Make QuickBooks Work For You QuickBooks API Integration Project Spotlight Dozen Bakeshop

Ethix Systems helped us launch an online time sheet program . . . Ethix did this for us - even with customizing the tool for our purposes - at a fraction of the cost of other web-based systems we were looking into. As a result, we also save money on labor because we eliminate manual addition of hours and reduce other time sheet management.

Andrew Twigg
Owner

Vision: Dozen Bake Shop is a small bakery with two locations in Pittsburgh. They sell all kinds of baked goods, from cookies and cupcakes to cinnamon rolls and quiches.

Problem: Employee time management was not centralized between their locations. Dozen Bake Shop inquired about whether a free web-based time entry program, called PHP TimeClock, would be a feasible solution for the stores.

Solution: Ethix Systems determined that PHP TimeClock was a simple yet powerful tool that would work well for Dozen Bake Shop's situation. The application was also very customizable, so after it was installed and configured, Dozen Bake Shop was able to start using it right away without any additional development time.
QuickBooks is a great accounting software package capable of managing finances for many different industries. However, some industries need more than it offers. For example, the construction industry greatly benefits from "work in progress" expense tracking for projects, a feature not offered in QuickBooks. But because it is inexpensive and performs 95% of the functions the company needs, the accounting personnel will implement QuickBooks and find another way to track this information, such as using a local Excel document. These workarounds lead to time wasted on data entry, decision-making based on inaccurate or incomplete data, and a process relying on an employee's "quick fix" that never gets standardized or documented.
Thankfully, QuickBooks permits customization through an API (Application Programming Interface). An API is a method of directly communicating with software. The QuickBooks API is so robust that an independent program can fully integrate with QuickBooks' internal database.
One of our recent projects involved building a scheduling application around QuickBooks. It makes use of the customer and item lists from QuickBooks to generate job schedules that are stored externally. Once jobs are completed, the software automatically creates the invoice in QuickBooks. In this way, the process of scheduling is now standardized across the company, and many hours spent in double data-entry are saved each month.
Many software packages come with APIs to help extend their usefulness, so if you're unsure whether the software will do exactly what you want it to do, see if it has an API. Chances are that the API will enable us to provide for you that last piece of functionality that you need.