How Pennylane simplifies integrations and achieves super-connectivity with Chift

‍Pennylane's goal is to become the ultimate hub by connecting many business tools to their solution, and they chose Chift as their partner to achieve this ambitious goal.

By offering such a large integration portfolio, Pennylane aims to give accountants and businesses a seamless, automated, all-in-one solution for managing financial data.

As Pennylane’s CEO, Arthur Waller, explains:

“For us, integrations are truly one of the pillars that enable accounting firms and their clients to save time by automating data collection, particularly for purchases and sales.”

But what is Pennylane?

Pennylane is an all-in-one accounting and financial management tool that helps accountants and their clients manage purchasing, sales, cash flow, and accounting. The platform offers a comprehensive solution that automates the data collection process to provide accountants with real-time visibility and up-to-date dashboards, allowing them to make informed decisions and give accurate advice to their clients.

However, with a rapidly expanding product offering and growing client needs, Pennylane realized that building and maintaining all the necessary integrations in-house was becoming increasingly unsustainable.

The challenges were twofold:

1. Connecting to numerous external tools: Pennylane needed to connect to a wide variety of purchasing, sales, and invoicing tools, each requiring a dedicated connector that had to be built and maintained.
2. Tailoring integrations to specific business needs: Pennylane’s integrations had to be adapted to the unique use cases of the software being integrated with theirs, which required deep knowledge of workflows and requirements.

To solve these challenges, Pennylane turned to Chift in late 2022. Initially, they used Chift’s Unified API products to send Z-ticket data for accounting. However, as their integration needs grew and they were impressed with Chift’s solutions, Pennylane used more and more Chift products such as:

• Z-ticket to Accounting Sync
• Ecommerce Orders to Accounting Sync
• Client & Supplier Invoices to Accounting Sync
• PMS (Property Management System) Orders to Accounting Sync

Chift Syncs were created to meet the demand for quick, easy integration with minimal development effort. Syncs enable clients to add multiple integrations with little to no coding required.

Each Sync serves a specific function, such as synchronizing orders from ecommerce platforms with accounting software to automatically create accounting entries. This flexibility allows clients to quickly add and scale integration flows as their needs evolve.

Each Sync is activated through a tailored mapping flow, allowing Pennylane users to effortlessly automate their processes. Chift’s extensive experience across major software categories ensures seamless, efficient integrations.

“Chift has been a great partner from the start, understanding both sides—our accounting tool needs and the operational tools we connect to. They do a fantastic job extracting data from business tools and helping accountants map that data to accounting objects. When the data arrives in Pennylane, it’s fully automated and error-free,” Waller shared.

Benefits of Chift Syncs for Pennylane:

• No-Code Solution: Chift’s Syncs allow Pennylane to integrate multiple AP and AR tools to their software without adding development complexity.
• No Maintenance: Chift handles all maintenance, meaning Pennylane doesn't need to allocate resources to ongoing integration support.
• No Business Logic to Define: Chift manages the business logic between Pennylane’s API and the Unified API, removing the need for Pennylane to define these rules themselves.
• Ready-made Mapping Interface: Syncs come with a pre-built mapping interface, enabling users to easily link data fields between systems without having to create custom mapping tools.

Since partnering with Chift, Pennylane has significantly reduced the operational burden of managing integrations and can now focus its resources on product growth. With Chift Syncs, they are able to rapidly scale their integration capabilities without sacrificing time or development ressources.

The collaboration between Pennylane and Chift has yielded clear benefits:

• Time and Cost Savings: By using Chift Syncs, Pennylane has saved time and money on integration development and maintenance.
• Scalability: With Chift’s Unified API, Pennylane can easily integrate with a growing portfolio of software solutions.
• Improved Focus on Core Product: By outsourcing integration management to Chift, Pennylane can dedicate more attention to improving their platform and delivering value to users.

“Since the beginning of our collaboration with Chift, we’ve been impressed by their support. Our integration team holds a weekly meeting with Chift’s team to prioritize new connectors and discuss feedback on existing ones to minimize bug reports from our clients,” said Waller.

By partnering with Chift, Pennylane has been able to optimize its integration strategy and achieve significant operational efficiencies. Leveraging Chift’s no-code Sync solution has allowed them to focus on product innovation while scaling their integration capabilities.

Thinking about expending through integrations? Book a Demo with our team!