Launched as a pilot initiative almost two years ago, our Developer Growth Program has been helping app developers grow their businesses ever since. Participating developers, including Helm, Asset Accountant, Re-Leased, Genius Sheets, Syft Analytics, Buildertrend, Katana, Uncat, Client Hub, A2X, ApprovalMax, VERIFYiQ, Dext, and Knowify, engage directly with the Intuit Developers & Partners group, and an exclusive network of accountant experts, UX designers, solution architects, and go-to-market managers.
During the program, participants gain insights into maximizing their marketing impact, connecting with more customers, and increasing their app revenue. Today, we’re excited to share what Bookkeep CEO Jason Richelson and Vice President of Marketing & Communications Alison Ball have to say about their ongoing experience.
Bookkeep and its origin story
Jason Richelson and Ruth Ku founded Bookkeep as a bookkeeping firm in 2018. In December 2019, they launched their first app to automate Square accounting and listed it in the QuickBooks App Store. When the pandemic sparked significant e-commerce growth in 2020, Bookkeep responded by launching Amazon Seller and Shopify integrations. By May 2021, Bookkeep had over 25 app integrations. Today they offer over 60 integrations and have expanded to support point-of-sale (POS) solutions, making them a category leader in automated accounting for retail, e-commerce, restaurant, and cannabis dispensary businesses.
“Bookkeep is a secure data bridge that sits between over 60 popular e-commerce, retail, and payment solutions (think Shopify, PayPal, Square, Amazon, Toast, Clover, Treez, Mindbody, etc.), and cloud-based accounting systems like QuickBooks Online,” Jason says. “Each selling and payment solution is mapped to specific General Ledger accounts, enabling Bookkeep to automatically calculate and book daily accrual-based summary sales and payment journal entries while you sleep.”
The benefits of Bookkeep range from ease of use and time savings to ensuring the accuracy of clients’ QuickBooks Online reports, to keeping business owners informed on a day-to-day basis. Alison outlines the benefits in detail below:
- QuickBooks Online is updated nightly including all revenue and payment data, with no effort from their users. Having up-to-date books is crucial to running your business. But to get up-to-date books, you first need to get all the relevant data from your selling and payment platforms into your books. It takes a lot of time to manually calculate and book the entries from the sales and payment platforms that multi-channel e-commerce or retail companies use in their businesses. Bookkeep completely automates that, so time savings is the first big benefit.
- Accuracy and timeliness are significantly enhanced. Bookkeep users can rely on QuickBooks Online reports to run their businesses accurately because their QuickBooks Online integration now reflects revenue and payment data previously scattered across multiple platforms. In practical terms, this means they know exactly how much cash they can spend, what their product COGS and margins are, and how much they owe for sales tax. They also know what their daily sales by store or channel are (something Shopify won’t email to you, for example), and how much the selling and payment platforms are costing their businesses in terms of fees and commissions.
- Business owners stay in the loop every day. Because Bookkeep is so simple, accurate, and reliable, it’s easy to just set it and forget it. Users love our daily email updates that display the health of each connection and provide key figures from each platform. It’s a light lift for users to skim the email, and then go about their day confidently, knowing their books are up to date.
Thousands of e-commerce and retail businesses—and their accounting teams—trust Bookkeep’s smarter accounting automation platform. As one customer’s five-star review in the QuickBooks App Store says, “Excellent app! The daily sync to QuickBooks saves so much time and effort. But for me, it’s the technical support that makes this app stand out. They are always quick to respond, helpful, and knowledgeable. Well done Anish and Jason! Thanks for all your help.”
How the Developer Growth Program is helping Bookkeep and their customers
Bookkeep’s goal is to help businesses get the revenue and sales data they need to succeed. Says Jason, “As an app company, our mission is to help accountants, bookkeepers, and e-commerce CFOs and business owners account for their revenue, effortlessly, the right way. To do that, we need more customers to learn about Bookkeep!”
But not everyone knows who Bookkeep is and what they do (yet!).
“Simply put, we are the best solution for multi-channel e-commerce businesses because we base our journal entries on the sale date, not the payment date (as other apps do). Unless you’re an accountant, you may not understand why that’s important to the health of your books,” Jason explains. “And unfortunately, businesses find out their books are wrong at exactly the worst time for them—often when they’re in the process of being acquired. It’s devastating to accept a lower valuation because you didn’t properly book your revenues on an accrual basis.”
He adds, “We want to help ensure this never happens and give business owners and their accounting teams confidence in their revenue and sales data every day, so better business decisions can be made.”
Joining the Developer Growth Program made getting the word out about Bookkeep and what it does much easier. “We were delighted to apply. It seemed like a good fit as we were eager to learn more about how we could connect on a deeper level with more businesses using QuickBooks Online in the e-commerce, retail, and restaurant industries, and with the ProAdvisors who serve them.”
Though still working their way through the program, Alison and Jason say the experience has been amazing.
Says Alison, “We have been impressed with the advice we have been given, from how to improve our click-through responses on the QuickBooks App Store, all the way to gaining actionable insights from the connection data generated by our API usage. We haven’t been able to implement all the recommendations we’ve received yet, but we’re looking forward to rolling them out and measuring the impact.”
The team has also been impressed with the numerous assets in the Intuit Marketing Portal. Alison says they’re “immediately useful to any app that doesn’t have a full marketing department,” and they’re planning an upcoming “better together” campaign.
Another aspect of the program that has garnered praise from the Bookkeep team is working with the accountant panel. According to Jason, it’s been an exceptional part of the experience.
“We were fortunate to be matched with Jacint Tumacder and Jeff Wilson, CPA. They immediately understood the importance of accrual-based entries, and why having up-to-date books is imperative for business owners and their advisors,” he says. “We went deep on several principles, and they had good suggestions for future features we could implement. In a nutshell, we loved geeking out with them about the accounting underpinning our entries, and they were like our own private advisory council for features that would take us to the next level and beyond!”
The Developer Growth Program is “priceless” for small companies
The Developer Growth Program offers developers invaluable help with their marketing needs. Alison thinks this is especially true for small companies that are just starting.
“While developers are experts on their solution, many do not have full marketing departments or customer experience (CX) designers on staff,” she says. “Additionally, the data QuickBooks Online can access but the app developer cannot, is a bit of a black hole. Having access to that data and a knowledgeable person to explain it is priceless.”
One of the Bookkeep team’s main takeaways from the Intuit marketing team was that the Bookkeep app listing was “too technical.” To help improve their conversion on the QuickBooks App Store, Alison says they needed to bring the story about Bookkeep up the purchasing funnel a bit. So they did, and Alison says they’re already seeing benefits with improved conversion to trials.
Moving forward, the Bookkeep team is excited to review and implement all the recommended changes to their app. Once they do, they hope to share a major success story.
Says Jason, “Stay tuned—the early results are promising just from the tweaks we’ve made so far.”
We can’t wait to hear how the advice they’ve received and the knowledge they’ve gained from the Developer Growth Program help Jason and his team take Bookkeep to the next level.
Developers interested in the program can visit our developer forums to inquire about the program and how to participate. We’re always looking for innovative apps that can address the needs of the QuickBooks community. Our step-by-step guide makes listing your app on the QuickBooks App Store easy.