Whether you're an established Etsy power seller or are just starting out on your Etsy journey, Etsy accounting is something you need to get to grips with. As such, you might just be considering setting up an A2X Etsy integration.
A2X is an accounting automation software that automatically sends Etsy transaction data to your accounting software. While automating your accounting tasks is invaluable for most online businesses, the rising cost of A2X has left many Etsy sellers wondering whether it's worth it.
Link My Books is a popular, more affordable alternative solution. It has all the same core features as A2X but with a few key differences, which we're going to look at in this guide.
Key Takeaways from this Post
Join me as I go through the ins and outs of both Link My Books and A2X for Etsy sellers. By the end of this guide, you'll be able to determine which software is right for your business.
Why Automate Your Etsy Accounting?
There's a good amount of potential for opening an Etsy store. While earnings vary from seller to seller, some stores rake in a decent $50,000 a year. If you're putting the effort in to enhance your business, you'll likely enjoy business growth. Part of this is to automate your Etsy accounting. Here's why:
Save Time
Automating your Etsy accounting, even as a small business, will save you hours of time every month. This is valuable time you can spend on more productive tasks that'll help you grow your business. The alternative is manual data entry, which is a time-consuming endeavour.
Consider how tedious the bookkeeping side of running an Etsy business is, particularly as your sales volume increases. You'd need to transfer all that data to your eCommerce accounting software to ensure your records are clean and accurate.
Enhanced Data Accuracy
The more Etsy sales you make, the more data you have to work with and transfer. Mistakes will inevitably happen from time to time, even if your sales are still pretty low. And when you make a mistake in your accounts, it can be difficult to spot down the line.
Automating your accounting ensures all your data is pinpoint accurate and free from human error. Software like Link My Books reconciles your accounts. With this rigorous reconciliation, you can be confident the data recorded in your accounting software is a true representation of the amount deposited into your bank account.
Sales Tax Calculations
Automated eCommerce bookkeeping software calculates your sales tax for you. Link My Books has worked with thousands of Etsy sellers since its launch in 2018 and we discovered that more 75% of sellers miscalculate their taxes before coming to us. eCommerce sellers are risking fines and penalties, as well as overpaying their taxes, by not automating their bookkeeping.
Keep Organised
Software like Link My Books and A2X help keep your records organised by breaking down transactions and categorising them accordingly. If you sell on multiple sales channels, you know how difficult it can be to remain organised.
You've got data to record from all different sources, for example, Shopify sales invoices, eBay posts, and Amazon settlements. With automation software, this is all synced and consolidated for better organisation.
Should You Use Etsy Accounting Spreadsheets?
Etsy accounting spreadsheets might be OK if you're just starting out. But, they're not really scalable. If you're planning on growing your business into a more profitable venture, you'll want to at least sign up to an accounting software sooner rather than later.
Etsy accounting is difficult for a growing business if you have to record all your transactions manually in spreadsheets. You also don't get the advantage of reporting and analytical tools which can give you critical insights into business performance.
In essence, there's really no need to use spreadsheets for your Etsy and e commerce accounting. If you're budget is super tight and you're just starting out, it's better to go with a free accounting software solution, at least for the time being until your budget improves.
An Overview of Link My Books and A2X
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Link My Books and A2X simplify Etsy accounting by automatically transferring financial data to your accounting software. They split the data up into revenue, expenses, and profit, and break these down further so you can see where your money's going and what's coming in. This information is compiled into tidy summaries.
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Both Link My Books and A2X calculate taxes and include these in your summary statements. Additionally, they track COGS (cost of goods sold). Tracking your COGS, and how they impact your revenue and taxes, can help you bring your costs down and boost business profitability.
Link My Books vs A2X for Etsy Accounting Automation
Features
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What are the standout features of A2X and Link My Books for Etsy and e commerce sellers? Let's take a look:
A2X
- NetSuite integration: NetSuite is a useful and reputable business management software. Because A2X integrates with NetSuite, users can benefit from some of its features, providing they have a NetSuite subscription. Users get access to more tools that facilitate, for example, order management and inventory management.
