Automatically convert quotes into sales invoices

You know the process: Sales closes a deal in the CRM and sends an email to finance. Finance opens Exact Online, looks up the customer, creates an invoice, enters the products and copies over the pricing agreements. One more check on the VAT rate and then the invoice is sent. Twenty minutes of work, for every deal all over again.

Now the version with a connector between your CRM system and your accounting: Sales closes a deal, the invoice is prepared in Exact Online and sent automatically. Job done. No email, no retyping data and no delay. The difference is letting a quote run through to an invoice automatically via a connector between your CRM and Exact Online. And how that works technically we explain step by step in this article.

The seven steps from quote to invoice

Under the bonnet, an automatic connector runs through seven steps. Each of those steps replaces something that now happens manually.

1. Sales creates a deal in the CRM

Your sales rep fills in the deal as always. Customer name, products, quantities, prices. In HubSpot those are line items, in Salesforce Products with PricebookEntries, in Pipedrive deal fields with products. The data you need for an invoice already exists at this point.

2. The deal is won

The sales rep moves the deal to the won stage. In HubSpot you change the pipeline stage, in Salesforce you set the Opportunity to Closed Won, in Pipedrive you drag the deal to the won column. This moment, this status change, is the starting signal.

3. The connector detects the change

As soon as the deal status changes, the connector picks this up. With HubSpot and Salesforce via a polling mechanism or webhook, with Pipedrive via a real-time webhook. The connector knows: this deal is won, an invoice needs to be created.

4. Checking or creating the contact in Exact Online

Before an invoice can be created, the customer must exist in Exact Online. The connector searches on the basis of company name, Chamber of Commerce number or email address to see whether the contact already exists. If so, the deal is linked to the existing customer contact. If not, the new customer contact is created automatically with the data from the CRM. Think of name, address, VAT number and payment terms.

5. Creating the sales invoice

Once the customer contact exists and the deal is connected, the connector creates a sales invoice in Exact Online with the right products, quantities and amounts. Every line item from your CRM becomes an invoice line. The invoice is ready within seconds, complete with the correct VAT rate and the agreed payment terms.

6. Sending the invoice

Depending on your settings in Exact Online, the invoice is sent to the customer automatically by email. No manual action is needed any more.

7. Payment status back to the CRM

Once the customer has paid, Exact Online registers the payment. The connector sends that status back to your CRM. Sales sees straight away in the deal that the invoice has been paid, without having to call finance.

Per CRM: how does the connector work?

The basic process is the same, but the details differ per platform.

HubSpot

HubSpot works with deals, pipeline stages and line items. Commerce Hub CPQ generates quotes with products and prices, but the step to Exact Online is missing in HubSpot itself.

With a connector it works like this: the deal moves to the won stage, the connector reads the line items (product, quantity, price), checks whether the relation exists in Exact and creates a sales invoice. Product codes are matched between HubSpot and Exact Online, so the correct item appears on the invoice.

Salesforce

Salesforce works with Opportunities, Products and PricebookEntries. When an Opportunity reaches Closed Won, the connector reads out the linked products with their prices. The relation is searched for or created in Exact, and the invoice follows automatically.

Pipedrive

Pipedrive sends a real-time webhook on a stage change. That means no delay. As soon as the deal is set to won, the connector picks it up right away. Products and amounts are read out and translated into invoice lines in Exact Online.

Pipedrive has its own Invoicing App Extension, but those invoices live in the Pipedrive ecosystem, they do not reach your bookkeeping, whereas a connector to Exact Online takes care of that.

Four technical challenges and how they are solved

The flow sounds simple, but behind the scenes four things get solved that you would otherwise have to do by hand.

Product does not exist in Exact Online

What if sales puts a product on a deal that does not yet exist in Exact Online? The connector can create the product automatically based on the CRM data: name, price, product code. Or you choose to have the connector send a notification so you can create the product yourself first. Which approach fits depends on how tightly you want to manage your item master data.

VAT rate: the CRM does not know this, Exact Online does

HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive have no VAT logic. They work with amounts, not with VAT codes. Exact Online, on the other hand, needs to know which VAT rate applies to each invoice line: 0%, 9% or 21%.

The connector solves this by mapping VAT codes based on product group, customer type or the buyer's country. A domestic sale automatically gets the standard rate. An EU delivery gets the correct ICP code. That prevents errors you would otherwise only discover at the VAT return.

Payment terms

Your CRM says "Net 30" or "pay within 14 days". Exact Online works with internal payment term codes. The connector translates the CRM term into the correct code in Exact. That way every invoice gets the agreed payment term, without finance having to set it manually.

Currency in international deals

If you work internationally, deals come in different currencies. Exact Online distinguishes between the invoice amount in the original currency and the amount converted to your administrative currency. The connector makes sure both amounts are filled in correctly, so your bookkeeping is accurate regardless of whether the deal was closed in euros, dollars or pounds.

Time savings

A connector between your CRM and Exact Online delivers a considerable time saving. Let's assume 50 deals per month and an average finance time of 10 to 15 minutes per invoice spent transferring data. That comes down to 8 to 12 hours per month of purely administrative work. With a connector that disappears entirely.

Of course, this is not only about hours, it is about speed. An invoice that goes out the same day instead of three to five working days later shortens your effective payment term. That saves 150 to 250 waiting days with 50 invoices a month, which improves your cash flow right away.

On top of that you save time on the mistakes that no longer happen when transferring data. Wrong amounts or an incorrect VAT rate are a thing of the past. The connector handles it automatically based on real-time data from your CRM combined with financial knowledge from Exact Online.

What do you need to set this up?

You do not need a developer. The connectors from iWebDevelopment are no-code, you configure them through a dashboard. The steps:

1. Connect your CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce or Pipedrive) and Exact Online
2. Set which pipeline stage triggers the invoicing
3. Map your products and VAT codes
4. Test with a trial invoice
5. Put the connector live

The connectors can be cancelled monthly, so you can try them out without any risk.

From manual to automatic

The step from quotation to invoice is the most repetitive task in the collaboration between sales and finance. And it is exactly the kind of work you do not want to keep doing twice, the data already exists, the connector makes sure this data ends up in the right place at the right moment.

Anyone who wants to automate the entire customer cycle (from first contact to payment) starts here. At the moment the deal is won and the invoice creates itself.

Want to know more about the security of your data? The connectors from iWebDevelopment are ISO 27001 certified and independently pen-tested.

Want to try it yourself? View the HubSpot connector →

Using a different CRM? Salesforce connector → | Pipedrive connector →