How to Use a VA to Pull Data from Stripe, QuickBooks, and Shopify to Build a Simple Financial Snapshot?

Running a business solely relying on online platforms to manage financial health feels like speaking three languages simultaneously. It can be easy to get lost in dashboards, reports, and numbers, and before you know it, you are spending more time crunching data than operating your business.

Research reveals that 40 percent of small business owners state bookkeeping is the worst part of owning a business. Some studies also found that small business owners spend 120 hours a year on bookkeeping alone. Furthermore, it drains valuable time that could be better spent expanding their business and connecting with customers.

If you have ever wondered if there is a way you can hand off all those tiresome financial tasks and finally breathe a little easier, there is a compelling solution—hiring an online virtual assistant (VA). By hiring an accounting and bookkeeping VA, you can entrust the job of managing and documenting your business’s current cash, receivables, payables, inventory, and financial ratios. Consequently, you’ll have a transparent overview of your business’s health, giving you a streamlined, easy-to-understand financial snapshot.

Tools Your VA Will Need Access To

Imagine having all your business’s financial data organized without browsing numerous platforms. Sounds good, right? To build a good financial snapshot, VAs will gather data from the right tools and make it easy to review. Here’s what they’ll need:

• Stripe. Stripe is where your revenue data lives if you process online payments or subscriptions. In this tool, your VA can pull metrics like gross revenue, net revenue, refunds, and successful transactions.
• QuickBooks. This is where your business costs and accounting details can be found. VAs will note expenses, spending, and profit or loss on this tool. If you utilize it for employee payments, QuickBooks also helps track cash balances, unpaid invoices, and payroll.
• Shopify. If you sell products online, Shopify tracks all the eCommerce data you need. Your VA will get gross net sales, top-sell data, top-selling items, value, and customer insights.

Ways VAs Can Manage Your Financial Snapshot

An outsourced virtual assistant can save time cleaning up and organizing your finances by pulling data from Stripe, Shopify, and QuickBooks. Instead of getting lost in the details, you’ll get a simple, ready-to-use summary for budgeting, forecasting, and making more informed decisions.

But there is more— your VA will handle the heavy lifting, spot trends, and pinpoint any red flags or growth opportunities, giving you a straightforward and stress-free financial snapshot to make confident options for your business. Below are some ways on how VAs can handle your financial snapshot:

1. Data Entry and Expense Tracking

Since financial snapshots contain your business’ financial state, your VA can plug numbers from varying tools into an easy-to-read spreadsheet, determining everything concerning your financial data. With consistent formatting and accuracy of accounting software like Stripe for payments, Shopify for online sales, and QuickBooks for bookkeeping, this becomes the substantial foundation for VAs to audit data for monthly reports.

2. Document Management

Tracking down important financial docs is challenging. But the good news? Your VA can manage it all for you. They can transform traditional and hassle paperwork management into structured, organized, and digitally restored workflows, from downloading reports to filling them in cloud-based storage solutions like Google Drive or Dropbox. So, when tax season or funding time rolls around, you are quickly prepared without worries.

3. Financial Reporting

You need a precise report to understand your business’s financial status. VAs can do the magic; instead of presenting hard-to-digest and overwhelming data, they can turn it into a brief report. This can be in the form of a one-page Google sheet, a simple slide deck, or graphs and visuals, highlighting your cash flow patterns established on compiled data.

4. Research

Detect a spike in refunds, more heightened ad costs, or a drop in orders? Your VA can dig into the details to figure out what’s going on. They might check Stripe transactions for big refunds, review Shopify order notes for returns, or scan QuickBooks to justify sudden expenses.

Moreover, if you’re planning a pricing update or budget shift, they can also study how similar businesses spend and what is expected in your industry.

5. Data Organization

One of the bookkeeping services a VA can provide is systematizing and handling your day-to-day financial records in a way that is manageable to follow on repeat—no guesswork, no mess. Also, they can keep the system running smoothly month after month. Hence, your team can efficiently understand or anticipate your business state with everything laid out clearly.

