ConnectBooks began its journey in 2017 when I founded a small bookkeeping company. By early 2018, just six months in, I started working with an Amazon seller—my first introduction to the world of e-commerce accounting. At that time, my team was small, and I was personally involved in every account.
To serve these clients, I spent countless hours pulling various reports from Amazon, exporting them into Excel, and manually importing them into QuickBooks. After several months of this process, I realized how time-consuming and error-prone it was. I wanted to scale the business, but my manual process was too complex for my team to replicate.
That’s when the idea struck—to automate the process. If my employees could simply click a button to pull Amazon data directly into QuickBooks, we could scale far more efficiently. This was the seed that grew into what is now ConnectBooks.
As I spoke with other Amazon sellers about this automation idea, many were enthusiastic—but they didn’t necessarily want our bookkeeping service. Larger sellers, often managing $40–50 million in sales, preferred in-house bookkeepers.
To address this, we split the business into two entities:
Over time, I made a pivotal decision to specialize exclusively in e-commerce bookkeeping. Serving multiple industries made it difficult to maintain consistent quality and efficient processes. By niching down, we could refine our systems, automate more effectively, and deliver a higher-quality service.
The results were dramatic—while our revenue didn’t double, our profits did. Specialization and automation proved to be the key drivers of growth and efficiency.
Automation became the foundation of our success. Efficient processes allowed us to compete with in-house teams while maintaining profitability. When automation wasn’t possible, the work became too time-intensive to sustain profitably, reinforcing our commitment to continual improvement.
For e-commerce bookkeeping, automation isn’t just convenient—it’s essential. ConnectBooks automates complex tasks that would otherwise require hours of manual labor or constant oversight, enabling bookkeepers to focus on strategy rather than data entry.
Once automation was established, our next focus was clarity—helping clients truly understand their numbers. Our bookkeeping firm catered to higher-end clients, starting around $1,500 per month, who valued insights and strategic discussions.
However, clients often asked deeper questions:
“I see that I didn’t make money this month—but which products are unprofitable?”
Traditional tools like QuickBooks couldn’t answer this at the SKU level. Amazon fees, variable costs, and timing differences made profitability analysis difficult.
ConnectBooks solved this by creating detailed SKU-level profitability reports that accurately reflect all associated costs and fees. This level of clarity became a game-changer.
Profitability wasn’t the only challenge. Inventory posed another major issue. A business might be profitable on paper but struggle with cash flow if too much money is tied up in slow-moving inventory.
Recognizing this, we expanded ConnectBooks to include inventory insights—helping businesses identify slow-moving SKUs, manage turnover, and forecast cash flow more accurately.
Historically, we leveraged QuickBooks Desktop for its robust inventory capabilities. But with QuickBooks Desktop being phased out and QuickBooks Online (QBO) becoming the standard, we saw a gap—QBO lacked advanced inventory features.
This realization pushed us to build a comprehensive inventory system within ConnectBooks, tailored specifically for e-commerce and financial insight.
Today, ConnectBooks and our bookkeeping company operate hand-in-hand. What started as an internal tool has evolved into a full-fledged platform that empowers both our team and our clients.
ConnectBooks delivers value on three critical levels:
Together, these elements give e-commerce businesses the clarity they need to make data-driven decisions.
At its core, ConnectBooks embodies two guiding principles:
Whether a bookkeeper focuses on one or both, success lies in combining these strengths. ConnectBooks enables both—helping e-commerce businesses and bookkeepers alike operate smarter, faster, and with complete financial visibility.
See how ConnectBooks can help your business today!
Running an e-commerce business comes with plenty of challenges, but ConnectBooks is here to make your life easier. With real-time insights, seamless integrations, and detailed tracking of your profitability and inventory, you can stay ahead of the game. Whether you’re selling on Amazon, Shopify, Walmart, TikTok or eBay, ConnectBooks helps you manage your finances with 100% accuracy and confidence, so you can focus on growing your business.
Ready to level up? Start making smarter, data-driven decisions every step of the way. Try ConnectBooks Free Today or Schedule a Demo
%20(3).png)