Integrating Kintsugi with BigCommerce: A Comprehensive Step-by-Step Guide

Kintsugi and BigCommerce are powerful tools that complement each other, streamlining business operations by addressing different needs—BigCommerce as a leading e-commerce platform and Kintsugi as a rising star in sales tax automation. With BigCommerce seeing significant growth and Kintsugi doubling its valuation in 2024, integrating the two platforms is an excellent way to enhance efficiency and compliance. This guide provides a step-by-step approach to integrating Kintsugi with BigCommerce, starting with an overview of their features.

What Is Kintsugi?

Kintsugi is a B2B SaaS company offering sales tax automation tools. The 2018 Supreme Court ruling requiring retailers to collect sales tax on out-of-state sales paved the way for the birth of Kintsugi. The company wants to change how people think about sales taxes by making the whole process convenient through automation.

Kintsugi is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs manage sales tax compliance by helping them monitor their nexus, registration, collection, remittance and filing. Kintsugi wants business owners to focus on what truly matters -- growing their business. 

With Kintsugi, you will save hours and money for your sales tax compliance because our automated sales tax software offers all the functionalities necessary to keep you covered from non-compliance. Kintsugi automates compliance in three simple steps -- (1) Connect and Monitor; (2) Register and Collect; (3) Remit and File.

With our tool, our customers saved over nine hours every month, which they could spend on more important things than tax compliance and registration time was reduced by 83%. Additionally, they enjoyed a 98.3% reduction in errors and a 99.8% savings from fees and penalties.

Key Features

Kintsugi has tons of amazing features that Shopify merchants and Chargebee and Stripe customers love. Those who are using BigCommerce will definitely appreciate the same elements, which are as follows. 

Automate sales tax compliance. Kintsugi is designed to take care of your sales tax compliance through automation and Kintsugi delivers. It uses its proprietary AI, Kintsugi Intelligence, to automate the process for seamless tax compliance.

Seamless Integration. Kintsugi offers no-code integration to numerous other ERP, HR, and e-commerce systems to make sales tax automation fast and easy. You need not worry about the configuration because you only need to click some buttons to complete the process and enter your API.

You can integrate Kintsugi with BigCommerce, Stripe, Chargebee, Shopify, QuickBooks, NetSuite and more in minutes without breaking a sweat.

Easy Onboarding. Kintsugi CEO Pujun Bhatnagar acknowledges the time wasted on sales tax compliance by noting that the process offers no revenue. "Achieving compliance is not an activity that is going to generate any revenue but many businesses are spending hundreds of hours each year doing this work," Bhatnagar told Forbes.

Handles exemption and special tax situations. Kintsugi is updated with the complex and ever-changing tax laws across different states, including local taxes, VAT, and GST. It automatically applies the correct tax rates based on the customer's location and transaction details for accurate calculations. It also lets business owners mark customers exempt from sales tax, specify products or services exempt from sales tax or subject to special tax rates, and create custom tax rules to accommodate unique tax situations.

Kintsugi won't let you waste any of your time by making the onboarding easy as pie. With Kintsugi's intuitive design, even first-time users can navigate the application within minutes.

Reliable Customer Support. Kintsugi offers white glove customer service. With our  24/7 customer support, you will be immediately connected to our reliable and knowledgeable agents, who will ensure that you get the help you need at any time of the day. We can also connect you to a tax expert when you need one. 

Let Kintsugi manage your sales tax compliance because it's what Kintsugi does best.

What Is BigCommerce?

BigCommerce is a popular ecommerce software platform that helps startups, midsized and high-profile companies set up their online store, customer it to their liking, and sell digital, physical, and service-based products. BigCommerce offers many features, including store design, multi-storefront, product management, SEO, and integration with other third-party providers to help e-commerce stores grow. 

BigCommerce is an all-in-one tool that supports product management, inventory control, and marketing capabilities. Its direct competitors include Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento. However, BigCommerce offers lower transaction fees. It is also versatile as it offers simple features for beginners and advanced features for big companies. BigCommerce offers scalability to support growing businesses.

Key Features

Online Store Creation. BigCommerce has professionally designed templates that allow you to customize them to reflect your brand. It also has an intuitive design for easy setup and management.

Product Management. Has inventory control to manage products, categories and inventory levels efficiently. It also supports product variations to easily different items based on sizes, colors, materials, etc.

