Exectras – Case Study: Custom-Building a Membership Platform on Zoho

Executive Summary

Exectras began as a merchant services company. In 2016, it reimagined itself as a membership organization, giving member businesses access to a bundle of discounted services – including employee benefits – delivered through a network of payment processors and vendor partners.

Running that model means constantly syncing merchant, member, and vendor data across a growing set of outside systems. Exectras partnered with Cornerstone Solutions to bring custom development into its Zoho CRM environment: connecting it to Deluxe’s First On Board, MDE, and Blaze payment platforms, the Corvia payment processor, and Aperia’s PCI compliance system, while automating membership pricing, referral partner residuals, and merchant onboarding end to end.

The Challenge

Before partnering with Cornerstone Solutions, Exectras’ Zoho CRM had been configured but never custom-built:

1. No custom development in the Zoho environment. The CRM was configured for basic use but had no custom functions, APIs, or automation connecting it to the outside systems Exectras’ membership model depends on.
2. Manual merchant and member onboarding. New accounts and contacts from FOB, MDE, and Corvia had to be created by hand, with no automated match-and-create logic.
3. No automated revenue tracking. Membership fees and referral partner residual payouts had no calculation engine, creating manual work every billing cycle.
4. No compliance or employee-count visibility. PCI compliance data and the active employee counts that drive membership pricing tiers weren’t flowing into the CRM automatically.
5. Disconnected marketing operations. Membership form submissions and their attachments had no automated path into a task the marketing team could act on.

Implementation

Cornerstone Solutions has built out Exectras’ Zoho CRM environment through sustained, multi-year custom development – integrating outside systems, automating revenue-critical calculations, and continuing to extend the platform as Exectras’ needs grow.

Connecting Exectras to Its Payment Ecosystem

• Built and maintain custom API integrations with Deluxe’s First On Board (FOB), MDE, and Blaze payment systems, mapping more than 500 fields between the FOB platform and Zoho CRM.
• Built a recursive scheduled function that queries the Corvia payment processor daily for new Merchant ID (MID) records and automatically creates the matching Account and Contact records.
• Integrated Aperia’s PCI compliance system so merchant compliance data flows into CRM automatically.

Automating Membership Revenue Operations

• Built custom functions to calculate membership fees, including logic to handle waived first-year fees.
• Built automated Membership Residual calculations that identify member accounts with a referral partner and generate the monthly residual payout and yearly anniversary fee records automatically.
• Built a daily scheduled function to count active employees per account and update the record – feeding directly into membership pricing tiers.
• Built a formatting function to correct routing numbers submitted through Zoho Forms, which were losing leading zeros on the way in.

Streamlining Account & Contact Creation

• Built a custom Create Account/Contact function to parse incoming webhook and form data into new CRM records.
• Fixed logic so existing contacts are correctly linked to an account’s additional-accounts field instead of creating duplicates.
• Removed a unique-phone constraint on Accounts that was causing the creation button to fail.

Streamlining Marketing Operations

• Built automation that moves attachments from membership form submissions into Zoho Workdrive and links them to an automatically created Marketing Request task in Zoho Connect.

Most Recent Work: Membership Form Automation (Zoho Flow)

• Mapped fields and built a new Zoho Flow-based function to handle membership form submissions and pricing calculations, including AI-assisted logic, tested in sandbox and pushed to production in September 2026.

Results

Exectras now runs its membership model on a Zoho CRM environment that was custom-built – not just configured – to connect every system the business depends on.

Key Outcome	Impact Metric	Zoho Application(s)
Vendor & Processor Connectivity	Custom API integrations keep merchant, payment, and compliance data flowing automatically between Zoho CRM and five outside platforms: Deluxe’s First On Board, MDE, and Blaze payment systems, the Corvia payment processor, and Aperia’s PCI compliance system.	CRM, Custom Functions
Onboarding Efficiency	A daily scheduled function pulls new Merchant ID records from Corvia and automatically creates the matching Account and Contact records, eliminating manual merchant entry.	CRM, Deluge
Revenue Accuracy	Automated membership fee calculations (including first-year waivers) and monthly referral partner residual payouts removed manual pricing and payout work.	CRM, Workflow, Deluge
Data Accuracy	Automated routing-number formatting and daily employee-count tracking removed two recurring sources of manual correction that fed directly into membership pricing tiers.	CRM, Deluge
Marketing Operations	Form submissions and attachments now flow automatically into Connect tasks and Workdrive, ready for the marketing team without manual file handling.	Forms, Connect, Workdrive
Platform Evolution	Ongoing custom development – most recently a Zoho Flow-based Membership Form automation pushed to production in September 2026 – continues to extend the system Cornerstone built.	Flow

 

“Cornerstone didn’t just configure Zoho for us – they built it to actually run our business, connecting every system we depend on.”

– Exectras Team

About Exectras

Exectras began as a merchant services provider and, in 2016, evolved into a membership organization that gives businesses access to discounted services – including employee benefits – delivered through its network of payment and vendor partners.

About Cornerstone Solutions

Cornerstone Solutions is a Zoho Partner and Advanced Solutions Provider, specializing in comprehensive Zoho implementation for growing businesses. Cornerstone offers deep expertise in automation, data migration, and user adoption strategies.