Case 1: Accountants Academy
Accountants Academy is an online e-learning platform for accountants. It offers online training courses, accredited live seminars and recognized e-learning courses with online follow-up.
Registering for a seminar is very easy on the Accountants Academy website. You fill in a form and immediately receive an automatic confirmation e-mail. A few days later, you will receive the invoice in your mailbox.
What was it like before?
Behind the scenes, Cédric (Founder & Managing Director) toils to process those dozens of registrations he receives every week into his administration in a timely manner. First he adds all the data (with a lot of copy-paste) in his Excel file to keep an overview. Then he fills out a template for the invoice in Microsoft Word with the customer data so that he can send it out as quickly as possible. After that, he may do some administration to put the SME portfolio in order before moving on to the next registration mail.
How did we help Cédric?
Fortunately, Cédric got in touch with Experience Lab, where we made it our mission to put him out of his (daily) misery. Automation on a small scale can save a lot of time. Time that you would rather invest in other things.
First of all, we provided a tool that would help Cédric keep an overview of the registrations. Excel as a spreadsheet no longer seemed suitable to us in 2021. A tool like Airtable allows you to keep track of the various seminars and to link new registrations to them.
Automation on a small scale with Airtable
Airtable is a mix between a relational database and a spreadsheet, with the possibility to extend with all kinds of code to build smart internal systems. User-friendly for entrepreneurs and marketers, but also very easy for developers to build on.
The tool is flexible, and the possibilities endless. It is now much more convenient to keep an overview, quickly filtering by name, seminar, price or date of registration. Track and follow the status of the application for SME portfolio? Easily added as an extra field in Airtable.
Airtable also allowed us, through its strong API (application programming interface), to easily link the forms from Accountants Academy's Wordpress website. A first important step of the automation flow.
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Airtable also allowed us, through its strong API (application programming interface), to easily link the forms from Accountants Academy's Wordpress website. A first important step of the automation flow.
Creating invoices in Airtable
The next step was the automatic creation of invoices. We placed a small script behind a button field in Airtable that easily retrieved the necessary data from Airtable for one specific registration (from both the registration and the seminar table) and sent it to the Teamleader API to create a draft invoice with the correct price (with or without discount, depending on the combination packages that customers did or did not choose).
Connecting with Teamleader
To complete the story, we were able to correctly adapt the current invoice template that Cédric was using in Microsoft Word so that it could be dynamically populated by Teamleader. We also taught Cédric how to work efficiently in Teamleader with personalized e-mail templates and predefined articles in order to save maximum time without compromising his personalized approach.
To summarize:
A hidden field on each registration form sent via the website ensures that the automatically added entry in Airtable is linked to the correct seminar of the registration.
A simple press on the blue button sends the data of the registration to Teamleader to create an 'invoice not yet booked' based on their own invoice template. Does the company or contact not exist yet? Then it is first created in the Teamleader CRM. The link to the new invoice is stored in Airtable right after the registration, so it's clear at a glance which registrations have already been invoiced, and which ones haven't.
Subsequently, it is very easy for Cédric to send the invoice using the e-mail templates he added in Teamleader. The automatic link with his Exact accounting software takes care of the rest.
This integration took 10 hours to set up. The limitations of Airtable's free plan were not a problem here.
Case 2: Kaart Blanche
Card Blanche is an innovative greeting card brand that has been growing tremendously over the last year with countless orders on their Woocommerce webshop from all over the world.
In addition to orders from individuals, they also supply quite a few cards to a network of retailers who order them in large quantities.
What was it like before?
After the successful end of the year period, Timo (co-founder and commercial director) was left with a huge hangover: hundreds of invoices had to be made for the business orders, and this was done manually by adapting a template in InDesign each time, exporting it and sending it on to the relevant customer. A gigantic job, until Experience Lab got involved.
Woocommerce plugin
Experience Lab wrote a Woocommerce plugin that makes it very easy for Timo to forward a single order (or an entire selection at once) to the Teamleader API to turn it into 'invoices not yet booked'. Does the company or contact not yet exist? Then it is first created in the CRM.
The integration takes into account the various shipping and discount options within Woocommerce so that prices are always correct, no matter what.
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Batch booking and sending invoices is a nice extra functionality that comes with Teamleader out-of-the-box.
Invoice templates in Teamleader
Next, it was a small effort to also convert the template from InDesign to a Teamleader-compatible invoice template. Batch booking and sending invoices is a nice extra functionality that comes with Teamleader out-of-the-box, and it was able to complete the flow for Timo.
To summarize:
Timo can now select from Woocommerce the orders for which he wants to create an invoice and have them very easily batch forwarded to Teamleader. There he can book them and send them out in one go, accompanied by a personalized e-mail template.
A lot of time saved; mission accomplished!
This integration took 12 hours to set up.
Case 3: Experience Lab
Our mission at Experience Lab is simple. We use digital technology and our creativity in a smart way for a better online world. We build digital experiences for and with SMEs, promising start-ups and fast-growing scale-ups. Everything can be better - and so can your digital strategy and online environment. That's exactly what we do at Experience Lab.
What was it like before?
We too once spent a lot of time on our invoicing, which became more and more extensive. Fortunately, we soon invested in an automated system.
Connecting our time-logging tool with Retool
Our employees log time working on projects for clients in Float, our resource scheduling and time-logging tool.
Thanks to Retool, a clever low-code app builder, we were able to build a system in a few hours that pulls in the necessary data from the Float API and then forwards it to Teamleader to create invoices where the correct logs show up.
To summarize:
In Retool, we can very easily select the Float project, the Teamleader contact or company we want to invoice to, and the time period (which is automatically already set to the past month). One more single click, and the invoice is ready to be sent.
This integration took 4-5 hours to set up. Retool itself costs us €50 per month, but we still use it for many other applications and purposes.