Siigo is the leading accounting system for Colombian SMEs: over 350,000 companies in the country and more than 1.2 million across Latin America manage their financial operations through its platform. With that reach, Siigo identified a specific opportunity: its users were already using the system to record their sales, but had to leave it to collect payment. Siigo Pay was created to close that loop, and Cobre is the infrastructure that makes it possible.
Why did the disconnect between invoicing and collections cost SMEs time and money?
The workflow of a typical SME in Colombia involves multiple systems that don’t communicate with each other. A company issues its invoice in Siigo, then waits for payment externally—whether through a bank, a separate payment gateway, or even in cash—and must then log back into the accounting system to manually record the income. Every manual step in that process is a source of error, delay, and operational burden that accumulates invoice by invoice.
The problem wasn’t just one of efficiency: it was one of liquidity and visibility. Without real-time traceability between payment and accounting entry, SME owners operated with outdated information about their cash flow. Knowing how much they had collected that day required manually reconciling bank statements with system records—a process that in many small businesses was done weekly, or not at all.
Solving this with a generic payment gateway wasn’t the answer either. Those types of solutions further decouple the process: the money goes into a separate account, and accounting remains the user’s responsibility. Siigo needed a payment platform that integrated into the accounting system’s logic, not one that was tacked on from the outside.
The pain points of the previous model included:
Siigo integrated Cobre’s API to enable real-time collections directly from its platform.
Siigo users can initiate a payment with Siigo Pay from an invoice, a quote, or a standalone payment link. In any case, the system generates a payment request that the end customer completes through the real-time payment gateways available in Colombia.
The funds are deposited directly into the invoice issuer’s bank account, and Cobre notifies Siigo via webhooks as soon as the transaction is confirmed.
That notification is the key to automation: Siigo listens for Cobre’s response and automatically updates the invoice status to “paid,” without any user intervention. The result is a complete cycle—invoice issued, collection triggered, payment received, accounting updated—that occurs seamlessly and in real time.
Some features enabled by the integration:
Siigo Pay is the payment platform integrated into Siigo’s accounting software. It allows businesses to collect payments for invoices or quotes directly from Siigo and receive funds in their bank account, with accounting updated automatically upon payment. It is available to current Siigo users without the need to sign up for a separate payment service.
Cobre serves as the payment infrastructure behind Siigo Pay. When a user initiates a payment, Cobre processes the transaction through the real-time payment channels available in Colombia, confirms the result via webhooks, and allows Siigo to automatically update the accounting records.
Any company operating with Siigo in Colombia can access Siigo Pay. It is specifically designed for SMEs that already use electronic invoicing and want to eliminate the disconnect between collections and accounting records, without the need for staff dedicated to reconciliation.
The integration is carried out through Cobre’s API, which allows Siigo to create payment requests, monitor the status of each transaction, and receive real-time notifications via webhooks when a payment is confirmed. This event-driven architecture is what enables the automatic updating of the accounting system without user intervention.
