Preventing duplicate work: how to make your systems talk to each other

You prevent duplicate work by connecting your systems, so that every piece of data is entered only once and then flows automatically to the places where it is also needed. The customer you add to the CRM then appears by itself in the accounting; the order status that changes emails itself to the customer; the sale in the shop updates the stock in the webshop. In this article we show you how to spot duplicate work, what it really costs you and how such a connection works in practice — without having to switch software.

How do you spot duplicate work?

You spot duplicate work by one pattern: the same piece of data is entered or updated by hand in two or more places. It rarely feels like a problem — it is only ever a few minutes — but it comes back every day and it grows along with your business. The five forms we come across most often:

1. The customer is everywhere, but nowhere the same. A new customer goes into the CRM, is then created once more in the accounting and also sits in a sales sheet. Three places, three versions — and when an address changes, someone has to remember to update all three.

2. Order statuses get emailed. "Your order has been shipped" is a manual email, or the customer calls to ask where their order is — because the webshop, the warehouse and customer service can't see each other's status.

3. Stock is kept in two places. Whatever is sold in the shop or via a marketplace then has to be deducted from the webshop stock by hand. Anyone who forgets for a day sells products that are no longer there.

4. The quote gets retyped into the invoice. Same customer, same lines, same amounts — but the quoting package and the accounting package don't know each other, so someone types it across. Including, now and then, a typo in exactly the amount.

5. "Let me just check the other system." The creeping signal: staff have two or three systems open on screen and shuttle between them, because no single system has the whole picture.

What does duplicate work really cost you?

The sum is simple and the outcome almost always turns out higher than expected: ten minutes of retyping per working day is, across some 230 working days, already almost forty hours a year — a full working week, per person, of work that a connection does for free. With several staff and several flows, that adds up fast. And the hours are only the visible half.

The invisible half consists of three things. Errors: every manual handover is a chance for a typo, and that error comes back as a wrong invoice, a customer who slips through the cracks or a round of corrections after the fact. Delay: data is only updated when someone has time for it, so decisions are made on yesterday's figures. Unreliable figures: as soon as systems diverge, no one knows any more which version is correct — there is no single source of truth — and every month time goes into figuring things out instead of steering.

The solution: let systems do the retyping

The solution is almost never new software, but a connection between the software you already have. Almost every modern system — accounting, CRM, webshop, point of sale, ATS — has an API: a connection point that lets other systems fetch and write data. A connection uses that connection point to do what a person now does: as soon as something changes in system A, it is automatically and flawlessly updated in system B. What such a connection costs and what the price depends on, you can read in What does an API integration cost?.

There are three ways to make such a connection, increasing in flexibility:

• A standard connector. For popular combinations — webshop to accounting, for example — there are ready-made apps you switch on for a monthly fee. Quickly sorted; you do work with the fields and rules the connector can handle.
• A workflow tool (iPaaS). Tools like Make, Zapier and Power Automate let you build flows yourself between hundreds of systems: "if this happens in A, then do that in B". More flexible than a connector, and often set up within a few days — in Zapier vs Make vs Power Automate we compare the three.
• Custom on the API. For flows with real logic — margins, exceptions per customer, several systems at once — you build a bespoke connection. Indicatively that costs €1,500–€15,000; in What does an API integration cost? you'll find where you land within that range.

What such an automated flow looks like, you don't have to guess: in the Flow-Lab you build one yourself in an interactive demo. And for the most requested system combinations — from Shopify to Exact Online to ATS to accounting — we've worked out per connection what's possible and what it costs: see the overview on Integrations.

Three connections that make the biggest difference

Which connection delivers the most differs per business — but in practice the same three keep floating to the top, because they touch daily work and directly affect money.

CRM to accounting. A won deal in HubSpot or Pipedrive automatically becomes a customer and a (draft) invoice in Exact Online or Moneybird. That eliminates the duplicate customer management and the retyping of quote into invoice in one go. For many service providers this is the connection with the shortest payback time.

Webshop to accounting and stock. Orders, payouts and VAT flow automatically from Shopify or WooCommerce into the accounting package, and stock stays the same everywhere — even if you also sell in a physical shop or on marketplaces. How to set this up and what it costs is in Connecting your webshop to your accounting.

ATS to administration. For recruitment and staffing agencies: a placement in the ATS automatically triggers the corresponding lines in time tracking and invoicing, instead of every placement being an administrative project. How we tackle that you can read on IT & automation for recruitment.

Where do you start?

Start with tallying, not with tooling. Have your team note down for one week whenever they retype data from one system into another — a tick mark each time is enough. At the end of the week you'll see in black and white which flow occurs most often; that is almost always also the flow with the most errors.

Pick one flow from that and automate it first — preferably the flow that directly affects money, such as quote-to-invoice or order-to-accounting. One working connection shows the organisation more concretely what automating delivers than any plan does, and the agreements you make for it (which system is leading, who manages the connection) are immediately the foundation for the next. If you'd first like an independent look at where the most duplicate work sits in your case: the free Operations Scan maps out your processes and lines up the opportunities — the report is yours regardless.

Further reading

• Connections per system combination: options and costs
• What is an API integration?
• What does an API integration cost?
• Connecting your webshop to your accounting
• Zapier vs Make vs Power Automate: which do you choose?
• Build a workflow yourself in the Flow-Lab

Frequently asked questions

Written by Hugo Eleveld · Updated June 2026. This article is informative; for tailored advice book an intro call.