Intuit begins acquisition of TradeGecko

by

General Ledger

It was recently announced that Intuit has begun the acquisition of TradeGecko with an anticipated closing date on the deal in September (2020). TradeGecko was founded in February 2012 by three entrepreneurs from New Zealand, brothers Cameron and Bradley Priest along with Carl Thompson. Their public launch took place in January, 2013. The company is headquartered in Singapore, with other offices in Manilla, Philippines and Toronto, Canada.

Based upon their last 'press update', TradeGecko has since received over $12m (USD) in funding and serves over 13,000 users in over 90 countries.

So, if you don't know 'TradeGecko', then you might be confused by their name, and you might from our headline graphic be thinking that this is another Intuit acquisition that has something to do with the 'financial services' side of the company, but that isn't so. You see, TradeGecko is actually a cloud based inventory and order management software for online businesses that combines sales channels, locations and currencies so that every product, order and customer can be easily managed.

Along with eCommerce stores on Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and Amazon, TradeGecko also integrates QuickBooks Online and ShipStation. (In fact, you will already find TradeGecko within the Intuit App Store.) You can create purchase orders, backorders, inventory adjustments, track pack sizes, batches and expiration dates. Email quotes and send customers a link to invoices with credit card payments built right in. 

TradeGecko even offers a customizable B2B eCommerce Store that gives every business the perfect platform to start selling wholesale online with a unique catalog and price list for each customer.

TradeGecko also includes detailed reports and customer insights to track and predict business performance. Their mobile app quickly shows business data and allows users to create and manage orders, monitor inventory and contact customers and suppliers.

Are you starting to see how this acquisition might benefit 'QuickBooks'?  QuickBooks Online has been seriously in need of a big boost when it comes to inventory functionality! Now Intuit QuickBooks has just initiated steps to acquire an Inventory App that already integrates with QuickBooks, that makes it pretty easy to merge major functionality.

Reminds you of other acquisitions to bolster the functionality of QuickBooks doesn't it, like TSheets and ChronoBooks? Both of those Apps ultimately made their way into QuickBooks to bolster the product but in entirely different methods and approaches.

I suspect that TradeGecko will also be ultimately incorporated into QuickBooks to bolster the inventory capabilities of QBO. The questions in my mind, and probably yours at this point, are "whether that will be for all versions of QBO, or only QBO-Advanced", and "whether the approach will be more closely akin to that of TSheets, or that of ChronoBooks". Only time will tell.