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Accounting Integrations for Retailers and Restaurants powered by LINK!

Accounting Integrations for Retailers and Restaurants powered by LINK!

by | May 21, 2025 | Case Studies

Overview

Retailers and restaurants increasingly rely on integrated tech systems to manage operations efficiently. However, syncing complex datasets between commerce platforms (POS, ecommerce, ordering etc) and accounting systems often requires manual workarounds, creating room for errors and inefficiencies.

To eliminate such challenges, LINK provides powerful embedded integration solutions, including:

  • Lightspeed Commerce and QuickBooks Online (QBO) integration, tailored for 1800+ golf courses that run on Lightspeed R-series for their retail stores, and K-series for their on-premise bars and restaurants.
  • Shopify and QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT) integration, offering a full end-to-end sync process for 1200+ businesses and counting.

The Problem

As merchants scale and use a wide range of retail and food tech systems, their accounting teams face several hurdles and inefficiencies:

  • Manual data entry across platforms introduces inconsistencies and delays.
  • Lack of control over how and when data syncs to accounting software leads to errors,  incomplete reporting, and potentially inaccurate tax filings.
  • Limited error handling makes it hard to identify and correct sync issues.
  • Rigid mapping rules force merchants to create workarounds for within their accounting system rather than go with the right/ideal setup.
  • Increased operational costs stem from inefficient workflows, frequent rework, and a higher reliance on accounting or support staff to reconcile data manually.

The Solution

Lightspeed Commerce + QuickBooks Online

  • Flexible sync modes
     Merchants can choose how sales are aggregated—by individual transaction, product, product type, or register.
  • Manual or automatic sync options
     Users can review summaries before syncing or let the system run in the background.
  • Customizable account mapping
     Every financial component—income, refunds, tips, discounts, etc.—can be mapped to specific QBO accounts.
  • Robust error handling
     Includes product deduplication, auto-retries for temporary API issues, manual retry interfaces, and detailed activity logs.

Shopify + QuickBooks Desktop

  • Robust and fast set up with QuickBooks Web Connector (QWC) architecture
    Scalable integration built on the latest version of the QuickBooks Desktop API, which establishes a robust and secure bridge with Shopify by leveraging the QWC based approach.
  • Modern, Automated Syncing
    Replaces the legacy file-based approach with seamless, real-time data transfer. No manual setup needed and it enables faster, more reliable syncs.
  • Data sync flexibility
     Merchants can choose between individual order sync or summarized entries per payout/day.
  • Automation and reporting
    Reduces manual data entry while enabling detailed financial reporting—including income, refunds, and cost of goods sold.

The Result

LINK’s embedded accounting integrations have enabled thousands of retailers and restaurants to automate financial data reconciliation, with high security and reliability, thus setting the gold standard for such integrations. 

The affordability of LINK’s solutions, starting at $15 per location per month, allows a wide range of merchants to benefit from full automation. LINK has 1500+ and 500+ daily active users for QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online integrations respectively, with continuous usage since the last two years, demonstrating long-term stickiness and value. LINK anticipates 10x user growth in the next 15 months. 

LINK’s Accounting integrations typically save merchants 40+ hours per location per month on manual tasks, thus making these integrations instrumental for Commerce platforms to acquire and retain merchants.  

 

Talk to us at LINK!

We specialize in powering seamless integrations across retail and food tech ecosystems. Let’s explore how we can do the same for you.

Online subscription activation during in-store purchases enabled by LINK!

Online subscription activation during in-store purchases enabled by LINK!

by | May 14, 2025 | Case Studies

Overview 

The Client is one of the largest brick-and-mortar chains for CBD wellness products in the USA, with hundreds of locations, along with thriving online sales. They want to increase revenue generated per store and customer retention, by activating online subscriptions for customers during in-store purchases. Since the checkout process is done by the cashier, the cashier should be able to prompt the customer about signing up for online subscriptions and complete the activation for the subscriptions within the purchase flow at the point of sale.

The Challenge

The brick-and-mortar stores use LightSpeed X-series POS to manage the in-store purchases. Online subscriptions are managed at the corporate level, using Shopify for ecommerce along with the Skio application to manage the subscription model.
To achieve the in-store subscription opportunity, the Client needed its POS platform to talk to its ecommerce/subscription platform and they needed it as soon as possible.

The Solution

LINK stepped in and created a POC for the Client, ensuring that we met the Client’s requirements while collaborating closely with the Skio team. The POC helped the Client quickly make the decision to move forward with LINK for creating the solution.

