VB Media, an e-commerce platform for the print industry, now offers customers platform-level integration with Xero, QuickBooks and Sage accounting software, as well as the shopVOX business management solution.
The VB Media system’s in-built Order Management tool is already used by a large number of print businesses to manage the process whereby orders are either assigned to in-house production or trade suppliers, provide notifications about missing artwork, and show each order’s status, as well as giving users an overview of each customer’s order and payment history. Available to customers on VB Media’s Pro tier, these integrations expand on this, enabling VB Media customers using any of these platforms to easily and instantly share data from their e-commerce system with their existing accounting or business management solutions, saving time, creating a single point of data entry and reducing the margin for error.
On a practical level, with these integrations in place, when an order is placed via a print service provider’s (PSP’s) website, it will be sent to the desired platform via their API so that it is immediately ready for accountancy purposes. In addition, if the customer hasn’t previously ordered via the website but is already recognised by the PSP’s accounting system, the PSP will be able to simply select that existing customer without needing to re-enter their details.
As with all other solutions integrated with the VB Media system, these API integrations have been enabled in-house at the source-code level. As a result, maintenance, updates and upgrades will all be handled behind the scenes by VB Media, leaving users free to focus on their core business instead of worrying about plug-ins going rogue or being deprecated.
Wayne Bodimeade, Director, VB Media comments: “We spend a lot of time talking to printers, and it is clear that many are increasingly looking to their software to reduce administrative elements of their workload and free them up to focus on tasks that deliver real value. To do this successfully, it’s important the routes orders take into your business – and that is through websites for a vast number of businesses – integrate seamlessly with your order management system, your wider workflow management and, of course, whatever systems you use to manage your cashflow and finances. By adding these integrations, we’re aiming to help our customers cut down on paperwork and time spent re-entering data so that they can focus instead on creating value with print.”
Gavin De Boos, Director, VB Media adds: “We developed these integrations at the source-code level to ensure that maintenance, updates and upgrades will all be taken care of by us, ensuring continuity for our customers. We originally designed the VB Media system to be a cost-effective and user-friendly solution that enables printers to get their business online without a heavy time investment, but we’ve found that many of our customers also find our in-built Order Management tool is an effective workflow solution for them. These integrations enable them to build on that further, saving them time and freeing them up to sell more print.”
