The automation process is not only related to marketing activities, but it also improves the work of other departments. The same is with business administration; the market is full of tools that streamlines the processes from bookkeeping to HR. One of them is Xero, complete accounting software that eases the payroll headache. Today we’ll tell you more about best Xero integrations, why you should consider giving them a try and how they affect the accounting at your company.
But first, what is Xero?
Xero is an accounting software dedicated mostly to small businesses (as they state on their website). It gives you more control over the cash flow, tracking expenses, and revenues in real-time. Packed with a wide range of features, it’s a huge help for accounting departments.
Choosing Xero for bookkeeping, you’ll get:
- dashboard showing all the important information about the cash flow and bank account in one place presented in simple graphs and charts,
- bank connections/reconciliation – manage your payments and transactions straight from Xero,
- inventory – track your stock in real-time and stay up-to-date with the most profitable products from your offer,
- expense tracking – fully automated expense management with push notifications and receipts capturing,
- payroll – calculate your employees’ payments automatically and create pay run journals,
- invoicing – send invoices with various online payment options,
- reporting – generate accurate reports about the cash flow to stay on top of the company’s financial situation,
- taxes – add tax rates and set the default ones for each project.
Each feature is a huge benefit for your company, and fortunately, it’s not the end of the list! Xero supports multiple currencies and allows you to accept payments via services like Paypal or Stripe. What is more, it also serves you as a contact book, saving all your contacts as the easy-to-browse history. There’s one more asset, especially important when it comes to such a comprehensive tool – it’s fully searchable, so you can find any transaction whenever you want.
Xero offers three pricing plans:
- Starter – 20$ per month (5 invoices/quotes, 5 bills, 20 bank transactions)
- Standard – 30$ per month (unlimited invoices/quotes, bills, bank transactions, )
- Premium – 40$ per month (unlimited invoices/quotes, bills, bank transactions, multiple currencies)
Each plan includes the basics like bank account connections, dashboard with quotes and invoices, reporting, bills, and receipts capturing (with Hubdoc, I’ll mention this app below), payments tracking, mobile apps, and so on.
All plans also include the integration, so no matter the plan you choose, you can enjoy accounting features in your favorite app.
As you can see, Xero is a perfect app to streamline the accounting processes at your company! And what is more, it offers a wide range of integrations and add-ons, so let us recommend some of the most useful! The list is created based on the Xero’s app marketplace categories and tools are chosen up to the users’ reviews.
Best Xero integrations for Running Business Smoothly!
Accountant Tools
As explained above, Xero is complete accounting software, but other apps specialize in making bookkeeping smart and secure. These add-ons reduce the administrative paperwork and provide Xero users with the features their favorite accounting app lack. These are, for example, inter-entity and equipment loan reconciliation, tracking key customer information, more comprehensive tax management, loan calculators, retirement calculators, advanced client maps, reporting, and more. What is more, these tools sync all the customer details automatically, so you don’t need to waste time entering them manually.
Best accounting integrations for Xero:
- Practice Manager – built by Xero Team,
- AccountKit
- Acterys
- DataDear
- G-Accon
- Flowrev
- Business Sorter
- ClarityHQ
- Syft
- KeyPay
AccountKit for Xero, source: apps.xero.com
Bills and expenses
Billing and expense tracking tools extend Xero’s financial control significantly. First and foremost, they reduce billing-related paperwork, providing Xero users with fully automated data entering solutions, like bills and receipts capturing thanks to the OCR technology data extraction, purchase order creations and approvals, repetitive tasks automation, invoice coding automation and so on. All these features cut the hours spend on manual data entry, saving your precious time for growth-related issues. No matter the industry your company belongs to, the sales department members and bookkeepers will be delighted using the add-ons that streamline accounting processes and let them focus on the customers more.
