advantages of both systems, it is necessary to integrate them with each other. When it comes to integrating a CRM system with a financial solution, many different questions start to occur – “How do I integrate my ERP system with a financial solution without falling into a cost trap?”, “Which synchronization tools do I need and which implementation costs are to be expected?” and so on.

An integration without middleware

These questions are very easy to answer. Because the sevDesk integration for Salesforce, is very easy to set up and ready to use. All you have to do is to visit the AppExchange Store and download it .
You do not need expensive synchronization tools or third-party systems, because both systems communicate directly with each other and exchange data directly.
In order to use the integration you need to own a Salesforce and a sevDesk license. If you already use one of the two platforms, you just have to initiate a migration, our team is happy to assist you here.

Configuration – what exactly can I sync?

The configuration is very simple and flexible. When integrating both systems, the question arises as to what data should be stored in sevDesk, which in Salesforce and which data should actually be synchronized. There is no such thing as a blanket answer because every company has its own sales processes and decision guidelines. We wanted to make it easier for you and created a simple synchronization scheme:

settings scheme sevDesk integration for Salesforce

Customer master data is maintained in Salesforce. If you already have a dataset in sevDesk, do not worry, we’ll help you with data migration and ensure the integrity of your data!
Now that you know, your central customer data database will be Salesforce, you’ll need to determine which direction you want to sync your products from. It depends on which of the two systems should contain the material master and from where the product data should be transmitted to where. The synchronization interval can be run hourly, daily, or manually when needed.

How exactly does the integration work?

Since offers are part of Opportunity Management in Salesforce, it makes sense to create them there as well. At this point you have several options. Depending on how many intermediate steps you and your team prefer between quoting and invoicing. The longest way would be to convert your opportunity into a Salesforce order, have it created as an order in sevDesk, and then configure an invoice. But you can also go the fast route and convert your Salesforce Opportunity from the quotation status into an invoice with just one click and omit the above intermediate steps either completely or partially.

Whichever workflow you choose, your orders are always created in Salesforce, forwarded to sevDesk, and then synced back to Salesforce. So you are always up to date, in both systems – no data duplication, no errors, no duplicated data entry.

What happens in sevDesk as soon as you have sent your order?

Now, first, sevDesk automatically takes the default positions and master data that you created in Salesforce into the appropriate fields. In addition, according to legal requirements and specifications, all legal mandatory information is filled out via the sevDesk invoice program. At the same time, all selected products will be listed and VAT will be charged according to applicable tax rates. So you get rid of the annoying task of manually transferring data from one system to another, preventing erroneous entries. This feature does not only save you time and effort, but allows you to use your resources for more important activities.

Once the invoice has been created, sevDesk can take advantage of one of its many integrations and, for example, use the existing post interface. All you have to do is press “Send to sevDesk” (in Salesforce) and your invoice will be printed, enveloped and sent to your customer by a third party, with just one click. Of course, you can alternatively have the bill sent digitally by e-mail or download it as a pdf.

Screenshot of sevDesk Integration for Salesforce

The online banking system also gives you the ability to compare all incoming payments with existing invoices and instantly view unpaid or paid invoices. Optionally, as already mentioned, you can set up a fully or semi-automatic dunning system that reminds customers of pending payments.

The DATEV export feature allows you to work better with your accountant. So you can easily exchange data and documents with each other or even give your tax advisor access to your sevDesk account. In addition, sevDesk has an interface to the tax office, through which you can submit your VAT registration directly from your system to the tax office.

As you can see, integrating Salesforce with sevDesk gives you more than just a CRM system and a financial solution. No, you get a fully automated end-to-end solution for all of your business processes – with excellent CRM, sales, marketing, and service tools, and of course, one of the best cloud accounting systems.

What’s next?

We are constantly working to improve and provide you with new ways to optimize your processes. At the moment, we are developing a data migration tool. This will help sevDesk users transfer their data into Salesforce in just a few steps. Furthermore, we are in the process of implementing new features, such as the status overview of Paid and Open postings in Salesforce, through an automatic synchronization with sevDesk.
This and much more will give you even more pleasure in the future.

By Anastasia Pahl
cloudwharf.com

Have we convinced you? Then sign up today! for a free consultation. We’re here to help you drive your business and perfect your lead-to-cash process.

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