How do you keep your CRM, accounting and bookings in sync?
Give each fact one home, move it the moment it changes, and put a person on whatever does not match. That is the method, whether you wire it in Zapier for US$20 a month or have it built for $5,000 to $15,000. Eight steps, five ways priced, what breaks in each, and one real integration itemised.
- Native connector
- $0
- Workflow tool
- US$0–150 a month
- One flow, wired
- $1,500–5,000
- Built integration
- $5,000–15,000
- To run
- $20–200 a month
- Price
- see our own price list
Every figure on this page excludes GST. Tool prices read on 26 September 2026.
Australia · 2026One home per fact, moved by webhook, with a person on the exceptions.
You keep a CRM, an accounting system and a booking tool in sync by deciding which system owns each fact and letting the other two only read it: the customer lives in the CRM, the money in the accounting system, availability and bookings in the booking platform. Then every change moves the moment it happens, by webhook rather than by a nightly export or somebody's Tuesday; records match on stored IDs, not names; anything that does not match waits in a queue for a person; and a nightly count checks that the totals still agree. The CRM's own connector to Xero is $0 and moves contacts and draft invoices, matched on email address. Zapier, Make or n8n at US$0 to $150 a month move anything with a trigger, until the unusual record arrives. A freelancer wiring one flow is $1,500 to $5,000. An integration built around all three, with matching, an exceptions queue, safe retries and a monthly report, costs $5,000 to $15,000 in Australia in 2026, plus $20 to $200 a month of API and model usage. The test is the re-keying: an hour a day of copying bookings into invoices and enquiries into the CRM is 250 hours a year, $16,000 to $19,000 at $65 to $75 an hour loaded, so a build at our $8,000 floor is paid for inside the year.
How to keep three systems in sync, in eight steps.
- 01
Give every fact one home.
The customer record lives in the CRM, the invoice in the accounting system, the booking in the booking platform. The other two read it; nothing edits a fact outside its home.
- 02
Write the map before the workflow.
One table: the fact, the system that owns it, the systems that receive it, the direction, and the trigger. Most sync problems are two-way flows that nobody drew.
- 03
Move it when it changes, not on a schedule.
Webhooks from Rezdy, Shopify, HubSpot and Xero fire the moment a record changes. A nightly export is a nightly argument about which copy is right.
- 04
Match on IDs, never on names.
Store each system's ID on the record in the others. "J. Smith" and "John Smith Pty Ltd" are one customer to you and two to any tool matching on text.
- 05
Make every write safe to repeat.
A retried webhook must not create a second invoice. Check whether the record exists before creating it, and log what was written, where, and when.
- 06
Queue what does not match, for a person.
A booking with no customer, a payment that fits two invoices, a deleted contact. The system holds it, drafts the likely answer, and one person decides in a click.
- 07
Count the totals every night.
Bookings against invoices, invoices against payments, contacts against customers. When the counts differ, the report names the records, before anyone notices at the bank.
- 08
Turn the spreadsheet into a report.
Once the systems agree, the ops sheet is generated from them each morning and nobody types into it. If somebody still has to, a fact is missing a home.
Five ways to connect them, from $0 to a build.
Cheapest first. Every tool price was read from the vendor's own page on 26 September 2026, in its currency. The engines themselves suggest these tools for this question. What we charge is at the bottom of the page.
