Quotes in your CRM, invoices in Exact: the missing link

Your sales team sends a quote from the CRM. The customer agrees. The deal is marked as won. And then the waiting begins.

Because the invoice still has to be created in Exact Online. Manually. By someone else. Based on data that sits somewhere in an email. This is daily life for companies that create their quotes in a CRM and their invoices in the accounting system. And it costs more than you think, both in time and in money. Anyone searching for how quotes from the CRM end up as invoices in the accounting system quickly discovers that the missing link is not a person but a connector.

Does this sound familiar?

This is the workflow we come across at dozens of SMEs:

1. Sales creates a quote in HubSpot, Salesforce or Pipedrive. Products, quantities, prices: it is all there.
2. The customer agrees. The deal is set to "won".
3. Sales sends an email to finance. "Please create an invoice for Company X, see attached quote."
4. Finance gathers the details. Customer name, address, VAT number, products, amounts: everything is retyped into Exact Online.
5. The invoice goes out. Days later. Sometimes with the wrong amounts. Sometimes to the wrong address.

Every step in this process is a chance for delay and errors. And every day the invoice is sent later is another day you wait for your money.

What this costs you

The impact is more concrete than you might expect.

Suppose your sales team closes 50 deals per month with an average invoice value of 500 euros. That is 25,000 euros in revenue that needs to be invoiced. If it takes three to five working days before finance sends the invoice, your effective payment term shifts from 30 to 33 to 35 days.

At 50 invoices per month you are looking at 150 to 250 extra waiting days per month. That is cash flow you miss. Money that sits in your customer's account instead of yours.

And then there is the manual work. Finance spends an average of 10 to 15 minutes per invoice transferring data. With 50 invoices that is 8 to 12 hours per month of pure administrative work that adds nothing.

Per CRM: where it goes wrong

The problem is universal, but the details differ per platform.

HubSpot

HubSpot has deals with line items and Commerce Hub CPQ for generating quotes. That works fine, right up to the moment the quote is accepted. Commerce Hub generates quotes, calculates prices, sends the quote to the customer. But that is where it stops. The step to an invoice in Exact Online does not exist. The quote stays stuck in HubSpot while finance retypes everything in Exact.

With Breeze AI and the new "Run Agent" workflow action, HubSpot can automate more and more within its own platform. But the moment data has to cross the border to your accounting system, a connector is needed.

Salesforce

Salesforce works with Opportunities, Products and PricebookEntries. The platform is powerful, certainly with Agentforce for lead qualification and Data 360 for customer insights. But here too the same applies: the opportunity is won, and then someone has to manually create an invoice in Exact.

Salesforce has no native invoicing. The data sits in the system, but the bridge to your accounting system is missing.

Pipedrive

Pipedrive has an Invoicing App Extension that lets you create invoices from deals. Sounds good, but those invoices live in the Pipedrive ecosystem. They do not automatically end up in Exact Online. You have an invoicing function that stands apart from your accounting system. The result: double work or an invoice that never lands in your ledger.

Why email is not a solution

"But we have a good system, sales always sends an email with the details."

We hear that often. And it is true: with discipline it works. Until it no longer works. Until someone forgets to send the email. Until the attachment is missing. Until finance copies an old amount because the quote was adjusted in the meantime.

Email is not an integration. It is a workaround. And workarounds do not scale.

At five deals per month it is manageable. At fifty it becomes a risk. At a hundred it is untenable.

What could be different

The data you need for an invoice already exists. Customer name, address, VAT number, products, quantities, prices: it is all in your CRM. The question is not whether you have that data, but whether it automatically ends up in the right place.

A connector between your CRM and Exact Online does exactly that. As soon as a deal is set to "won", the data is automatically converted into an invoice in Exact. No email. No retyping. No delay.

The connector ensures that:

• Customer data stays in sync. New contact in HubSpot? Automatically a relation in Exact Online. Including VAT number and payment terms.
• Invoices are created automatically. Deal won? The invoice is ready in Exact. With the right products, quantities and amounts.
• Payment status flows back. Customer has paid? HubSpot, Salesforce or Pipedrive knows it, without sales having to call finance.

What to look out for

Not every connector is the same. Pay attention to these points:

• Two-way traffic. Contacts from CRM to Exact, payment status from Exact to CRM. One-way traffic solves only half the problem.
• Product catalogue. Are products and prices synchronised? Or do you have to maintain them in two places?
• Security. Your accounting system contains sensitive data. Choose a provider with ISO 27001 certification and an independent pentest. That guarantees your data is protected according to international standards.
• Flexibility. Cancellable monthly is a sign of confidence in the product itself. Long-term contracts are not.

Making the move

The gap between quote and invoice is not an inevitable problem. It is a choice. You can keep emailing between sales and finance. Or you can build the bridge that should have been there already.

The technology exists. The connectors exist. The only question is how many invoices you still want to retype manually before you make the move.

Want to know more about how to automate the step from quote to invoice? Read how to automatically convert quotes into invoices.

Want to try it yourself? View the HubSpot connector →

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