- A2X accountant certification course: If you're an Etsy accountant or bookkeeper, you can take the on-demand A2X certification course. This is made up of 9 modules, which consist of video and text content. Once you've completed the course, your accountant business will be added to the A2X directory and you'll also get a badge to show off your certified status.
- Network of certified professional accountants: A2X has the largest network of certified accountants who are discoverable through the platform. This is useful for connecting accountants with Etsy clients. There are a few differences between traditional accounting and e commerce accounting. The accountants in the A2X directory specialise in e commerce accounting so you can be confident they know their stuff.
Link My Books
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- Benchmarking: Link My Books Benchmarking is an impressive analytical tool that gives you a percentile ranking of how your own business is performing compared to similar Etsy businesses. It measures metrics like sales growth, advertising fee ratio, and refund ratio. You'll be presented with easy-to-understand graphs that tell you a median percentage, and precisely where your business ranks in relation to this.
- Guided Tax Wizard: Our Guided Tax Wizard is designed to make setting your tax rates easy. During the setup process, you'll be asked a few short questions about whether your VAT-registered, and whether you sell reduced or zero-rated products. Once you've completed the Tax Wizard, you can select which products belong to what group. And, Link My Books applies the correct tax rates to all your Etsy sales.
- The Profitability Show podcast: Link My Books wants its customers to succeed in building profitable eCommerce businesses. Because of this, we've launched The eCommerce Profitability Show via Spotify. On this show, co-founder Dan discusses growth strategies with his guests, who are successful eCommerce founders and CEOs. They share their secrets and wisdom, and explore how to overcome challenges and identify growth opportunities.
Sales Channel Integrations
Integrations include payment processors, accounting software, and sales platforms. Both A2X and Link My Books integrate with all major payment processors. And both integrate with Xero and QuickBooks Online. A2X integrates with an additional two accounting software; Sage and NetSuite.
These are the sales channels A2X and Link My Books integrate with:
A2X
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- Etsy
- eBay
- Shopify
- Walmart
- Amazon
- BigCommerce
Link My Books
- Etsy
- eBay
- Shopify
- Walmart
- Amazon
- WooCommerce
- TikTok Shop
- Square
Comparing Integrations
Here's a table for a quick comparison:
Support
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Without good support, you might find yourself stuck and unable to use a software to its full potential. With that in mind, we're now going to look at how well A2X and Link My Books supports its customers with Etsy bookkeeping.
A2X
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You can reach out to the A2X team via live chat and email. The software offers convenient 24/7 support too, which means Etsy sellers should be able to get in touch with someone, regardless of their time zone. As there are a lot of people who run an Etsy store alongside their full-time job, this is also convenient for those needing help out of regular office hours.
With regards to learning resources, A2X has a Support Center and Community hub. The support center is populated with articles related to using and setting up an A2X account, and connecting it with an Etsy account, or other sales channel.
The Community hub, on the other hand, has educational resources for growing an eCommerce business or an eCommerce accounting firm.
Link My Books
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Link My Books offers a choice of three ways to get in touch with the support team; live chat, email, and telephone. Because we want to ensure our subscribers get all their questions answered quickly and thoroughly, our support team is made up of qualified eCommerce accounting and bookkeeping experts.
When it comes to educational resources and helpful business-boosting content, we've got loads of information in our Help Center and on our blog. Our Help Center covers an array of topics to help you get stuck into Link My Books and your Etsy bookkeeping tasks.
Our blog discusses all-thing-eCommerce. From connecting Etsy to Xero and claiming a VAT refund on Etsy fees to eBay managed payments and different Shopify tools; Our info-packed blog has something for everyone.
Subscriptions and Cost
Next, I'm putting the spotlight on A2X and Link My Books prices.
A2X
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A2X subscription plans for Etsy seller accounting begin at $29 per month for the Mini. For this price, you can connect one Etsy shop with 200 orders or less. The next plan up, the Basic, costs $45 per month and allows 500 orders. Beyond that is the Pro plan, which allows 2,000 orders for $79/month. And then you have the Advanced for 5,000 orders.
If you have multiple Etsy accounts, you can get one of the Premium plans, which allow you to connect 5 Etsy seller accounts. This costs $229 per month and allows up to 15,000 orders combined across all your stores.