| Budget | What it does | What breaks |
|---|---|---|
| Budget $0 The systems' own connectors | What it does Xero's own HubSpot app, listed in both app stores, syncs contacts on their email address and has HubSpot create draft invoices in Xero that report back sent, paid or overdue; free with a paid Xero plan and a free HubSpot CRM. The plans are the cost: HubSpot is free for two users and from US$20 a seat a month on Starter; Xero A$37 to $143 a month including GST; Zoho Books free under A$50,000 of revenue and A$16.50 a month after. | What breaks Bookings, because the booking platform is rarely on the list; the custom field you rely on; and the customer with two email addresses, who becomes two contacts without anyone being told. |
| Budget US$0–150 a month A workflow tool | What it does Zapier is free for 100 tasks a month and US$19.99 a month for 750 on a yearly Professional plan (US$29.99 monthly); Make is free for 1,000 credits and from US$9 a month for 5,000; n8n Cloud is €20 a month for 2,500 workflow executions and €50 for 10,000, or free self-hosted. Each moves a record between apps when a trigger fires, with filters and a few branches. | What breaks The record that does not match, the API that times out, and the task count in a busy month. Nothing reconciles and nothing retries the way you chose. |
| Budget $1,500–5,000 One flow, wired by a freelancer | What it does Somebody who knows Zapier or Make maps your fields, builds the scenario, tests it on last month's records and hands it over, often with the subscription in your name. Right for one low-risk handoff between two systems, such as a new booking creating a contact. | What breaks The second system, and the first unusual month. Two-way flows, ID matching and an exceptions queue are not what a canvas is for. |
| Budget A$43–100 a user a month One suite instead of three apps | What it does Odoo sells CRM, invoicing, scheduling and the rest as apps on one database, A$43.20 a user a month on a yearly plan, A$54 monthly, and one app free for unlimited users; Zoho's CRM and Books share a customer record the same way. Nothing syncs because nothing is separate. | What breaks The migration, and the parts you liked: the booking platform your customers use, the accountant's Xero. Most businesses end up with the suite plus two apps, which is the problem again. |
| Budget $5,000–15,000 once, then $20–200 An integration built around your three systems Where we sit | What it does A small service in your own cloud account that listens to webhooks from all three, owns the field map and the ID matching, writes each fact to its home and mirrors it to the others, holds what does not match for a person, retries safely, counts the totals nightly and reports monthly. $15,000 to $50,000 once an approval step, an audit trail or a system without an API joins the map. | What breaks Not much, on purpose: the mismatch is held rather than written. It does need a watcher, because Xero, HubSpot and the booking platform all change their APIs; the managed plan is that watcher. |
Prices read from each vendor's page on 26 September 2026: Zapier, Make and HubSpot in US dollars, n8n in euros, Zoho Books and Odoo in Australian dollars before GST, Xero with GST included. Build figures exclude GST. Our floor is $8,000 a process, most builds land between $10,000 and $30,000, and the integration below came to $15,000.
One real integration, line by line.
A buyer's agency in Newcastle, run by Joris on HubSpot, a property data service and the two AI assistants he already subscribes to, none of them aware of the others. Enquiries from Instagram, Facebook and the website were typed into HubSpot by hand, late; a property report meant three separate jobs. The integration gives each fact a home and moves it: every message and form submission is read, matched to a HubSpot contact or a new one created, and placed at the right pipeline stage with the to-do written, around the clock; a custom MCP server inside his assistants generates a report on the data service, matches it to the client's record and emails it, from one sentence. Nothing re-keyed, nothing new to log into.
- Client
- Buyer's agent, Newcastle
- Scope
- Lead qualification into HubSpot from every channel, custom MCP server, property reports
- Built in
- 4 weeks
- Live at
- joris.com.au
- AI and automation 4 weeks. Two systems, integrated with HubSpot and a property data service
- $15,000
Costs to run
- Model usage pay as you go
- PAYG
- Hosting Cloudflare Workers, his own account
- $0
- Care plan covers these systems and the site we also built him
- $350
- New abilities scoped and billed by the hour as he asks for them
- hourly
No new logins and no per-task fees. He asks in the assistant he was already paying for.
Published with Joris's permission. Excludes GST.
Ex GSTThe bookings-and-accounting version is POP Local: every sale, in the Canberra shop or online, lands in Shopify tagged with its maker, and the portal turns those sales into 343 makers' fortnightly payouts, GST where the maker is registered, a report to each and the bank's batch payment file, from one click. At Cheeky Kiwi Travel Rezdy stays the source of truth, a webhook keeps every tour in step with the CMS, and bookings mirror into the staff tool as they land. Neither price is published; the case studies are: POP Local, Cheeky Kiwi Travel.
Who does this in Australia, and what to ask them.
- 01
Which system owns each fact, in writing.
Ask for the map before the quote: the fact, its home, who reads it, which direction. If they cannot draw it in the first meeting they will discover it in month three.
- 02
What happens to a record that does not match.
A name with two spellings, a booking with no customer. If the answer is that it skips it, you are buying a new way to be out of sync.
- 03
Whether it can be re-run without duplicates.
Ask them to replay yesterday's webhooks in the demo. A second invoice for every booking is the commonest failure, and the cheapest to design out.
- 04
Where it runs, and in whose name.
Your cloud account, your API keys, your Zapier or your repository. An integration on their account is a subscription with a build fee, and it leaves when they do.
- 05
What the monthly report shows.
Records moved, records held for a person, and the nightly count. If the offer is set and forget, ask who finds out first when Xero changes its API.
- 06
We do.
