The Story Behind Sagify: A Shopify–Sage 50 Integration Built by Someone Who Actually Uses Both

Finding a Shopify Sage 50 app is not the most obvious search. First, you probably checked out the Shopify App Store and saw a few options, but they ended up just being weird connectors for the cloud versions, others didn't work. Then you might have checked the Sage 50 Marketplace, which houses apps specifically for the Sage products, but they all seemed to do everything and nothing at the same time.

The Problem: Manual Order Entry

A few years ago I was in search of an app that could connect our Shopify store with our accounting system: Sage 50 Desktop version. We had been running on Shopify for nearly ten years, and using Simply Accounting (now Sage 50) for the better part of 20 years. We were not strangers to either platform.

Thanks to e-commerce, our business started taking off, but so did our responsibility to enter these growing sales into our books. At the start, I was entering Shopify orders into Sage 50 one by one, line by line, taking the Shopify payout, matching the orders, and closing out the month. At first, we were probably talking about 1–5 hours of work.

As order volume increased:

• Time spent entering orders grew
• I was starting to make errors
• I was taking shortcuts (entering less detail on the invoice)
• I was burning out

The first week of every month was entirely dedicated to entering these orders. We are talking a 20–30 hour effort every month.

The Search for an Integration

There had to be an integration that would connect my Shopify store with Sage 50. Heck, there were plenty of integrations that connected Shopify to QuickBooks, to Zoho, Xero, and far more obscure accounting platforms.

We stumbled upon an integration company that would set out to build this integration for us. After back and forth with them, we had something set up. However, it quickly became obvious that they were never experts in Shopify nor Sage 50. They were a generic integration company that would come in, build you a connector between any two systems — or three, or four — and then start a contract with you.

Our issue was that our setup wasn't so cut and dry. We had:

• Bundled products
• Wholesale customers
• Retail customers
• Tax-exempt customers
• States that did not charge taxes
• Sales and promotions
• Multiple currencies While complex, most businesses operate in a similar fashion. The problem — or rather theirs — was that they didn't know the exact intricacies of both Shopify and Sage 50 well enough to understand how to handle all this behavior.

The result was an importer that brought in orders but would still require myself or a team member to review the invoice and make changes. Essentially, we shifted our work from entering invoices to editing them. The result was maybe a couple of hours saved and more frustration for a system that should have replaced all this work to begin with. We redefined our roles, and did not save any time.

Building My Own Solution

Around this time, I was tinkering with custom Shopify apps, building systems for our backend operations — automating order tags based on spend levels, upsell features on our website, checkout customization. I knew a thing or two about Shopify's development ecosystem. I worked in Sage 50 all day as well, so I knew my way around the system. I knew its quirks, and I knew what our accountants needed.

Armed with this knowledge — and my frustration that no one understood the needs of a business that uses both Sage 50 and Shopify — I decided to build a prototype. Sure, it's niche, but we are talking about two companies that serve millions of customers.

To my excitement, I had something workable within a couple of weeks. Albeit, it was a crude implementation: it booted up a terminal on your computer, it was completely text based, but I could see all the text zooming by as it took in our Shopify orders and created sales invoices in Sage 50. It was exciting. I showed our team, got feedback, and started building our Shopify Sage 50 app.

Introducing Sagify

There's a lot of details from that point forward, but I'll cut to the chase. My app Sagify is built by someone who knows the Shopify ecosystem, knows the intricacies of Sage 50, and knows what businesses need from both of these systems to let them talk to each other.

Sagify is designed to replicate your existing workflow:

• Do you sell to wholesale customers and need those orders entered as Sales Orders? No problem.
• Do you sell only to retail customers and need all those assigned to an "ONLINE SALES" customer in Sage 50? No problem. In Sagify, you set up rule-based logic to mimic exactly how you would have entered that order yourself. I custom tailor the software to your needs.

I am proud to say that Sagify is listed on the Sage 50 Marketplace ↗, vetted by their team of engineers. Sagify lives on your desktop as an application — it is a semi-automatic process where you log in every day, run your sync, approve or disapprove entries, and remain fully in control of the outcome. Nothing is going on behind the scenes, none of your company data hitting some random server over the internet.

Get in Touch

If you are looking for an app that connects your Shopify store to Sage 50, or you are looking to bring your business to Shopify and want something that will integrate Sage 50 to your store, then schedule a demo with me so I can show you Sagify. I can make it work the way you envision the two systems.

You can reach out to me via the support page and send me a message. Book a demo on the Sagify product page.