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There are also separate Multi plans for Etsy stores selling across other channels too. So with these plans, you could, for example, connect Etsy, eBay, Amazon, and your Shopify store with A2X under the one subscription. The price of Multi plans begins at $89. This allows you to connect two sales channels to your account with up to 1,000 orders. For four channels, you'll need the Multi 5K for $169/month.
Link My Books
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Link My Books costs significantly less than A2X, with prices starting at $17/month. Plans are separated into three. The Lite plan allows for one sales channel connection, the Pro allows for five, and the Premium allows for ten.
You can adjust the number of orders you need to account for every month using the convenient slider at the top of the page. As you move this, the price also adjusts to reflect your order volume.
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For example, if you want to connect one Etsy seller account and have 1,000 orders per month on that store, you'll need the Lite plan. Slide the slider across to 1,000 and your price becomes $35/month. If you need 5,000 orders the price is $55.
The cost of the Pro plan begins at $29/month which accommodates 200 orders across five channels. So if you have, for example, an Etsy shop, Shopify store, Amazon store, eBay shop, and a TikTok Shop, this is the one for you. For 1,000 orders across these five stores Link My Books costs $49/month. For 5,000 orders, it costs $65/month.
Why Choose Link My Books for Your Automated Accounting System?
There are some very definitive standout reasons for choosing Link My Books for managing financial data from the Etsy marketplace:
Analytics
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Link My Books has some powerful analytics that you can take advantage of. Link My Books Benchmarking, for example, is a first-of-its-kind feature. From comparing Etsy transactions across multiple sales platforms to having a cohort analysis of sales growth trends, Link My Books provides the right tools to help you grow.
Team of Experts
Whether you need help to set up a QuickBooks Online integration or you want to learn strategies from people who have already built successful businesses, Link My Books offers premium support in all-things-e commerce.
Cost-Effective
Link My Books keeps its costs low and excellent value for your money. Manage Etsy payments and accounting tasks from as little as $17/month.
Scalable
Link My Books is helps you scale your Etsy Shop because you can adjust the number or orders you need to suit your business. We have a wide selection of sales platforms to integrate with, and we make it easy to add these to your account when you decide to expand your business.
You Sell (or Want to Sell) on Other Marketplaces as Well as Etsy
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With a Link My Books integration, you can access and manage all your platforms' cash flow data and financial statements from your one dashboard. So whether you want to analyse Etsy transactions, eBay managed payments payouts, Amazon settlements, or even reconcile bank deposits, Link My Books is on-hand to help.
Link My Books encourages customers to operate on multiple channels with its simple multi-channel pricing structure, as well as its analytical feature; Profit & Loss by Channel.
This is another winning analytical tool designed to help your business thrive. You can compare your Etsy financials with transactions from other stores. Look at aspects like sales, advertising fees, shipping fees, refunds, and taxes, to see where your efforts are yielding the best results. You can also filter transactions by data and compare store performance side-by-side.
How to Migrate From A2X to Link My Books
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If you already have an A2X account but want to migrate to Link My Books, here's how to do it in four easy steps:
- Sign up for your free Link My Books trial. Answer the questions and connect your Etsy and bookkeeping software.
- Fill in the Guided Tax Wizard using the same mapping that you used for A2X and confirm your setup.
- Stop transferring data from A2X to your QuickBooks Online or Xero account.
- Start transferring data from Link My Books to QuickBooks Online or Xero.
If you Want to Connect Link My Books to Multiple Channels
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At the top of your dashboard, access the drop-down menu to find the option to add another channel. You'll then go through the short process of connecting your additional channel, which is the same as when you connected the first channel.
Link My Books: Integrate Etsy and Your Accounting Software for Accurate Accounting
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Do you want your e commerce accounting to be accurate? If so, an automation software that integrates with both your Etsy store and your QuickBooks or Xero software is the way forward. A2X might be the solution for Etsy sellers who also have a BigCommerce store, or use Sage or NetSuite accounting software.
However, Link My Books has lower prices and more analytical tools to make accounting easier for most e commerce businesses. We eliminate the need for manual data entry, and deliver expert advice on developing your brand through our profitability podcast.
If you want to experience the benefits of Link My Books first-hand, grab your free trial today. You'll be automating your accounts in under 15 minutes.
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