As gold partners with Xero, the UK’s leading online accounting software, we at James Scott have had a lot of experience with a range of add-ons and integrations they have to offer.
With over 700 integrated apps providing solutions to business and accountancy needs and while we haven’t checked them all out, we’re able to narrow our favourite ones down to five.
Here’s our list and a quick review of each – perhaps one or more might be able to help you and your business.
A2X
If you’ve ever spent time manually reconciling individual sales on online trading platforms, like Amazon, Shopify and eBay, then you know how time-consuming the process can be.
Figuring out fees, refunds and adjustments is important, but cuts into time that could be better used by the seller or their accountant on other parts of the business.
A2X automates that manual process, transforming what would take hours into a few seconds while providing accurate accrual financial information.
This piece of software is a must-have for any ecommerce business to streamline their practices while eliminating errors.
A2X has been especially helpful for us the past year with the boom of online and ecommerce clients we’ve had come to us, an uptick that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.
We wrote integrating Xero and Amazon using A2X last year if you want more detail.
Dext Prepare
I think we can agree that streamlining the business of the day is crucial for any accountant.
As James Scott has grown, we’ve welcomed more clients who want more and more, and while that is definitely not a bad thing, it’s multiplied the hurdles of any project we have to get over.
Dext Prepare, a nifty tool that provides insights about our clients right at our fingertips, is perfect for allowing us to not just handle the extra workload, but thrive.
Just some of the functions Dext Prepare offers include tools to tax deductibles automatically for your clients, request and view paperwork digitally, and help understand the financial performance of a client’s business.
Smartly split tax allows users to divide by description, nominal code or percentage if receipts show tax payable and receivable expenses, while you can extract data from over 1,400 online suppliers with ease and accuracy.
ApprovalMax
This is an app that has allowed us to clear our desks of paper, declutter and make our email inboxes more manageable.
ApprovalMax replaces paper- and email-based approvals with fully automated multi-role and multi-tiered approvals for bills, purchase orders and sales invoices.
Alternatively, executives can approve requests through the ApprovalMax with a touch of a button on their mobile device.
You can share access to an unlimited number of users too, all of whom can create, review and approve Xero documents, all with an audit trail but without the stack of papers to sign.
It’s quite a unique app with benefits that you might not have thought about before, so definitely worth checking out.
Futrli
Forecasting software has had a serious upgrade with Futrli, creating one of the best prediction technologies out there for accountants and business leaders.
With the app, users get a live view of:
- predicted cash
- predicted profit
- predicted sales
- predicted spend
- scenario modelling
- predicted tax.
That’s all just with Futrli Predict. In addition, Futrli Advisor offers live and dynamic dashboards, KPI email alerts and printed report templates that we’ve found particularly useful.
Futrli Portfolio, meanwhile, gives in-depth analysis of Zero and QuickBooks cloud clients to make advisory simple, something that has made it easy to scale our practices up and share them across our team.
Futrli isn’t just a niche tool for accountants, though. It’s incredibly easy to use and understand with its clean and crisp design, so we would recommend it to any business leader who wants to get ahead of the game.
Stripe
This is our go-to when it comes to accepting direct debit, credit card and Apple Pay payments, whether that’s via a Xero invoice or an eCommerce store.
What’s especially special about Stripe is its dashboard which allows users to view all the payments to the bank account in a clear and concise way.
It also comes with an auto pay feature to collect recurring card payment for repeat billing customers.
What’s more, it works perfectly with Xero, automatically matching payments as they come to your Stripe bank feed.
Instead of having to hunt down payments and fees, we can do everything we need with one click.
Get in touch with us to book a free consultation about the benefits that Xero can bring to your business.