System integration and API development

Getting your systems to work together

Most businesses run several systems that were never designed to know about each other: an accounting package, a CRM, a job or stock system, a payment gateway, a courier. System integration is the work of connecting them so a figure captured once appears everywhere it should.

Done well it is invisible. Done badly it is a spreadsheet exported every Friday and a person reconciling the difference on Monday.

Platforms we have worked with in production include Xero, QuickBooks, Exact and AFAS for accounting; Booking.com, Airbnb and Ivvy for bookings and availability; and Adyen for payments. Where a system is new to us, the work starts with its API documentation and a sandbox.

What we connect

The names change, but the shapes repeat:

• Accounting and ERP systems: customers, invoices, payments, stock
• CRMs and sales tools, so the sales view and the operational view agree
• Payment gateways and bank files, including reconciliation of what actually cleared
• Couriers and logistics providers: waybills, tracking, delivery confirmation
• Custom APIs for your own partners or apps to build against, with documentation and keys you control

Built for the day it breaks

Integrations fail in ways that are easy to miss: a provider times out, a record is rejected, the same message arrives twice. The damage comes from failing quietly, because by the time anyone notices, the two systems have disagreed for a fortnight.

We design for that. Work runs through a queue with automatic retries, anything that cannot be processed is held for inspection rather than dropped, repeated messages do not create duplicates, and someone is told when a failure needs a human.

Custom API development

Where you are the one being integrated with, we build the API: documented endpoints, authentication and keys you can issue and revoke, sensible rate limits, and versioning so a change on your side does not break a partner overnight.

The same applies internally. A clean API is what lets a portal, an automation and a mobile app share the same rules rather than each reimplementing them.

What it takes from you

Access and appetite, mostly. We need credentials or sandbox access to the systems involved, and one person who knows how the process is meant to work.

We start with the single most painful link, prove it in a test environment you can open, then extend. After launch, integrations are the part that most benefits from an ongoing arrangement, because third parties change their systems whether or not you are ready.