Connecting your accounting platform to the tools you use
Accounting software rarely sits alone for long. Payments arrive through a gateway, staff are paid through payroll, orders come in from a storefront, and stock moves through a warehouse or a spreadsheet somebody still maintains.
What connects, and what it moves
- Currency SGD and multi-currency ledgers
- Tax GST-ready transaction detail
- Invoicing InvoiceNow ready formats
- Banking Feeds from your business accounts
- Payroll CPF, claims and leave entries
- Storefronts Orders, fees and refunds
Integration categories
What to check before you connect
This page maps the common integration categories for Singapore businesses, what each connection actually moves between systems, and how to judge whether an integration is real or nominal.
Category — what the connection moves
Payment gateways and getting paid
A gateway connection is only useful if payouts split properly
A payment gateway connection brings settled transactions into the accounting system so you can match them to invoices without keying fees and payouts by hand. One done correctly saves a bookkeeper half a day a month; one done loosely is a spreadsheet with extra steps.
The detail that matters is how the gateway's payout batches are represented. A single daily payout containing several customer payments needs to be split and matched, not recorded as one lump. Ask the vendor how the integration handles gateway fees, refunds, and chargebacks. Refunds are the usual place integrations get thin, and they are also the transactions most likely to be missed.
Questions to put to the vendor
- Does one daily payout split into the individual customer receipts?
- How are gateway fees deducted and posted to an expense account?
- What happens when a customer is refunded two weeks after the payout?
Payroll, leave, and claims
One system or two before you compare features
Payroll integration usually means journal entries flow from the payroll system into accounting, so wages, CPF contributions, and deductions land in the right accounts without a manual journal. Some platforms include payroll natively; others integrate with a separate provider.
If you employ staff, decide whether you want one system or two before you compare features. A native module is simpler but may be less capable than a dedicated payroll product; an integration keeps the specialist tool but adds a dependency. Either can be the right call — make it deliberately rather than by accident.
- One native system
- Fewer logins and no second bill. Payroll capability stops where the platform stops, and any change you want happens on the accounting vendor's roadmap.
- Two connected systems
- A payroll product built for Singapore rules, wired into the ledger. One more integration to notice when it breaks.
E-commerce and order data
Orders, refunds and fees as reconcilable transactions
For businesses selling online, the useful integration brings orders, refunds, and platform fees into accounting as transactions that can be reconciled against payouts. Without it, someone exports a CSV and rebuilds the month by hand.
The questions to ask are about timing and granularity. Are orders imported per transaction or per settlement? How are discounts and shipping handled? What happens to an order that is later refunded in part?
Granularity is the difference between a clean month and a mystery. If the storefront hands over one settlement total and no line detail, you have not automated reconciliation — you have moved the CSV export somewhere else.
Inventory and cost of goods sold
Match the depth to how much inventory drives your margin
Inventory integration is where accounting software meets operations. A trading business needs stock movements to flow into cost of goods sold, not just a periodic stock count that gets adjusted at year end.
Platforms differ sharply here. Lighter bookkeeping tools handle basic stock tracking and are simpler to run day to day. ERP-style systems follow warehouse movements, purchase orders and landed costs in more depth.
Neither is the wrong answer. A service business with a sample room should not buy a warehouse system, and a distributor running landed costs should not settle for a stock count at year end.
What "integration" sometimes means
Not every listed integration is a live connection
Some are file exports, some are manual imports, and some are third-party connectors that a partner maintains rather than the platform itself. None of those are necessarily bad, but they fail differently, and you should know which one you are buying.
Live connection
Data moves on a trigger the vendor maintains. When it stops, the platform's support is your first call.
File export or import
You, or an admin, run it. Reliable and inspectable, but it depends on a person remembering each month.
Third-party connector
A partner maintains the bridge. Useful where no native option exists; a known risk when the platform updates.
Plainly asked
Does data move automatically, on what trigger, and who fixes it when it stops?
Building a stack you can maintain
Every integration is a dependency
Each one can break, needs someone to notice, and adds a place where data can diverge. The practical approach is to connect the systems that carry the most volume first, prove the routine works for a month, then add the next.
Keep a short list of what connects to what and who owns it. When something looks wrong in your reports, that list is where you start looking. A stack of five connections that somebody checks monthly beats a stack of fifteen nobody has opened since setup.
Where this fits into choosing a platform
Integration breadth is a selection criterion, not a starting point
If your stack is a bank account and an invoicing tool, a broad integration catalogue adds noise. If you run a storefront, payroll, and inventory, it becomes one of the more important factors.
The selection framework treats integration breadth as one scoring factor among several. Weigh it against your actual systems rather than the vendor's list length.
What connects
The plain list of systems a Singapore platform usually talks to
No logos on this page — the name of the category tells you more about what will move than a brand mark does. Each line below is a category worth checking on your shortlist of accounting integrations.
Integrations & Workflow
Questions worth answering before you connect anything
Open each row for the answer we give when a Singapore business asks us the same thing.
01 Do I need payroll integrated if I only have a few staff?
Even with two or three staff, manual journals for wages and CPF are the kind of task that quietly falls behind. A basic payroll integration pays for itself the first time an adjustment is missed and corrected late.
02 How much does an integration cost?
Native integrations are usually part of the plan; third-party connectors often bill per month on top. Ask both vendors what happens to the price if either side changes their plan, since that is where the surprise usually sits.
03 What breaks first when an integration stops working?
Reconciliation, almost always. Transactions stop arriving, so the bank or payout side grows a backlog while the invoice side keeps going. A monthly comparison between the two catches it early.
04 Can I start with one integration and add more later?
Yes, and it is the better route for most small teams. Connect the highest-volume system first, run a full month, then add the next one. Building five at once rarely survives a change of staff.
05 Does an integration work with GST reporting?
It should, but check the detail. A GST-ready integration carries the tax code on each transaction, so the GST return is built from the ledger rather than recalculated from a total.
06 Do I need an inventory module if I only sell a handful of SKUs?
For a handful of SKUs, a light stock tracking setup is enough. The threshold is not the count, it is the margin — when inventory mix starts driving your gross profit, the depth is worth paying for.
Map your own stack before you sign up for one
Most surprises in cloud accounting come from an integration nobody tested after setup. Walk the list on this page against your own systems, note the ones that carry the most rows each month, and start there.
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