Gifts Less Ordinary have almost 100 partners, sell to 6 countries (with 3 more coming on board this year), and are growing like never before. Fooman Connect: Xero has allowed the company to automate processes and scale quickly across multiple markets. Here’s what Amy Read, the company’s CEO & Founder, had to say about using the extension.

I knew when we started I needed a solution that would give me full and accurate visibility of Magento sales data in Xero and be 100% accurate. You worry when you’re implementing any software onto your platform, and you need to be sure that it’s going to be reliable and that it delivers what it needs to do. Our Magento developers recommended Fooman Connect: Xero as really the only solution on the market would work seamlessly between Magento and Xero. We’ve used the Fooman Xero extension since our launch in 2015 and are very happy with it.

From the very first pull of our sales data from Magento to Xero, it was all automated. It was really easy to do our partner payments each month, reconcile all our accounts and see our sales by region. The time taken for us to export and import into Xero was a matter of minutes, even when we have significant sales per month from different countries.

Favourite Features

• Accuracy of data
• Simple to use
• Full visibility of Magento sales data in Xero

Having full visibility of our Magento sales data in Xero is so helpful to us - things like customer reference number, order number and sales by region. The extension gives you very clear visibility in one simple platform. In Magento, you can see what sales/data has been exported and what hasn’t been yet.

Accuracy is also very important - another reason we’re happy with the Fooman extension. We’re an online marketplace growing fast (400% growth this year alone), and selling to different countries in different currencies. You need to have your accounts 100% accurate - if our accounts don’t work then our business model doesn’t work. We have almost 100 partners on our site so we need to be sure that everything tallies correctly and feel reassured that we have all the data. There’d be nothing worse than having to reconcile the accounts at the end of the month and they don’t tally up. Making incorrect partner payments or getting the accounts wrong isn’t an option. It could cost us a lot, not only in terms of sales but also in our partners’ confidence.

The Fooman Connect: Xero extension is very simple and intuitive - somebody who is not technical can easily grasp how to manage it. In a nice way, it’s fool proof. Our first accountant picked it up within minutes. Now, the whole accounting team easily operates it and I have full confidence in them playing around with the extension.

About Gifts Less Ordinary

Gifts Less Ordinary is a luxury online marketplace offering unique and personalized gifts to treasure. Every partner and product is handpicked, to make life a little easier for you by offering the most unusual and unique gifts. The site offers free delivery to the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Afura is an online clothing and lifestyle store based out of Amsterdam. Here’s what Victor ter Hark, Afura’s Founder, had to say about using Fooman Connect.

Before using the Fooman Xero: Connect extension, we had to manually transfer sales information from Magento to Xero. We knew it wasn’t the right way to run a business. We were quite busy then, and it was only going to get busier. We had between 50-200 invoices per month and it used to take us 1-2 minutes per invoice.

It was a very time consuming job sucking up to 7 hours every month and we were taking risks in the accuracy of our data doing it manually. As our business grew, we knew that this number would just increase over time with the number of invoices and customers we have.

So I researched the alternatives to connect Magento and Xero. I first tried another tool but it wasn’t a great experience and I didn’t get the results I was expecting. So I was really happy when I found the Fooman extension and it worked exactly as I wanted it to. There’s a seamless integration between Magento and Xero - it’s like they are one!

We saw a huge increase in our accuracy of the data after using the Fooman extension. It imports exactly as it should, we don’t have to worry about any copy/paste errors when moving the information over. 

Favourite Features

• Time savings every month
• Customisable code
• Accuracy of data

Exporting our orders is now a small once a week job and we’ve been able to systemise our work. It saves time and allows us to focus on the things we should be doing to grow our business. Now that we have the extension set up, we don’t even have to think about it. The extension grows with us as our business grows.

As a developer myself, the quality of code in this extension is superb and you can customise it to fit your needs. The supporting documentation and setup process is straightforward to get up and running within 1-2 hours, even if you’re not a developer. The documentation is complete and thoughtful. If you follow the documentation, you’ll get it. It’s all in there.

It was especially helpful to be able to speak directly to the developer of the extension. Kristof solved my questions/issues from a developer perspective and a business perspective - a rarity in this space, but so valuable. Support was always really great, even considering the time zone difference (I’m in Amsterdam and Fooman is in New Zealand) there was always a quick response from someone at the team.

About Afura

Afura is an online clothing and lifestyle stored based out of Amsterdam, and shipping worldwide. Afura believes in well designed products, capable of having a profound impact on mundane things in life and transcend beyond their sub-culture. Their offering includes a curation of independent and established brands sourced from our home market, Europe, Japan and the USA.