ChecklistCRMOperations

The Operations Buyer’s CRM Checklist: 25 Must-Have Integrations and Controls

UUnknown

2026-02-23

12 min read

A prioritized, 25‑item CRM checklist for ops buyers focusing on integrations, security controls, and features small businesses can’t ignore in 2026.

Stop guessing — get a CRM that talks to your finance stack, payments, and marketing: a prioritized checklist for operations buyers

If you’re an operations buyer for a small business, you’re tired of chasing disconnected data, manual reconciliations, and budget surprises. This CRM checklist puts integration, security controls, and operational features first so you can stop exporting CSVs and start running predictable operations in 2026.

The bottom line up front (inverted pyramid): what matters most in 2026

Prioritize real-time accounting connectors, native payment integrations, and robust security controls. Why? Because recent shifts — widespread adoption of bank APIs, AI-driven reconciliation tools, and increased vendor consolidation in late 2025 — mean CRMs without these capabilities become operational bottlenecks fast.

Quick take: Choose a CRM that natively integrates with your accounting system, accepts and reconciles payments in-line, centralizes marketing and subscription data, and enforces enterprise-grade access controls. Everything else is nice-to-have.

How to use this checklist

This guide is a prioritized, actionable vendor checklist tailored for operations buyers and small business owners. Use it to:

Score CRM vendors during evaluation
Create a phased implementation plan
Define acceptance tests for integrations and controls

Each item includes what to look for, an acceptance test, and a fast implementation tip.

Top 10 must-have integrations and controls (critical — implement first)

Real-time accounting connectors (QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite)
What to look for: Bi-directional sync of invoices, payments, customers, and returns with configurable mapping and automated ledger posting.

Acceptance test: Create an invoice in CRM, mark it paid via payment provider, confirm clearing and reconciliation in accounting ledger within 5 minutes.

Tip: Prioritize vendors with pre-built connectors and sandbox testing environments to avoid custom middleware.
Native payment integrations (Stripe, Adyen, PayPal, local processors)
What to look for: In-CRM checkout, saved cards, refunds, disputes, and statement-level reconciliation.

Acceptance test: Process a partial refund and ensure accounting shows correct revenue recognition and refund ledger entries.

Tip: Confirm support for tokenization and PCI DSS scope reduction.
Bank feed & open finance connectors (Plaid, TrueLayer, bank APIs)
What to look for: Continuous bank transaction streams for cash flow visibility and auto-categorization.

Acceptance test: Link a bank account, trigger an ACH deposit, and validate auto-match with CRM payment record.

Tip: Look for reconciliation rules and confidence scoring to speed reviews.
Subscription & billing orchestration (charge automation, dunning)
What to look for: Metered billing, proration, multi-currency support, and automated dunning sequences.

Acceptance test: Create a subscription with proration, simulate failed payment, and confirm dunning emails and retry logic.

Tip: Integrate billing events into accounting with a revenue recognition schedule.
Vendor/expense management (card, expense feed)
What to look for: Virtual cards, auto-import of corporate card transactions, policy enforcement, and auto-categorization.

Acceptance test: Issue a virtual card, make a vendor charge, and verify expense auto-match and policy flagging.

Tip: Use virtual cards to eliminate subscription leakage and improve vendor control.
AR automation & collections workflow
What to look for: Automated invoice reminders, collections sequences, and integration with payment links.

Acceptance test: Send invoice, let it age, and confirm staged reminders, then resolve with a payment link and automatic ledger update.

Tip: Track days sales outstanding (DSO) and present recovery KPIs to leadership.
Marketing automation & lead attribution (HubSpot, Marketo, Braze)
What to look for: Unified customer lifecycle view, revenue attribution, campaign cost import, and lead-to-customer lifecycle mapping.

Acceptance test: Run a campaign, capture lead, and confirm correct revenue attribution in CRM and accounting dashboards.

Tip: Map cost-per-acquisition (CPA) directly to customer records to understand ROI.
Single source of truth for customer data (CDP/Customer 360)
What to look for: Deduplication, golden record policies, and cross-system identity resolution.

Acceptance test: Merge duplicate profiles and verify updates propagate to accounting, billing, and marketing systems.

Tip: Low-trust data kills AI initiatives — invest in data hygiene early (Salesforce research, 2026).
Role-based access control (RBAC) & SSO
What to look for: Granular RBAC, SAML/OIDC SSO, and session policies.

Acceptance test: Create a read-only role for finance and ensure they cannot edit deals or customer payments.

Tip: Enforce least privilege and integrate with your identity provider for automated provisioning.
Audit trails, immutable logs, and exportable compliance reports
What to look for: Tamper-evident logs, exportable audit reports for invoices, payments, and user actions.

