How it works
From web order to your books, step by step.
CartSpan® is a Windows program that runs beside QuickBooks Desktop or Sage 50 U.S. On a schedule you set, it fetches new orders from your store, checks them, posts each one as a real accounting document, and sends stock back to your store. When an order’s lines don’t add up to what the customer paid, it holds that order and tells you. Here’s what happens.
One order’s journey
Five steps.
The order is fetched.
As often as every 15 minutes, CartSpan asks your store for new orders: through the store’s own API (Shopify, BigCommerce, Amazon and others), or from a small script on your web server (WooCommerce, Magento and self-hosted carts).
- Only the orders you want: by status, by payment, or, on Shopify, when they ship or when they’re paid.
- On Shopify, every check logs why an order was left out.
The order is checked.
Before anything touches your books:
- It must balance. items + freight + tax + handling − discounts − gift certificates = amount paid
- It mustn’t be in your books already. CartSpan looks for the order number, 90 days back by default.
- Every item must be known. Store SKUs are matched to your items through your item map. An unknown item can be created for you, posted to a catch-all item with the SKU kept, or held.
- The tax code must fit. Chosen by ZIP, city, county, state, country or store.
It’s posted as a real document.
The document you’d key by hand: an invoice or a sales order, or in QuickBooks a sales receipt.
- Retail into a house account, or each customer as their own, by your rules.
- Customer groups set the document type, terms and sales rep.
- The store’s tax, to the penny, split across your tax agencies by rate.
- Revenue by store: a sales account per store in Sage 50, or a class per store in QuickBooks.
The money lands where your bookkeeper expects.
- Each payment method deposits to its own account, so bank reconciliation matches.
- Processor fees are recorded by your formula for each payment method.
- Shopify Payments on Sage 50: each payout becomes one deposit equal to the bank line. How payouts post
Stock goes back to your store.
Every minute, CartSpan checks your books for items whose stock changed, from web orders, counter sales, receipts or adjustments. When it finds one, it starts sending the changed items, and only those.
Some setups use the scheduled refresh instead. If CartSpan works out how many kits you can build from their parts, counts stock on open purchase orders as available, or leaves some warehouses out of your store’s numbers, it has to recount your whole inventory to get those numbers right. In those setups your store’s stock is updated on the full refresh you schedule (as often as every 15 minutes), not the one-minute check. Everything else works the same.
- Quantity available, not on hand: stock minus open sales orders.
- Many store SKUs can point at one item; a 6-pack shows on hand ÷ 6.
- Assemblies show how many you could build from the parts on hand.
- Prices too, on stores that accept them; Shopify keeps its own prices.
When something’s wrong
Wrong totals get held, not posted.
Store plugins sometimes change an order so its lines no longer add up to what the customer paid. CartSpan holds that order so you can look into it before the wrong amount reaches your books. The same happens when an order has an unmapped tax code or can’t be posted. A held order:
- is held aside, with the reason;
- pauses order downloads and stock updates, so your store doesn’t show stock from an order that’s still on hold;
- sends you an email, and puts a line in the Inbox with a Fix… button;
- once you fix it and restore it, CartSpan carries on.
Your item list stays yours
No renaming on either side.
- Map any store SKU to any item in your books; many SKUs can point at one item, and the map works both ways.
- Load the map from Shopify, BigCommerce, Squarespace, Walmart, Amazon or a spreadsheet, and export it to Excel.
- Items no longer active in your books are flagged.
- Pair a web customer with their existing account once; CartSpan remembers.
Ready for the warehouse
Picking starts when the order posts.
- A PDF pick list by email as each order posts: ship-to, ship-by, carrier, the customer’s note, and the lines sorted by stock location with a barcode on each. A copy is kept for 90 days and can be re-sent from CartSpan. See a sample →
- Size, color, engraving and other options show on the line.
- The store’s shipping labels map to your Ship Via list: “UPS Ground (3-5 days)” becomes UPS.
- Tracking numbers from the store appear on the invoice.
What leaves your PC
Your books never leave your machine. Nothing passes through our servers.
Orders come straight from your store to the computer running your books, and stock goes straight back. CartSpan contacts cartspan.com only for the things below, and none of them carries an order, a customer or your accounting.
| CartSpan contacts cartspan.com to | What it sends | When |
|---|---|---|
| Check your license | Your license ID, product and expiry date, and a Windows computer ID; on activation, the billing email you type | At install, and when you activate, refresh or move it |
| Read announcements | Nothing about you | Hourly, and with each order check |
| Check for updates | Nothing about you | When CartSpan starts; you can turn it off |
- Card numbers never reach CartSpan. Orders carry only the card brand and, in some setups, the last four digits.
- Store and database passwords are stored encrypted on your computer.
- Email, such as pick lists and alerts, goes through your own mail server to your own addresses.
- CartSpan also checks the time with time.nist.gov and its connection with google.com, sending nothing. If you start a remote-support session, you see it and can end it any time.
What it runs on
A Windows PC beside your books.
- QuickBooks Desktop Pro, Premier or Enterprise 2023 or newer, or Sage 50 U.S. 2024 or newer.
- Your own PC or server. CartSpan customers also run it at Summit Hosting and Ace Cloud Hosting.
- QuickBooks Pro and Premier also need read-only QODBC, $149 per user a year (FLEXquarters, checked October 13, 2026); Enterprise includes it.
- CartSpan is a program you leave open; that computer needs to be on. After a restart, open CartSpan again and it picks up where it left off.
Set up with you
About an hour, once your books are ready.
- A short call first, to make sure CartSpan fits.
- Then a free 10-day trial on your own orders: we install and configure it with you, remotely.
- When something’s wrong later, you call the person who wrote it.
Walk through your own orders with us.
A short call covers your store, your books and how your orders should land.