Here’s what their work might look like:

• Organizing a monthly financial snapshot template
• Using consistent naming for all reports
• Color-coding spreadsheet sections
• Adding notes or tags for unusual items

6. Summary Writing

Once your VA sorts through the data, they will give you a prompt summary with key insights like “revenue up 15% thanks to more Shopify orders” or “advertising costs doubled because of a one-time campaign.” Meanwhile, if there is a drop in profit, they will point that out, too; it is an uncomplicated way to keep you in the loop without searching through all the numbers.

A Breakdown of How a VA Can Pull Data

Your VA must gather data from each platform to build an authentic financial snapshot. How? Below are the basic steps for acquiring information from Stripe, QuickBooks, and Shopify.

Stripe: Extracting Payment and Revenue Data

1. Log in to the Stripe dashboard. Ensure your VA has access to the reporting section of the Stripe dashboard with view-only or appropriate permissions for financial data.
2. Specify the reporting date range. Match the date range with the specific reporting period you want to analyze, such as the previous month or quarter.
3. Navigate the types of data. Click on the top tabs to explore the data and summary reports you need. Here are some examples of what attributes you can acquire:

• Pull Gross Revenue. This represents the full amount or total sales received from customers.
• Record net revenue. It is the actual income deposited into the bank, which is your essential profit figure.
• Balance Transactions. It includes any refunds issued or disputes raised during the period. These amounts will directly reduce your revenue and may require further investigation.
• Payouts. Check the funds deposited into your bank account for the period. This shows Stripe’s real cash flow after fees and refunds.
• Customer Data. You may collect customer data, such as their payment method details.
  4. Download and save reports. Export the relevant info and save it in a dedicated folder on your cloud storage, clearly labelled by month.

QuickBooks: Analyzing Expenses, Profit, and Cash Flow

1. Access the Reports section. Log into QuickBooks and visit the reports tab to render the necessary financial reports. Set the period to match the one used in Stripe and Shopify. You may obtain the following reports upon your access:

• Profit and loss. Itshows your business’s general financial performance, total income, expenses, and net profit for the selected period.
• Vendor report. This data will help your VA break down costs by individual vendor or service provider. It helps specify significant ongoing costs and understand where the money is going.
• Bank account balances. It displays whether the recorded income and expenses align with actual cash. This step is critical for keeping your cash flow data correct.
• Outstanding invoices. It tracks any unpaid invoices or outstanding amounts from customers.
  2. Save all reports securely. Once the data is extracted, save it into a marked folder for the month and organize it by year for easy retrieval in the future.

Shopify: Capturing eCommerce Sales and Customer Insights

1. Go to the Analytics dashboard. Access the analytics section of your Shopify admin panel to start pulling the reports linked to sales, products, orders, and customer data.
2. Set the monthly date range. Guarantee the date range is the same as the one used for Stripe and QuickBooks.
3. Access Data.You can export data points, including sales, products, discount code usage, average order value (AOV), refunds and returns, and other related information. To access these data, you may use Shopify’s application programming interface (API), which demands some coding knowledge and third-party tools.
4. Extract and organize data. After acquiring the reports, VAs may analyze this information by creating spreadsheets or utilizing other tracking, analysis, and reporting systems.
5. Secure the organized data. Download the reports, save them in a monthly folder for easy access, and keep everything orderly and readily retrievable.

Dealing with Financial Management Struggles? Let OVA Virtual Do the Job for You!

By having VAs manage data from Stripe, QuickBooks, and Shopify, you can focus on growing your business while keeping an eye on your finances. With a simple process, your VA can deliver a compelling financial snapshot highlighting your financial health and status.

But take note: this does not replace your accountant, but it offers you a reliable and up-to-date report. With the proper systems and tools, your VA becomes a fundamental part of your team, making it easier to stay on top of your numbers.

Are you struggling to optimize your financial management operations? Seek steadfast support from OVA Virtual, an all-Filipina VA company that has proudly served clients since 2017. Our team can assist you with marketing or eCommerce, administrative tasks, customer support, project management, and your accounting and bookkeeping needs.

Contact us today to learn how OVA Virtual can transform your business and help you attain your financial goals.