Acceptance test: Generate a 90-day audit report for payments and confirm timeline of actions and exports match bank statements.

Tip: This speeds audits and reduces compliance headaches — non-negotiable for regulated industries.

Next 10 items (high priority — implement during phase 2)

Two-way ERP integration (for growing companies)
What to look for: Inventory sync, PO matching, COGS posting and multi-book support.

Acceptance test: Create a sales order, allocate inventory, and confirm COGS entries in ERP.

Tip: Avoid one-way exports — true operational scale needs closed-loop ERP workflows.
Automated reconciliation and AI matching
What to look for: Fuzzy matching, confidence scoring, and suggested auto-post rules.

Acceptance test: Import a bank statement and measure % of transactions auto-matched correctly.

Tip: Aim for >85% auto-match rate before manual review to cut time spent reconciling.
Refunds, disputes, and chargeback workflows
What to look for: Centralized dispute management, evidence collection, and automated chargeback responses.

Acceptance test: Trigger a dispute and confirm the CRM guides evidence collection and records outcome.

Tip: Reduce churn and reconcile disputed revenue accurately.
Tax engine & VAT/GST integration
What to look for: Real-time tax calculation, nexus rules, and tax reporting export.

Acceptance test: Create a cross-border sale and confirm correct tax code, line-item tax, and reporting export.

Tip: Use a managed tax service for multi-jurisdiction businesses to avoid surprises.
Vendor management & contracts repository
What to look for: Contract dates, auto-renewal alerts, and spend visibility.

Acceptance test: Upload a vendor contract, set renewal alert, and confirm notification before automatic renewal.

Tip: This reduces subscription leakage — a common small business problem in 2026.
Customer self-service billing portal
What to look for: Invoices, payment methods, usage history, and upgrade/downgrade paths.

Acceptance test: Have a customer update card details and verify immediate charge authorization and ledger update.

Tip: Self-service reduces AR overhead and improves cash flow.
Recurring vendor/subscription discovery (spend optimization)
What to look for: Identify unused SaaS, contract overlaps, and forecast recurring costs.

Acceptance test: Run a 30-day discovery and generate a report showing top 10 recurring costs and potential savings.

Tip: Combine with virtual card controls to eliminate wasted spend.
Custom workflows & low-code automation
What to look for: Visual workflow builder, event triggers, and error handling.

Acceptance test: Build a workflow that triggers contract creation when a deal reaches ‘Closed Won’ and auto-creates invoice draft.

Tip: Empower ops users to automate repetitive tasks without engineering sprint backlog delays.
SLA and escalation controls for service teams
What to look for: SLA timers, escalation routing, and performance reporting.

Acceptance test: Open a ticket, miss a SLA, and confirm automated escalation and reporting event in CRM.

Tip: Critical when combining sales, finance, and support workflows to protect revenue retention.
Data exportability & API rate limits
What to look for: Comprehensive APIs, Webhooks, and clear rate limits for scaling integrations.

Acceptance test: Export the last 12 months of customer transactions via API and confirm data completeness and performance.

Tip: Prefer vendors with predictable API SLAs and webhook delivery guarantees.

Final 5 items (nice-to-have but high ROI for growing teams)

Predictive cash flow and budget forecasting
What to look for: Rolling 13-week forecasts, scenario planning, and drill-down by product, team, or project.

Acceptance test: Generate a 13-week forecast and compare predicted vs actual cash flow after 30 days; target 90% accuracy improvement over baseline.

Tip: Leverage AI-driven forecasts but validate assumptions (invoice lag, churn, seasonality).
Multi-entity & multi-currency consolidation
What to look for: FX posting, intercompany eliminations, and consolidated P&L export.

Acceptance test: Post transactions across two entities and confirm consolidated financials and eliminations.

Tip: Essential for companies planning cross-border expansion in 2026.
Behavioral analytics & churn prediction
What to look for: Usage signals tied to billing, early churn indicators, and automated retention workflows.

Acceptance test: Identify a cohort at risk and trigger a retention campaign; measure reduction in churn rate.

Tip: Tie predictions directly to contract renewal playbooks and finance forecasts.
Embedded finance capabilities (wallets, buy now pay later)
What to look for: Configurable payment options that integrate with AR and revenue recognition.

Acceptance test: Offer BNPL on an invoice and confirm correct ledger treatment and customer payment schedule.

Tip: Embedded finance can accelerate conversions but requires careful revenue recognition rules.
Marketplace and partner integrations
What to look for: Ability to ingest partner revenue shares, commissions, and multi-party settlements.

Acceptance test: Record a partner sale and verify commission calculation and split payment posting.

