How does the Onboarding Process work?

Standard of Excellence

At DataAutomation, we know that the quality of our integrations and the satisfaction of our clients is what matters most. When you pursue a Xero integration with us, you’ll be contacted by an integration specialist that will work with you to create a build diagram specific to your needs. After a contract highlighting the build process is drawn up, you’ll have a call with your dedicated project manager and the journey towards integration and automation will begin!

Catalyst Lifestyle Case Study

By considering the problems faced by this Ecommerce company and the ways in which they benefited from our integration with Xero, you get a glimpse of how your needs can be met in a similar fashion.

What is Catalyst Lifestyle? 

Catalyst Lifestyle is a Hong Kong based cell phone case and accessory company that specializes in making a variety of colorful, durable, and unique cases for iPhones and other Apple products. Since their founding in 2010, Catalyst has won several best-in-class awards from various organizations around the world.

The problem they were facing

As Catalyst Lifestyle is based in China, this company faced issues with moving data out of the Bank of China and putting it in Xero. In order to get information out of the Bank of China and into Xero, they had to download several CSV (Comma-Separated Values) files, combine them, ensure that all of the data matched, make sure the layout was correct, and then finally upload them into Xero.

How the problem was affecting them

This process took 10 to 15 hours every single time they wanted to update their accounting and financial data, so they only did it once a month. Apart from the time loss, this was also causing a problem with incorrect financial information when the files were uploaded to Xero due to the long time delay between updates. The entire process was very time consuming, inefficient, and in blatant terms: painful.

The possible solutions that Catalyst Lifestyle considered

They looked at a few different options to make this process easier, but ended up frustrated due to the fact that the Bank of China does not have a feed that can be hooked up to Xero. Luckily, they soon found DataAutomation.

What if they hadn’t pursued a Xero integration through DataAutomation?

If we hadn’t worked with Catalyst Lifestyle, they would have had to continue completing these data transfers manually, which would mean more and more wasted time. Those valuable 10 to 15 hours a month wouldn’t be spent working productively on other projects or pushing their company forward. Additionally, there would have been a very real possibility that the old, outdated financial information they were harvesting once a month would have led to unfortunate decisions that could have affected the trajectory of the company. 

What risks did they consider when moving forward with DataAutomation?

When putting trust in any person, company, or product, there can be apprehension about the abilities of the professionals or the quality of the services . Since there was no API, Catalyst Lifestyle likely contemplated whether or not we would truly be successful in our integration task.

How did we help solve their problem?

1. We built a bot that would go past a captcha and log into the Bank of China’s website, which would then…
2. Download the necessary CSV files…
3. Mix and match them until they are just right…
4. And finally, go into Xero via the API and add all of the transactions

What measurable benefits did Catalyst Lifestyle see? 

They no longer had to spend 10 to 15 hours per month doing tedious and mind numbing work. Since the bot would run every day, they were able to see their data clearly in real time and review everything as frequently as was needed. Their time could be put to better use and they were constantly updated on financial information.