Bol.com integrations: accounting, ERP, webshop, shipping and customer service

Anyone selling on bol.com soon finds that the sales channel itself is only part of the work. Around it sit bookkeeping, stock, shipping and customer contact, and each of them has a connector. This article lists the types of bol.com integrations, so you know which ones you need and in what order.

What a bol.com integration works on

Bol.com gives sellers an API of its own for reading and updating data. An integration is software that talks to it and puts the data in another system. The data that matters to sellers:

• Orders and shipments: what was ordered, by whom, and when and how it was sent.
• Returns: what comes back and how it was handled.
• Offers and stock: which products you offer, at what price and with what stock.
• Invoices and payouts: what bol.com charges in commission and costs, and what it pays out.

Each type of integration uses a different part of this. That also decides what can go wrong.

1. Accounting

For most sellers this is the first connector that saves time. A bol.com order becomes a sales invoice in your accounting package, a return becomes a credit invoice, and bol.com’s costs come back as a purchase booking. Without a connector you retype that every month or upload an export, and you lose the link between a return and the original sale.

What to look for:

• Is a return booked as a credit invoice, for the amount actually refunded?
• Are commission and other bol.com costs booked separately?
• Can you reconcile a payout with the invoices that belong to it?

Schakel has a page per package: Bol.com and Moneybird, Bol.com and Exact Online, Bol.com and AFAS, Bol.com and Twinfield, Bol.com and e-Boekhouden, Bol.com and Yuki, Bol.com and SnelStart and Bol.com and Jortt. The whole subject is in automate bol.com bookkeeping.

2. ERP

An ERP package such as Exact Online or AFAS does more than bookkeeping: it also keeps stock, purchasing and customer data. The bol.com integration then has to deliver more than invoices, and match your existing items and relations. That takes more setup, because you link item codes, journals and VAT codes. Start with a few test orders and have your accountant or ERP partner check the first bookings.

3. Webshop and stock

If you also sell through your own webshop, you want a sale on one channel to lower the stock on the other. That prevents selling something you no longer have. For Shopify that is covered in Bol.com and Shopify; for WooCommerce and Lightspeed read WooCommerce and bol.com and Lightspeed and bol.com. The underlying problem is explained in inventory synchronization explained.

Watch for:

• How often is stock updated, and what happens in between?
• What happens to stock that bol.com manages itself, as with fulfilment by bol? It counts differently from stock on your own shelf.
• Can you set a safety stock?

4. Shipping

A shipping connector creates labels, passes the tracking number to bol.com and marks the order as shipped. That last step matters: an order reported as shipped too late can lead to complaints and a lower seller score. The choice depends on how you ship: with your own carrier, through a shipping platform or through bol.com itself.

5. Customer service

Buyer questions arrive through bol.com, but your team prefers to work in one system. A helpdesk connector turns those questions into tickets, preferably with the order attached, so your colleague does not have to search two screens first. The page Bol.com and Zendesk describes how that works.

6. Pricing, content and advertising

These tools do not touch your books but your sales: adjusting prices to competitors automatically, managing product information, running ads. They are useful once you have many products, but they usually come later. We write about prices in dynamic pricing on bol.com.

In what order

For most sellers this order works:

1. Accounting, because it costs hours every month and mistakes can end up in your VAT return. See also preparing your VAT return for bol.com.
2. Stock, as soon as you have more than one channel.
3. Shipping and customer service, when the number of orders per day grows.
4. Pricing and content, when your range is large enough for it to pay off.

Questions to ask every integration

• Which data does the connector read, and does it have read-only rights where writing is not needed?
• What happens with a return, a cancellation or a partial refund?
• How are duplicates prevented, and how do you see a failed booking?
• What does it cost per month, and what happens as your order volume grows?
• Who fixes an error, and within what time?

Choose one connector you understand well over five that get in each other’s way. You can try Schakel free for 30 days, and the pricing is on the site.