Tip: Increasingly important as partner ecosystems expand in 2026.

Vendor evaluation rubric: a simple scoring template

Score each vendor on these weighted categories to compare objectively:

Integration readiness (30%) — pre-built connectors, APIs, webhook reliability
Security & compliance (25%) — RBAC, SSO, audit trails, SOC2/ISO27001
Operational features (20%) — billing, reconciliation, automation
Data quality & CDP (15%) — dedupe, golden record, sync frequency
Price & TCO (10%) — subscription fees, transaction fees, integration costs

Action: Create a simple spreadsheet, rate vendors 1–5 for each criterion, and compute weighted score. Prioritize vendors with >4.0 weighted score.

Implementation playbook — 6-week phased approach

Week 0: Discovery & alignment — Map existing systems, identify owners, define 3 KPIs (DSO, time-to-reconcile, subscription leakage).
Week 1–2: Core integrations — Connect accounting, payments, and bank feeds. Run sandbox reconciliation tests.
Week 3: Security hardening — Configure RBAC, SSO, audit logs, and vendor contract terms for data residency and SOC2.
Week 4: Billing & subscription flows — Test subscriptions, proration, and dunning in staging with end-to-end ledger checks.
Week 5: Automation & workflows — Build key low-code automations: invoice-to-payment, dispute handling, renewal alerts.
Week 6: Launch & measure — Go live with a controlled cohort, measure KPIs, and plan backfill for unresolved edge cases.

Operational acceptance tests (OATs) — what to measure

Reconciliation time: Hours per month reduced by X%
Auto-match rate: Target >85%
DSO: Improve by target days
Subscription leakage: $ saved by cancelling overlapping subscriptions
Security incidents: 0 critical incidents post-launch

Trends and predictions for operations buyers in 2026

Two developments are shaping CRM evaluation this year:

Open banking and real-time payment rails — More banks provide streaming transaction APIs, letting CRMs offer near-real-time cash visibility.
AI-driven reconciliation and forecasting — With more high-quality data, reconciliation and cash forecasts are moving from manual to automated, but only when data hygiene is prioritized (Salesforce 2026 insights).

Combine these with stricter privacy and compliance expectations after late-2025 regulatory updates: vendors must prove data lineage and provide clear audit trails.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

Pitfall: Choosing a CRM because of shiny AI features without checking data quality. Fix: Run a data health audit first.
Pitfall: Underestimating API and webhook limits. Fix: Load-test data flows and ask vendors for SLA on webhook delivery.
Pitfall: No RBAC or SSO — leads to unauthorized access and compliance risk. Fix: Enforce SSO and least-privilege onboarding from day one.
Pitfall: Ignoring vendor TCO (transaction fees, connector costs). Fix: Model TCO over 36 months including integration and support costs.

Real-world example (experience)

We worked with a 45-person B2B services company in late 2025 that couldn’t reconcile subscription revenue with bank statements. They prioritized items 1–6 from this checklist, implementing a real-time accounting connector, Stripe integration, bank feeds, and automated reconciliation with AI matching. Within 60 days they reduced monthly reconciliation time from 25 hours to 3 hours and improved cash forecast accuracy by 18%. The ROI paid for the CRM and integration work within four months.

Vendor contract & security checklist before signing

Confirm SOC2 Type II or ISO 27001 certification
Data residency and export rights clause
API uptime SLA and webhook delivery SLA
Clear escalation, incident response, and breach notification timelines
Right-to-audit clause (or third-party audit reports)

Quick templates you can copy

1) Integration acceptance test (one-paragraph template)

"Create a sample customer, generate a $X invoice in CRM, process a $X payment via [payment provider], and confirm the payment posts to [accounting system] ledger within 10 minutes with matching reference IDs. All actions must appear in audit logs and be exportable as CSV/JSON."

2) Vendor scoring row (spreadsheet column names)

Actionable takeaways

Start with the top 10 checklist items — they remove the most operational friction.
Use the vendor rubric to make objective buy vs build decisions.
Run the 6-week implementation playbook and include acceptance tests in your SOW.
Prioritize data hygiene before turning on AI features — poor data gives poor predictions.

Closing — why operations buyers win with this checklist

As an operations buyer, your job is to turn fragmented systems into reliable, auditable workflows that free up the business to grow. In 2026 that means choosing CRMs that are integration-first, secure by design, and operationally powerful. Follow this prioritized checklist and you’ll cut manual work, tighten controls, and deliver measurable ROI.

Call to action

Ready to evaluate vendors with a scorecard and downloadable acceptance test templates? Download the Operations Buyer’s CRM Scorecard & OAT Pack at budge.cloud or schedule a 20-minute advisory call with our team to tailor this checklist to your stack.

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