Where inventory meets the ledger.
Almost every awkward conversation about Cin7 Core and an accounting system starts the same way: a stock figure and a balance sheet figure that do not agree, and nobody who can say which of the two is wrong. The connection itself is rarely the problem. What decides whether the numbers behave is which system is allowed to post what, and that is a decision rather than a setting.
Two ledgers, and neither of them is an add-on.
Cin7 Core connects natively to Xero and to QuickBooks Online, and both connections come with a standard subscription rather than as something extra to buy. That is worth saying plainly, because we are asked about the licence cost of “the accounting add-on” often enough to know the assumption is out there. Around those two sits a smaller group of apps, and how each one gets to Cin7 Core is what decides who fixes it when it stops.
Built into Cin7 Core and switched on from its own Integrations area. You map accounts and tax rules once through a wizard, and Cin7 maintain the connection at their end.
- AvalaraSales tax determination, natively connected
- QuickBooks OnlineThe ledger, natively connected and includedincluded in a standard subscription, not a paid add-on
- XeroThe ledger, natively connected and includedincluded in a standard subscription, not a paid add-on
No built-in tile. The connection runs on a Cin7 Core API key, configured at the other end and set up either by us or by the party who already holds that relationship.
- EzzyBillsSupplier invoice capture into accounts payable
- SynderChannel reconciliation, mainly against QuickBooks Online
No supported Cin7 Core connection of any kind. The app reaches you through something else in your stack, and Cin7 Core only ever sees what that platform passes on, if anything.
- A2XChannel revenue posted to the ledger, where it meets Cin7 Corereaches you through Xero / QuickBooks Online
What crosses, and in which direction.
The chart of accounts and the tax rules only ever travel one way, from the accounting system into Cin7 Core, where they arrive read-only. If an account or a tax rate is missing or wrong, it is created or corrected in the ledger and pulled across, never the other way round. People lose a surprising amount of time looking for the edit button on the Cin7 Core side.
Going the other way, Cin7 Core exports sale invoices and credit notes, supplier bills, cost of goods journals, manual journals and money tasks. Each of those is set per sales channel and per transaction type, which is the setting that makes the arrangement in fig. 03 possible at all: a channel’s invoices can be switched off while its cost journals keep posting.
Volume is the other thing worth knowing early. Both ledgers have limits on how much they are happy to carry in a month, and a business selling a few thousand small orders can pass them without doing anything unusual. The answer is consolidation, posting a day or a month of channel sales as one summarised document rather than several hundred, and it is a decision to take at scoping rather than after the first slow month end.
- ✓ Accounts and tax rules come from the ledger, read-only in Cin7 Core
- ✓ Invoices, bills, cost journals, manual journals and money tasks go the other way
- ✓ Sync type is set per channel and per transaction type, independently
- ✓ Consolidation exists for volume, and should be chosen deliberately
- ✓ A locked period in the ledger stops earlier documents updating
- ✓ Cin7 Core takes over inventory, so ledger-side stock tracking goes off
A2X only earns its place once channel volume is high enough to make a summarised posting worth the subscription, so which channels you sell through is the question underneath it. The channels it reads from
Shopify at volume is the case A2X was built for, and the Shopify page carries the rest of that setup rather than repeating it here. Shopify, end to end
Four figures have to agree, and most people check one.
This is the reconciliation that decides whether anybody trusts the numbers, and it is the part nobody sets out in full. It is not one comparison. It is four, run on both sides for the same date, and a difference in any of them surfaces in the total as though it were a stock problem.
The inventory movement total for the period, against the stock on hand figure on the balance sheet. This is the headline number and the one people check first.
Stock you have paid for and do not yet hold. It sits in its own account, it moves on receipt, and it produces a difference that looks like a costing error and is not one.
Goods received not invoiced. It shows on the balance sheet, and the products are not in stock, so it is not in the inventory movement total either. This is the one that catches people, and it catches them repeatedly.
Stock moving between your own locations on a transfer that has been sent and not yet received. Small in most months, and awkward in the month it is not.
The diagnostic worth knowing.
Cin7 Core produces a reconciliation report against the ledger, and it is the right place to start: it lists what exists in one system and not the other rather than leaving you to find it. What it does not do is tell you why.
So the test we would run next is a timing one. Pull the same figures for a mid-month date as well as for the period end. If mid-month balances and month end does not, the difference is usually manual journalling, because that is when adjustments get made, and a journal posted by hand into an account the integration also owns is working against it rather than with it.
That is not an argument against journalling. It is an argument for knowing which accounts the integration posts to, and for agreeing that anything landing in those accounts by hand is deliberate and documented. Where the treatment itself is the question, that is a conversation for your accountant rather than for us.
- ✓ Run the same four figures on both sides, for the same date
- ✓ Compare a mid-month date as well as the period end
- ✓ Check goods received not invoiced before assuming a costing problem
- ✓ Know which accounts the integration posts to, and who else touches them
- ✓ Reconcile a full period end to end before relying on it
A2X does not connect to Cin7 Core.
It is one of only two apps in our whole stack that reach a client through another platform rather than through Cin7 Core, and getting this wrong makes everything downstream of it wrong too. A2X connects to your sales channels and to your ledger. Cin7 Core connects to the same ledger. The two meet there, and nowhere else.
Channel revenue, summarised per payout
Sales, shipping income, discounts, refunds, channel fees, and any tax the channel collected and remitted itself. One summarised entry per payout, split into the right accounts, so it reconciles against the deposit that lands in the bank.
Stock and cost of goods
Inventory value and the cost journal as goods ship, and no channel sales invoices. The setting that makes this work is the per-channel sync table: invoice sync off for that channel, cost journals left on.