Payment Processing. BigCommerce supports multiple payment gateways and integrates with over 50 of them, including Paypal, Stripe, and Apple Pay.

Marketing and SEO Tools. BigCommerce has built-in SEO features to help you optimize your store for search engines with customizable URLs, metadata and sitemaps. It also allows integration with email marketing services, social media platforms and Google Shopping.

Unified inventory. If you sell on other e-commerce platforms like Amazon, eBay, or Etsy, you can integrate them with BigCommerce. Connect and list your products to online marketplaces, and import and fulfill Amazon, eBay, and Etsy orders. Then, synchronize inventory and price to see them on your BigCommerce dashboard. By integrating these platforms, the inventory is synchronized across all sales channels.

Analytics and Reporting. BigCommerce generates detailed reports on sales, customers, and marketing campaigns to help you analyze your customers' behavior so you can tailor your marketing strategies to their needs.

Customization. BigCommerce is serious with integration and allows APIs and SDKs, but you will need developers to enjoy this extended functionality. This gives you access to various applications that will help enhance your store's capabilities.

Understanding Kintsugi and BigCommerce Synergy

Kintsugi and BigCommerce will make great partners for your business as they provide a wide range of benefits to enhance your e-commerce operations. Here are some benefits you will enjoy when you integrate Kintsugi with BigCommerce.

Simplified tax compliance. Kintsugi uses AI to keep its system updated with tax laws and rates across various jurisdictions in real time to ensure accurate tax calculations. It can also manage tax exemptions and special tax rules.  Your business stays compliant with minimal effort from you.

Streamline operations. By integrating Kintsugi, sales tax calculations will be done directly within the BigCommerce store. This enables your business to process orders more quickly and efficiently.

Reduce administrative burden. Automating your sales tax compliance with Kintsugi reduces the time spent manually monitoring tax law changes, which is burdensome. You also save money by avoiding late filing or, inaccurate calculations and other potential issues that could lead you to pay penalties, charges, and fees, and at worse, trigger an audit or subject you to legal consequences.

Enhanced customer experience. By providing customers with detailed invoices reflecting accurate tax charges, they will trust your business more. Additionally, demonstrating your compliance and transparency will give your customers confidence in you and result in a better buying experience.

Preparation Before Integration

BigCommerce is one of the systems that Kintsugi seamlessly integrates with. So, there are not many preparations before the integration. However, it's a prerequisite that you have a Kintsugi account because you will be prompted to sign in to your account during the process.  

Step-by-Step Integration Guide

1. Log in to your BigCommerce App Store

2. Go to the Apps section in the sidebar and search for Kintsugi.

3. Install the Kintsugi Tax app.

4. After the installation, Kintsugi will request access to your BigCommerce store. Just click the 'Confirm' button to proceed.

5. You will be redirected to Kintsugi's login page. Enter your credentials to continue.  If you do not have an account, follow the prompts to create one.

6. Once logged into Kintsugi, you will be prompted to select the organization to which your BigCommerce store belongs. Choose the appropriate organization.

7. Click the 'Add' button to add organization details.

8. Fill in all the required fields.

9. Identify and list all the locations where your business has a physical presence. 10.  You will see a list of tasks. Click the 'Review' button for 'Products to Approve.' Review and approve products, if applicable, to ensure they meet the required criteria.

10. Press the 'Enable' button for 'Enable Tax Calculation.' The button will be available once the following three conditions are met:

• The initial sync is completed.
• All required organization details have been added to Kintsugi.
• Active tax registrations are present within the organization.

12.  Once done, go to your BigCommerce account. Verify the integration by going to Settings > Tax. It should show Kintsugi as the configured tax service.

Final Thoughts

Integrating Kintsugi with BigCommerce is easy. It might appear a lot, but you only have to follow the process, and you'll be surprised it's done in no time. With Kintsugi's no-code integration, you just have to click some buttons and you'll be able to integrate the two platforms.

BigCommerce and Kintsugi can streamline your e-commerce operations, improve customer experience and help you save money by reducing labor and operational expenses. Kintsugi's automated filing also saves you from potential penalties and interests from late filing. Also, Kintsugi supports multi-channel sales, so integrating it with BigCommerce will allow you to manage multiple sales channels in a single platform easily. This way, you can ensure consistent product information and pricing across all platforms. Kintsugi is the best sales tax automation partner for BigCommerce.

Kintsugi's no-code integrations support several ERP, HR and e-commerce systems. You can check all of them here.