LINK built connectors to the LightSpeed X-series POS and the Skio application, and provided a pop-up model for the cashier. When a customer makes a purchase in-store, LINK displays a pop-up window to capture whether the customer wishes to subscribe to specific products, billing start date, and the preferred payment method. The subscription information is shipped to Skio, via LINK’s connector with Skio, where a new customer subscription is created and fulfilled via the Skio-Shopify integration. The subscription flow is integrated as a part of sales, hence sending the subscription information to Skio and receiving successful subscription acknowledgement is done seamlessly in real-time. This ensures a smooth customer experience at the point of sale while providing them the option for in-store subscription.

The Result

LINK’s commitment to partnerships and our innovative and flexible approach helped in creating a swift and scalable solution involving multiple software platforms. This game-changing solution’s launch in the Client’s brick-and-mortar store will propel them into a new era of innovation and customer engagement, resulting in higher revenue per store and increased customer loyalty.

Seamless migrations : How leading POS platforms leverage LINK! For automated merchant onboarding

Seamless migrations : How leading POS platforms leverage LINK! For automated merchant onboarding

by | Feb 11, 2025 | Case Studies

Overview

As merchants worldwide seek advanced and scalable POS solutions for their businesses, the onboarding process can be complex, requiring careful data migration and minimal disruption to their operations. The POS platforms need to support new merchants through this complex task of migrating to their systems, while also ensuring that their POS platform syncs with the merchants’ existing tech stack, to enable seamless continuity of business operations.

The Challenge

Lightspeed Commerce was rapidly gaining merchants in the APAC region but their internal tooling and team was not set up to onboard merchants efficiently at large volumes. Lightspeed X-series team partnered with LINK to allow for accurate and automated data migration, system configuration, and rapid merchant activation.

When QuickBooks POS reached its end of life, its merchants needed to transition to Shopify POS while maintaining their integration with QuickBooks Desktop. Shopify turned to LINK! to execute this large-scale migration to harness LINK’s expertise in providing a combination of automated onboarding to Shopify POS and daily sync with QuickBooks Desktop.

The Solution

LINK follows a structured migration process to ensure a smooth transition, while supporting both a self-serve model and an ops-led model, letting the POS platform choose the best model for them.

For Shopify POS, LINK’s automated migration and integration workflow enabled merchants to self-serve and complete onboarding in a matter of hours. Merchants could upload files, map data, and connect to other tools from their tech stack, ensuring a seamless transition. They were additionally supported by the LINK’s ops team if they needed help. For Lightspeed Commerce, LINK created tooling and processes for the X-series POS onboarding team to retrieve merchant data. The LINK migration engine further transformed and imported the data into the X-series system.

LINK employs robust AI-led validation processes to ensure all data is migrated accurately with nearly zero human intervention and within set timelines. For the Lightspeed X-series onboarding, 90%+ of incoming merchants’ key data sets were migrated within 4 days, and the remaining merchants with corner cases and/or bad data were guided by the LINK ops team to successfully onboard in additional 1-2 weeks. For the Shopify POS migration, LINK provided a seamless, automated transition for over 35,000 merchants, ensuring their integration with QuickBooks Desktop was maintained. LINK also developed a migration app for the Shopify App Store and collaborated with Shopify to publish guides in the Shopify Help Center.

The Result

LINK’s unique combination of robust automated tooling and hands-on approach delivered exceptional POS migration experiences while ensuring merchants were set up for success from day one.

LINK continues to work closely with Shopify POS and Lightspeed X-series, migrating new merchants, allowing the POS platforms to focus on core product innovation. Shopify’s small retail segment onboarding is entirely managed by LINK, and Lightspeed X-series migration partnership with LINK has expanded internationally. Time to activation for merchants has reduced by 95%, leading to higher merchant conversion for the POS platforms. This also creates an accelerated path to revenue realisation for the POS platforms, since the merchants start transacting after they are activated. Through AI-led automated solutions and customized support, LINK continues to be a leading and trusted onboarding partner.

Loyalty platform rapidly gains new locations by integrating with top POS systems via LINK!

Loyalty platform rapidly gains new locations by integrating with top POS systems via LINK!

by | Oct 10, 2024 | Case Studies

Overview 

An industry-leading Loyalty Platform sought to boost revenue and customer retention for merchants in the restaurant and retail categories. To acquire the merchants, the most effective strategy for the Loyalty Platform was to build integrations with all the relevant POS systems as fast as possible, while ensuring a smooth experience for the end customers during a transaction.