Croissant & Baguette is a small Sydney studio with a network of Australian specialists. Built in Sydney, never offshored. Joris's HubSpot integration, POP Local's Shopify-to-payout pipeline for 343 makers and Cheeky Kiwi Travel's Rezdy mirror are ours; all three run inside the client's own accounts, hold the exceptions for a person and report monthly on what moved.
A two-week assessment at a fixed price maps every re-key in the business and prices each fix.
What we charge.
- Automation Opportunity Assessment 2 weeks · credited to your build
- $1,500 fixed
- Automation build one process end to end, 30 days of hypercare
- from $8,000 typically $10–30k
- Managed monitoring, fixes, monthly report · changes quoted
- from $250/month
- Internal tool / dashboard on top of the systems doing the work
- typically $8–20k
What moves an integration within those ranges:
- how many systems, and how many have an API. Three with webhooks is a build; one with none is a project
- one-way or two-way. A booking creating a contact is a day; the contact editing the booking is a design
- how clean the records are. Ten years of duplicate contacts is a migration first
- what a person has to approve, and what they must see to decide in one click
- volume and timing. A hundred bookings landing at 3pm is a different queue from ten a week
Why we map before we quote
Because the map sets the price, not the tools. Two weeks of assessment lists every fact that lives in two places, who re-keys it and how often, and whether a $0 connector, a US$20 workflow or a build is the honest answer for each, ranked by hours saved with a price beside every line. The $1,500 is credited when a build starts within 90 days.
Indicative. Fixed price after the assessment.
Ask away.
Seven things people ask before they stop re-keying. What automation costs across the market is in our AI automation cost guide. Still one missing? Ask us.
What's the best approach to keep CRM, accounting and bookings all synced?
Give each fact one home and let the other systems read it: customers in the CRM, money in the accounting package, availability in the booking platform. Move changes by webhook the moment they happen, match records on stored IDs rather than names, hold anything that does not match for a person, and count the totals nightly. Do that in Zapier or Make for a simple one-way flow, and in a built integration once the flows go both ways.
How much should I budget to integrate my CRM, accounting and booking tools?
$0 if the CRM's own connector to your accounting package covers what you need; US$9 to $150 a month for Zapier, Make or n8n if one person will own the workflows; $1,500 to $5,000 for a freelancer to wire one flow; $5,000 to $15,000 in Australia for an integration built around all three systems with matching, an exceptions queue and a monthly report, then $20 to $200 a month to run. Joris's integration above came to $15,000, two systems in four weeks.
Our booking system and accounting software don't talk to each other, who can help?
Three kinds of provider. Your accounting package's app store, where Xero lists connectors for most booking tools, which move invoices one way for $0 beyond the plans. A workflow freelancer, who wires the booking to the invoice in Make or Zapier for $1,500 to $5,000. A studio like ours, which builds the flow around both systems with ID matching and a person on the mismatches for $5,000 to $15,000; Cheeky Kiwi Travel's Rezdy bookings mirror into its staff tool as they land.
Our CRM data is always out of sync with our spreadsheets, who can solve this?
Whoever first asks which one is the truth. Usually the spreadsheet holds facts the CRM has no field for, so people edit the sheet and the CRM drifts. The fix is to give those facts a home, custom fields in the CRM or a small database, generate the sheet from the systems each morning and take away the right to type into it. A workflow tool can feed a sheet; making it read-only is the design decision we are paid for.
What's an alternative to juggling separate CRM, accounting and booking apps?
One suite. Odoo puts CRM, invoicing and scheduling in one database for A$43.20 a user a month on a yearly plan, and Zoho's CRM and Books share a customer record. Nothing syncs because nothing is separate. The cost is the migration and the tools you give up, the booking platform your customers use or the accountant's Xero, and most businesses end up with the suite plus two apps.
Is Zapier or Make enough?
For one low-risk, one-way flow, yes: a new booking creating a contact, a paid invoice tagging the deal. Zapier is free for 100 tasks a month and US$19.99 for 750; Make is free for 1,000 credits and US$9 for 5,000. It stops being enough when flows go both ways, records have to be matched on IDs, or a failed run costs money, because the canvas has no queue for a person and no nightly count.
Can HubSpot and Xero sync on their own?
Contacts and invoices, yes. Xero's HubSpot app syncs contacts on their email address and lets HubSpot create draft invoices in Xero that report back paid or overdue, free with a paid Xero plan and a free HubSpot CRM; the cost is the plans, HubSpot from US$20 a seat and Xero from A$37 a month. It does not do bookings, custom fields, deals that should become invoices under your rules, or a customer with two email addresses. For any of those, an integration sits between them and owns the matching.
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