Before We Start
Every integration project starts with the same question: what are we connecting, and how do you want it to work? The more prepared you are before our first call, the faster we move from discovery to a working system.
This is the checklist we send every new client. You don’t need everything on day one, but having most of it ready saves significant back-and-forth.
The Checklist
1. List Every Tool You Use
Write down every piece of software your team touches daily. CRM, accounting, email marketing, project management, phone system, scheduling — all of it. Include tools you think are irrelevant. We’ve found integrations hiding in tools clients forgot to mention.
For each tool, note:
- What you use it for
- Roughly how many people on your team use it
- Whether you’re on a paid plan (free tiers often lack API access)
2. Admin Access or API Credentials
We’ll need credentials for the systems we’re connecting. This usually means one of:
- Admin login to the platform (we’ll create our own service account where possible)
- API key or token (we have specific guides for HubSpot, Xero, Pipedrive, Clio, and Jobber)
- OAuth authorization — we’ll send you a link to click, and you grant access from your account
Send credentials through a secure method. We’ll provide a link for that — never send API keys or passwords over email.
3. Key Contacts
Tell us who:
- Makes decisions about how data should flow between systems
- Uses the systems daily and can tell us what’s working and what’s not
- Handles IT or admin for your accounts (sometimes this is a different person from the decision-maker)
We need at least one person who can answer “what should happen when X?” questions without needing to schedule a meeting every time.
4. Existing Automations
If you’re already using Zapier, Make, Power Automate, or anything similar, tell us. We need to know:
- What automations are running
- What triggers them
- Whether they’re working reliably or breaking
We don’t want to build something that conflicts with an existing automation, and in many cases we’ll replace fragile Zapier chains with something more robust.
5. What’s Not Working
This is the most important item. Tell us specifically what’s broken or painful:
- “We re-enter every new contact from our website form into HubSpot manually”
- “Invoices in Xero don’t match deals in our CRM”
- “When someone misses a call, nobody follows up because we don’t see it”
Concrete pain points help us prioritize what to build first.
6. Sample Data
If you can export a few rows of example data from each system, that helps us understand your field names, data formats, and any custom fields you’ve added. A CSV export or a few screenshots of a typical record is enough.
What You Don’t Need to Worry About
- Technical architecture — that’s our job
- Knowing your API version — we’ll figure it out
- Having everything perfect — messy data and imperfect processes are normal; that’s why you’re hiring us
Next Steps
Once we have your checklist, we move into discovery. Read How Our Integration Works to see what happens next, or head to How We Work to learn about our managed service model.
Need help with the full integration?
This guide covers the setup. If you want us to handle the integration end to end, we can do that.
See Integration Services