The Challenge

Even though the Loyalty Platform had built a few integrations in-house, they needed to move fast to get the key POS integrations done but didn’t have the in-house expertise and bandwidth. Also, to speed up merchant acquisition, it was critical for the Loyalty Platform to get listed with the leading POS marketplaces. LINK was well positioned to take on both the challenges. The Loyalty Platform partnered with LINK for POS expertise, speed, cost efficiency, and long-term maintenance and scaling. Partnering with LINK also freed up their in-house engineering bandwidth to focus on the core loyalty products.

The Solution

LINK integrated the Loyalty Platform with two POS systems: Clover and PAR Brink. For every transaction, the relevant customer and sale information is sent to the Loyalty Platform, which then computes/updates the loyalty points. The integration further allows the Loyalty Platform to show the offers for redemption on the POS system’s cashier screen via a pop-up. Once an offer is redeemed, the information is synced back with the Loyalty Platform. Since the communication between the POS and Loyalty Platform is happening in the middle of a sale transaction, each request/response happens in under two seconds. Additionally, LINK is using its expertise and POS partnerships to drive marketplace listings for the Loyalty Platform.

The Result

The Loyalty Platform was immediately able to offer the integrated well-rounded product to activate 180+ merchant locations and build an ongoing pipeline. With the POS integrations in place, the Loyalty Platform plans to run joint campaigns with other industry players that cater to restaurants and retailers, to further expand their footprint. LINK is also expanding its partnership with the Loyalty Platform to integrate additional POS systems as well as systems in categories such as e-commerce, CDP, CRM, and accounting.

Foodservice AI platform first launched in Europe further expands in the US market by launching POS integrations via LINK

Foodservice AI platform first launched in Europe further expands in the US market by launching POS integrations via LINK

by | Jun 7, 2024 | Case Studies

Overview 

An innovative European Foodservice AI Platform used for streamlining restaurants’ kitchen operations is expanding its US footprint via an integration with Toast – one of the top restaurant POS systems in the US. Their goal is twofold: gain new customers in North America and provide simple and fast data integration for existing and future customers. The restaurant types covered by the Foodservice AI Platform use a variety of POS systems, and hence further POS integrations are critical for their long-term success.

The Challenge

The Foodservice AI Platform’s current and prospective clients required an integration with Toast to streamline their kitchen operations. Additionally, considering the variety of POS systems globally and the potential number of customers, the Foodservice AI Platform needed a partner that could develop, scale, and maintain multiple integrations across geographies. They did a targeted market evaluation and chose LINK as the best fit for their needs.

The Solution

LINK went from an introductory call to delivering a robust, white-labeled solution in production within 5 weeks. Additionally, LINK provided multiple hosting options to comply with privacy requirements in the US and Europe. This gives flexibility and speed to the Foodservice AI Platform to expand deployments across the US and EU in parallel.

LINK built an order sync integration that would push order details from the POS system to the Foodservice AI Platform, which is needed for the Platform’s prediction/analytics engine to provide useful insights to the restaurants for managing their kitchens’ operations.
The solution will be available to hundreds of the Foodservice AI Platform’s new customers. Additionally, integrations with two more large-scale POS systems are underway.

The Result

The Foodservice AI Platform can now offer its current and prospective customers a fully seamless integration with their Toast POS systems. The quick build, agile maintenance, and industry-specific expert experience that LINK offers have opened the doors to begin building several other integrations the Foodservice AI Platform can offer to their merchants globally.

Testimonial

“As we expanded in the US market with our Foodservice AI Platform, used to manage restaurant kitchens, the decision for a POS middleware was made rather quickly. We needed to target different POS Systems and a large number of potential customers. We talked with LINK at length about our integration needs, the way we wanted the integration built, and how we envisioned maintenance and support to take place. After learning about the flexibility in service that LINK provides we decided that LINK was the best fit for us.
Once the roadmap and timeline were established with LINK, everything worked as planned and delivered on time or faster than originally estimated. Toast was the very first POS integration into our system and it spearheaded our initiative to add direct integrations to our platform. There have never been any blockers from the LINK development side and we are on our planned production timeline to go live and enter the US market. Based on this early success, we are looking forward to scaling our POS integrations both in the US and Europe with LINK.”

– Foodservice AI Platform