Hey, thanks for tuning in to another Partner Interview at EcomBalance. At EcomBalance, we’re all about creating win-win partnerships where we are able to grow with other companies in the eCommerce space.
In this exclusive interview, we interview Daniel Little from Link My Books, an integration software on e-commerce bookkeeping based out of the UK, US and Australia.
Daniel Little is the Co-Founder and CEO of Link My Books, an integration software that helps e-commerce sellers automate their bookkeeping. Thousands of businesses and e-commerce accountants from the UK, US and Australia use Link My Books to automate their Amazon, eBay, Shopify and Etsy bookkeeping.
We hope that you enjoy the interview and that it brings value to you as an eCommerce business owner.
Connor: Hey Daniel, thanks for taking the time to chat with us here. We love getting to know our partners better so that our community can benefit from what our partners are offering and doing in the industry. To get started, can you give us a high-level overview of Link My Books and how it got started?
Daniel: Believe it or not Pete and I started off as competitors on Amazon. Pete reached out to me when we both launched the same product within a week of each other. We became friends and realized that we worked really well together and joked about starting a business between us in the future. Then I sold my FBA business and started to look for new ideas. Accounting and bookkeeping had always been something I enjoyed in the business, but I felt that a lot of it was time consuming and could easily be automated. With Pete being a software engineer it made sense for this to be our opportunity to go into business together. We created Link My Books to help e-commerce sellers automate their bookkeeping and now 4 years on we have thousands of customers around the world doing just that.
Connor: That’s awesome! Can you dive a bit more into the products and services that you offer to help ecommerce businesses with their bookkeeping? I’m sure our audience would love to know exactly what problems you could solve for them.
Daniel: Link My Books sits in between your sales channels such as Amazon, eBay, Shopify or Etsy and your bookkeeping platform. Think of us as the middleman, doing all the hard work fetching your sales data from the sales channels and formatting it nicely for posting into Xero or QuickBooks. Link My Books gets to work whenever you receive a payout from a sales channel. We create a clean summary entry breaking down each payout into sales, refunds, fees and any VAT/GST or sales tax too. This means that for every deposit you receive into the bank, you now have a corresponding invoice in Xero or QuickBooks to match it up against. Our key message is that we save you time and help you to produce accurate financials on autopilot.
Connor: Jumping off of that…if there was one problem, you’d say that Link My Books solves best for your clients, what would it be? Why?
Daniel: We hear time and time again from our customers that it’s the confidence they gain in their numbers that is the big win for them. Lots of our customers used to stress and worry each month when they did their bookkeeping due to the sheer complexity of it. Selling online brings into play lots of international tax rules with some sales being subject to tax in one country and others being subject to tax in other countries. Link My Books takes all that stress away. We automate the whole process, checking each and every order to ensure the correct tax liabilities are accounted for. To do this manually is quite a task and not something most sellers want to or have the confidence to do each month. With Link My Books, they don’t need to anymore.
Connor: As the company continues to grow over the next year, what are your plans for expansion? Any new products or offerings or enhancements to your current products?
Daniel: We currently support businesses in the UK, US, Australia and South Africa who sell on Amazon, eBay, Etsy and Shopify and who are using Xero or QuickBooks as their accountancy platform. Next up are more sales channels such as WooCommerce, Square, Walmart, OnBuy etc. plus support for Canadian sales tax. These are all in the pipeline with some much closer than others. We bring out new products based on demand from our existing user base plus new business opportunities so if any of your readers need a channel we’ve missed, get in touch with support and we’ll add it to the list.
Connor: And how specifically would you say that Link My Books and your team is different from other similar businesses in the industry?
Daniel: Based on what our customers say in their reviews I’d say it’s our knowledge and support. Customers rave about how amazing our support team are and it’s for good reason. Our team is made up of ex 7 figure e-commerce sellers, accountants and bookkeepers so we really know our stuff. Almost anyone can make an app to automate a tedious process, but having first hand experience of the problems and therefore the knowledge to support customers is what we feel sets us apart from our competition.
Connor: What made you decide to get involved in the ecommerce bookkeeping space? What’s your starting eCommerce story? From what we’ve found, a lot of business owners in the space have fun stories of how they first started…
Daniel: I have always been entrepreneurial. When I was 12 years old I’d buy multipacks of Coca-Cola on the way to school and then store them in my locker to sell at break time for a profit. I’ve run eBay businesses, Shopify stores and most recently scaled and sold two Amazon businesses for 7 figures between 2014-2018. I think for me it’s the buzz. I really feel good when I scale businesses from nothing to big numbers but also seeing the product market fit that we have with Link My Books makes me feel really proud of what we have achieved.
Connor: Love it! Talking more about the eCommerce industry, where do you see it going in the next 1-2 years? Any unique predictions that you could share?
Daniel: Well the trend is certainly on the up in terms of internet sales as a percentage of total retail sales. In the UK for example in the last 10 years internet sales have risen from under 10% of total retail sales to well over 30% with consumers spending on average 5X more that then did online 10 years ago. I see that only increasing more and more. However I also see the rise of “micro” brands that serve a specific niche so well that consumers buy their products rather than products from the really big corporations. For people looking to get into eCommerce now I think that is the key, being laser focused on a specific pain point of a very specific market and going all in to solve it for them. Then building a brand from there outwards.
Connor: Giving you an open mic for a minute, what is something you’d want the EcomBalance audience to hear?
Daniel: If you’re sick of spending hours and hours on your e-commerce bookkeeping every month, downloading endless reports from sales channels and trying to get it all to balance then take a breath, relax – we’ve you covered. Head over to linkmybooks.com and start a free trial and see just how easy, efficient and accurate your bookkeeping can be when you have the right software automating it for you.
Connor: Changing gears a little bit…When it comes to bookkeeping and accounting, what do you think the biggest pain points for business owners are? Feel free to speak from personal experience as well.
Daniel: Let’s face it, bookkeeping is repetitive, tedious and for most people – the last thing on their to-do list (the task they always seem to find other things to do before they finally get to it). When something you have to do every month is constantly finding its way to the bottom of your to-do list then I’d say it’s time to outsource it or automate it.
Connor: As we close this out, I just have one more question. Where is the best place to find and follow you and the company online? Also, if you have one, is there any special offer that you’ll be offering to the community today?
Daniel:
Dan on LikedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-j-little/
Pete on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterrmoran/
Link My Books on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/link-my-books
YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/linkmybooks
Twitter – https://twitter.com/linkmybooks
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/linkmybooks/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/linkmybooks/
