The number you can't ignore
Six percent. That is the share of SME entrepreneurs who say they are sufficiently automated. The other 94% see opportunities but fail to act on them, according to the Exact SME Barometer 2025. For webshop owners this stings even more, because speed and volume are exactly what their business depends on.
While your orders come in through WooCommerce, Shopify or Bol.com, you spend your evenings retyping invoices into Exact Online. Sound familiar? Then you are not alone. And it costs you more than you think.
What manual administration really costs you
Most webshop owners underestimate how much time drains away on administrative tasks. Not because they are foolish, but because it happens gradually. Five minutes per order. Ten orders per day. That adds up to almost a full working day per week of typing.
But time is only the beginning. There are three areas where manual processing hits you.
Time you never get back
An average webshop with 30 to 50 orders per day spends 8 to 12 hours a week manually entering sales invoices, updating stock and matching bank statements. Those are hours you could put into marketing, product development or simply an evening off.
More than half of SMEs, 52% to be precise, name cost savings as the main reason to automate. Not innovation, not growth. Simply less money wasted on work a system can do better.
Errors that eat into your revenue
Manual entry is prone to mistakes. A wrong VAT rate, a decimal in the wrong place, an order booked twice. Every error takes time to correct and can lead to problems with your VAT return.
With 500 orders per month and an error margin of 2%, you are looking at 10 incorrect entries. Per month. That is 120 faulty lines per year that your administration has to sort out, or that stay undetected until the accountant comes around.
Growth you can't handle
This may well be the biggest risk. Manual processes do not scale. At 20 orders per day it is manageable. At 50 it starts to pinch. At 100 it becomes untenable.
And then there is the staffing problem. According to Statistics Netherlands, 69% of medium-sized businesses in the Netherlands face a staff shortage. Hiring someone for your administration is therefore not only expensive, that person is often simply not to be found.
How this looks by company size
The impact of manual administration differs depending on the stage your webshop is in. But the bottleneck is universal.
The starter (up to 20 orders per day)
You run everything yourself. Packing and shipping orders during the day, doing the bookkeeping in the evening. It works, but you lack the room to think about growth. Automating your webshop administration is somewhere on your list, but there are always more urgent things.
The risk: you get used to it. Working manually feels like "staying in control", while it is actually holding you back.
The grower (20 to 80 orders per day)
The first cracks appear. You miss an invoice now and then, the stock in Exact Online no longer stays in sync with your webshop, and your partner or employee complains that the administration takes up too much time.
This is the turning point. Here entrepreneurs decide either to automate or to hire an administrative employee. That last option quickly costs €2,500 to €3,000 per month, for work that a connector can do for a fraction of that amount.
The fast grower (80+ orders per day)
Without automation this phase is a nightmare. Multiple sales channels, returns, different VAT rates for foreign customers. Keeping track by hand is no longer an option.
Still, there are webshops that try. They have two or three people working on the administration and are still falling behind. The error rates rise, the accountant sends ever longer correction lists, and the quarterly closing becomes an annual trauma.
What automation means in practice
Automating your webshop administration means that your webshop and Exact Online communicate with each other continuously. Orders, invoices, payments and stock changes are synchronised automatically, without you having to look at it.
A connector between your webshop and Exact Online makes sure every order is automatically booked as a sales invoice. With the right VAT codes, on the right ledger account, linked to the right customer. Updated every five minutes.
That applies to all common platforms. Whatever you use, WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento or Lightspeed, the connector handles it. Do you also sell through Bol.com or Amazon? Then those orders are processed in the same way, including commission settlement and returns.
The installation does not cost you an afternoon. Most entrepreneurs have the connector up and running within ten minutes. Plug and play, without any technical knowledge. And if you prefer some guidance, there is an installation service that walks you through it.
That means no manual retyping. No forgotten invoices. No stock differences between your shop and your bookkeeping. And no evenings spent behind Excel.
The real question
It is not about whether you should automate. That 94% has known that for a long time. It is about when, and what it costs you to wait.
Every month you book by hand, you lose hours you could put into your business. Every mistake you make costs money to fix. And every chance to grow is limited by the capacity of your administration.
The technology is here. Connectors between platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento and Lightspeed with Exact Online exist and work. They process your orders automatically and keep your bookkeeping updated in real time. From €9.95 per month.
The question is not whether it is possible. The question is how long you keep doing it by hand.
Curious how much time you can save? View our webshop connectors →
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