Best bills and expenses integrations for Xero:
- Xero Expenses – native Xero app,
- Hubdoc – built by Xero Team,
- Expensify
- EzzyBills
- AutoEntry
- Datamolino
- Receipt Bank
- ApprovalMax
- Entryless
- Lightyear
- Spendesk
Hubdoc for Xero, source: apps.xero.com
CRM
Profitable businesses aim for a customer-centric approach, listening carefully to the clients’ needs. No matter if your company creates goods or offers the services, remembering that the customer is the guarantee of the income. To avoid the data mess and have a bigger picture of the clients’ structure, choose a CRM Xero add-ons. These apps support the business by keeping the contacts and all the details related to them in one, accessible place (the contacts from Xero are available in CRM software and vice-versa, also they’re updating in anything changes in both of the tools), and tracking the customers’ journey and identifying the potential issues on all of the stages. It also streamlines the process of invoicing, because you don’t have to waste time on manual data entry.
Best CRM apps for Xero:
- Hubspot
- CapsuleCRM
- Insightly
- Exsalerate
- WORK[etc]
- PieSync
- Infoodle
Capsule CRM for Xero, source: apps.xero.com
Debtor tracking
Cash flow relates to the credits as well and t avoid chasing late payments, consider integrating your Xero with debtor tracking add-ons. Tools like these are packed with features for getting paid on time: keeping the debtors’ details in one, easily accessible place, gaining instant credit insights, and receiving automated payment reminders. What is more, they provide you with detailed credit risk data that help you understand your customers better and point out which of them can cause bad debt the most likely.
Best debtor tracking apps for Xero:
- Debtor Daddy
- Satago
- Chaser
- EzyCollect
- IODM
- XO Cashflow
- CreditorWatch
Chaser for Xero, source: apps.xero.com
Ecommerce
Selling goods online becomes more popular these days, especially because of the COVID situation, which forced many store owners to close their shops and take their businesses to the internet. When it comes to the e-commerce service providers, the market is dominated mainly by eBay, Amazon, Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce hosting (read more in E-commerce CEO article). For all these who are struggling with an e-commerce accounting or just need a helping hand to reduce paperwork related to their online businesses, Xero offers various add-ons for e-commerce data automation. They generate invoices in Xero and send them to the customers when orders are placed, update the stock levels in Inventory, streamline the billing processes.
Best e-commerce apps for Xero:
- A2X
- OneSaaS
- Bigcommerce by OneSaas
- LinkMyBooks
- Airsquare
- Veequo
- RocketSpark
Time tracking
Time and money are our most precious sources, that’s why it’s good to know how much time we usually spend on bookkeeping and doing other accounting activities. Integrating Xero with time tracking software will allow you to log hours spent on working for a particular client. Most of the time trackers that offer Xero integration are packed with an invoicing feature as well so that accountants can easily bill their clients based on hours tracked. What is more, you can export the invoices to Xero and be sure that you keep the papers in order. Each client can be turned into a different project so that you can track time for all of them separately. With time tracking integration, you’ll also be able to point out the most time-consuming accounting activities thanks to the reporting feature.
Best time tracking apps for Xero:
- Timecamp
- WorkflowMax
- Harvest
- Deputy
- Tradify
- Timely
- MinuteDock
- TidyWork
- Everhour
Timecamp for Xero
Payroll HR
Xero ensures you with pay runs features, but in case you prefer separate apps for billing your customers, we picked some of the apps that can streamline the payroll process in your company.
Best payroll apps for Xero:
- CloudPayroll
- EmploymentHero
- Happy HR
- RosterElf
- EnableHR
- Microkeeper
- LeaveCal
Payments
Since online shopping and SaaS tools have become more popular, people across the world are more likely to use online payments as well. The market is full of tools that make this process fully automated, with just a few clicks users are able to pay for goods or services. Xero offers a wide range of online payment tools so that your customers can pay easily for the Xero invoices. With this integration, transactions are automatically reconciled, so that you can save more time for other parts of your business.
Best payments apps for Xero:
- Paypal
- Stripe
- GoCardless
- InvoiceSherpa
- PinPayments
- uCollect
- IntegraPay
- Pinch Payments
Paypal for Xero, source: apps.xero.com
As you can see, Xero is the ultimate accounting software, however, it also lacks some of the features essential for effective company management, like time tracking or debtor tracking. Some of them extend the already existing features, like CRM, payroll, or payments, giving you a fresh perspective on bookkeeping processes. Worth mentioning that also offers a developer platform for integration building, providing the software developers with all the documents, libraries, and how-to-guides for creating the integration.
Great piece! I think you have succinctly outlined the various benefits of the app in a compelling article.