Once each, from one system
Revenue posted once, by A2X. Cost posted once, by Cin7 Core. If the same sale produces a revenue line from both, that is duplication, and it has to be resolved before anybody relies on a margin figure.
The trap, if A2X came first.
A2X has a cost of goods feature of its own, and a business that ran A2X before adopting Cin7 Core has quite likely been using it. That was the right answer at the time. It stops being the right answer the moment Cin7 Core takes over cost.
Left on, cost posts twice, once from each system, and reported margin collapses. It is not a subtle failure and it is not always a quick one to spot, because the ledger keeps balancing and only the gross profit line looks wrong. So the switch should happen on a clean period boundary, with inventory values confirmed as matching on both sides at cut-over and the first period reconciled properly before anybody leans on the figures.
This is also why we would set A2X up before or alongside a Cin7 Core implementation rather than afterwards. Making the two systems meet mid-period, across a cut-over, usually costs more time than it saves, and the account mapping needs agreeing with your accountant before anything posts either way.
- ✓ Connect Cin7 Core to the ledger first, cost journals on, channel invoices off
- ✓ Prove a shipped order posts a cost journal and nothing else
- ✓ Agree the account mapping with the accountant before connecting A2X
- ✓ Review sample entries against real payouts before posting any
- ✓ Start posting from the first day of a period, not mid-month
- ✓ Switch legacy A2X cost of goods off at the same boundary
A sale and its payout often fall in different months, because one system posts on the fulfilment date and the other on the payment date. That is expected rather than broken, and it is worth understanding before the first month end rather than during it.
We make the data arrive correctly. We do not decide what it means.
That line is the whole of this section, and it is the most important thing on the page. Our work is the mechanism: what posts, from which system, on which trigger, into which account you and your accountant have chosen.
Decide who posts what
Which system owns revenue, which owns cost, which channels are summarised and which post individually, and what should happen on a refund, a credit note or a part shipment. Decided once, before anything is connected.
Map it against your accounts
Accounts and tax rules mapped through the connect wizard using the chart of accounts your accountant has set, not one we invented. The connection is an afternoon. The mapping conversation is the part that matters.
Reconcile a real period
Run the four figures on both sides for a full period, chase every difference down to a cause rather than a plug, and hand over a routine somebody in your team can run each month without us.
What we are not.
We are not accountants, and on this page of all pages that needs saying first rather than last. Dan is a Cin7 Core specialist. Nobody here is qualified to advise you on tax, and we would rather lose the work than imply otherwise.
So there are three things we hand straight to your accountant, every time. Tax treatment, including how any channel-collected or marketplace-facilitator tax should be handled where you are registered. The configuration of your general ledger. And how your chart of accounts should be read, or what it should contain. Those are their calls, they are the final word on them, and we would want them in the scoping conversation rather than hearing about it afterwards.
What we can tell you is how Cin7 Core talks to Xero and to QuickBooks Online: what it posts, when, in what shape, and what each setting does to the result. We cannot tell you what the entries should be. If you do not have an accountant who is comfortable with inventory, that is worth solving before the integration rather than after it, and we would say so on a first call.
Us, on camera, on the ledger side of Cin7 Core.
What people ask before starting.
Does the accounting connection cost extra?
No. Both the Xero and the QuickBooks Online connections are part of a standard Cin7 Core subscription rather than a paid add-on, so the licence question is about your accounting system and your Cin7 Core plan, not about the connection between them.
Some of the apps that sit around them are separately subscribed. We would set out which is which at scoping, so the running cost is clear before you commit to anything.
Do we need an accounting system at all, if Cin7 Core has a Financials module?
Not necessarily. The Financials module in Cin7 Core covers bank accounts and reconciliation, money in and out, journals, expense claims, fixed assets and financial periods, and for a business without a separate accounting tool it can carry the finance function on its own.
Whether it should is a question for your accountant rather than for us, because it depends on what they have to file, what they are set up to work in, and how much of your reporting lives outside inventory. We can tell you what the module does. They should tell you whether it is enough.
Our stock figure and our balance sheet do not agree. Where do we start?
With the four figures above, run on both sides for the same date, and with the reconciliation report Cin7 Core produces against the ledger. In our experience the difference sits in goods received not invoiced more often than anywhere else, and it is the figure most people have not thought to check.
If the list of symptoms is long, a system audit is usually the cheaper start, because it finds the decision underneath the symptoms instead of treating them one at a time.
We already use A2X. Does Cin7 Core replace it?
No, and it should not. They do different jobs, and the split in fig. 03 is the one we would build: A2X keeps channel revenue and fees, Cin7 Core takes stock and cost, and both post into the same ledger.
What does have to change is the cost of goods side, if A2X has been posting it. Leaving that on once Cin7 Core takes over cost double-counts it, so the swap happens on a clean period boundary and the first period gets reconciled carefully.
Can you talk to our accountant directly?
Yes, and we would rather. The account mapping, the tax treatment and the chart of accounts are theirs to decide, and the projects that go smoothly are the ones where that conversation happened before the connection was made rather than at the first month end.
We quote in phases at £99 an hour, as estimates rather than a fixed scope, and we give a range at scoping. We would rather set it wide than miss it.
What we have written about the ledger side of Cin7 Core.
Tell us which figures disagree.
Or which ledger you are on, and what you are hoping it does. Book a call and we will tell you what Cin7 Core should be posting, what it should not, and what would have to be true before the two sides reconcile without somebody adjusting them by hand.
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What to expect
- ✓ A straight conversation, no scripted sales pitch
- ✓ An honest view on whether you need this yet
- ✓ Estimates by phase before you commit to anything
- ✓ A clear split of our work and your accountant’s