If you run an eCommerce business for more than a year or two, you’ve probably come across GoDaddy Bookkeeping. For years, GoDaddy offered solid, reliable eCommerce bookkeeping to a wide variety of freelancers and small businesses. However, GoDaddy discontinued this service in 2022, leaving many eCommerce businesses to figure out a solution on their own. Fortunately, there are various GoDaddy Bookkeeping replacements and alternatives for eBay, Amazon, and Shopify sellers.
So, what was GoDaddy online bookkeeping and why was it discontinued? What is an alternative that offers eBay and QuickBooks integration? What about Shopify and QuickBooks integration? Or even integration with QuickBooks for Amazon sellers? Finally, what is the best way for eCommerce businesses to manage all of their bookkeeping needs in one place?
In this guide, we will answer all of these questions and more, but first, let’s take a closer look at how GoDaddy Bookkeeping worked and what happened to the popular service:
GoDaddy is primarily known for its web-hosting services, but the company has ventured into other territory over the years to help online businesses and entrepreneurs flourish. For a long time, GoDaddy Bookkeeping was the go-to bookkeeping solution for thousands of eCommerce businesses. It was specifically designed for small businesses in need of more comprehensive accounting and bookkeeping solutions.
Rather than forcing business owners to download software, GoDaddy developed a simple, easy-to-use website and subscription service. At first, it just allowed online freelancers to calculate their quarterly taxes. As GoDaddy fleshed out the service, the website grew to include tools for invoicing, P&L reports, and (perhaps most importantly) integration with sales channels like eBay, Amazon, and Shopify. This made it even easier for online merchants to link all of their sales data into GoDaddy’s bookkeeping system.
However, GoDaddy made very few improvements to the service over the last few years and, on June 18th, 2022, GoDaddy Bookkeeping was officially discontinued. Existing users were given until September 30th, 2022 to download all of their data and migrate to a new service. This means that if you used GoDaddy Bookkeeping and failed to download your books by the cutoff date, you’re out of luck on getting that data back.
Some of the primary benefits of GoDaddy Bookkeeping were its simple interface and affordable pricing structure. For just $4.99 per month, small eCommerce businesses could access invoice management, mobile payments, and P&L reports. The next plan cost $9.99 per month and added bank and credit card accounts, as well as support for data integration from different sales channels. This made it work well as accounting for Amazon and eBay sellers. Finally, the $14.99-per-month plan offered all of the same features, plus the ability to schedule recurring invoices.
That said, GoDaddy Bookkeeping was far from perfect. It lacked many of the features eCommerce business owners have come to expect from advanced eBay, Amazon, and Shopify accounting software. For example, GoDaddy Bookkeeping lacked inventory management, bill pay solutions, and support for different types of transactions.
Even though GoDaddy lacked some essential features, it was very popular for a reason. Over the years, eCommerce businesses have found that many sales channels simply lack accurate in-house accounting. Numbers don’t always add up how they should, making it virtually impossible to track transaction data with any certainty. GoDaddy’s integration largely solved this issue, ensuring that small online businesses could at least track basic bookkeeping metrics.
However, if you’re looking for accounting software to replace GoDaddy Bookkeeping, you shouldn’t settle for the bare minimum. In fact, there are a few key features that are a must-have for any eCommerce business that needs comprehensive accounting and bookkeeping solutions:
As you probably already know, there are some important distinctions between bookkeeping for eCommerce and brick-and-mortar businesses. Typically, a brick-and-mortar store has one sales channel; the business sells physical products directly to consumers. Additionally, inventory is easier to manage because it is physically present at the business location or storage facility. These are two of the biggest issues that arise when attempting to use the same bookkeeping practices for eCommerce.
With an eCommerce business, there are typically multiple sales channels. Your business might sell on Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and Shopify (just to name a few). All of these channels manage and display data differently. This can make it very hard to track financial metrics across every channel. Even if you use QuickBooks, you will need to implement third-party software or add-ons to integrate all of the relevant data.
This doesn’t even consider the differences with income reporting. Brick-and-mortar businesses can largely track income and profits with bank statements. Since eCommerce businesses typically sell through third-party channels, this simple method just doesn’t work. A single deposit to your account from Amazon could include multiple sales, chargebacks, shipping fees, and merchant fees. Without the right software to parse this information, you may find it very difficult to track and analyze your business income.
ConnectBooks is the best alternative to GoDaddy Bookkeeping because it takes all of the essential elements that made GoDaddy’s service useful and adds even more features to help eCommerce businesses. If you use more than one sales channel or you’re simply looking for a way to use QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Enterprise, or QuickBooks Online (and soon Xero) that is better suited to the needs of eCommerce bookkeeping, ConnectBooks is the perfect solution.
With ConnectBooks, you can quickly manage the collective data from all of your sales channels, generate accurate reports to analyze your income and expenses, and make smarter buying and pricing decisions for the future. Not only can this help you save money and run your business more efficiently, but it can also save you countless hours that would need to spend on manual bookkeeping.
Are you in need of a GoDaddy Bookkeeping alternative that integrates with eBay, Amazon, and Shopify? Do you want to learn more about managing all of your eCommerce channels in one place? If so, reach out to the experts at ConnectBooks for more information!
