The catalyst for WarehouseWise came from working on a complex Sage50 integration project. The client needed to connect their accounting system with inventory management, e-commerce, and analytics tools. What should have been straightforward became a six-month nightmare of API limitations, data synchronization issues, and custom middleware.
The Project
A growing retail business was using Sage50 for accounting, a separate system for inventory, Shopify for e-commerce, and spreadsheets for analytics. They wanted everything connected in real-time.
Challenge #1: API Limitations
Sage50's API was limited and poorly documented. Simple operations like fetching customer data required complex workarounds. Rate limits were strict, and error messages were cryptic at best.
Challenge #2: Data Synchronization
Each system had its own concept of what a 'product' or 'customer' was. Mapping these different models required extensive custom logic and constant maintenance as any system updated their schema.
Challenge #3: Real-time vs Batch
Sage50 worked best with batch processing, while the e-commerce platform needed real-time updates. Bridging this gap required building complex queueing systems and handling edge cases where data got out of sync.
Challenge #4: Error Handling
When something went wrong (and it often did), tracing the error through multiple systems was incredibly difficult. Was it a network issue? An API change? A data format problem? Debugging took hours.
The Breaking Point
Six months into the project, the client was frustrated, the team was burned out, and the solution was fragile. Any time one of the systems updated, we had to revisit the integration.
The Insight
This shouldn't be this hard. These are common business operations that every company needs. The problem isn't the individual systems—it's that they were never designed to work together.
The Solution
What if accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and analytics were all part of the same platform from day one? No integration needed because they're already integrated. That's the core idea behind WarehouseWise.
Lessons Applied
Every frustration from that Sage50 project is informing how we build WarehouseWise. API-first design, unified data models, real-time by default, and comprehensive error handling are all baked into our architecture.