A2X Shopify Integration: is it Worth it? Read Before Buying

Connecting A2X with Your Shopify store might seem like a solid choice for managing your eCommerce accounting. But is it worth it? Link My Books is a worthy competitor, which is why thousands of Shopify businesses sign up (and stay).

Software like A2X and Link My Books both provide a valuable service for Shopify stores. They break down Shopify payout data and automatically send it to your accounting software, like QuickBooks Online or Xero. But if both these softwares have the same core functionality, how do you choose between them?

To answer this question, you need to look at each software's features, integrations, level of support, and value for money. And that's exactly what we're going to do today.

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Join me as I dive deep into the Link My Books vs A2X for Shopify conundrum.

A2X vs Link My Books at a Glance

First, let's get an overview of these two softwares:

About A2X Software

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A2X transfers sales data from your Shopify store to accounting software. It breaks it down, categorises it, and organises it efficiently. With A2X, you can reconcile Shopify payout data quickly and easily. And, with dependable accuracy.

Additionally, A2X accounts for sales tax in its payout summaries so that this information is readily available when it comes to filing your returns. It offers detailed reports so you can keep track of your Shopify transactions and finances.

About Link My Books

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Link My Books offers very similar features to A2X. It generates accurate summaries that reconcile payout data and bank deposits, and automatically sends your financial information, including sales, advertising fees, and shipping, over to your accounting software.

Link My Books also calculates your sales tax and enables Shopify store owners to track their COGS (cost of goods sold).

One of the main differences between Link My Books and A2X is the powerful analytical tools that Link My Books offers its customers. These enable you to measure Shopify performance against your other e commerce stores, as well as industry averages.

Comparing A2X With Link My Books

• Features
• Integrations
• Support
• Pricing

Comparing Features

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Let's begin by looking at the key features of both A2X and Link My Books:

A2X

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• Payment gateway daily summaries: Suitable for both Shopify businesses and BigCommerce businesses, A2X produces daily summaries from a variety of third party payment gateways. These summaries include data like sales, taxes, fees, and refunds.
• Netsuite Shopify integration: A2X supports a Netsuite Shopify connection which adds functionality to your eCommerce accounting setup. This means users can benefit from features like inventory management, in addition to e commerce accounting and bookkeeping solutions.
• A2X certification course: A2X's certification course is designed for accountants working with eCommerce businesses. The course consists of 9 modules, and is presented in a variety of formats, including videos and articles. Those that complete the course get to be listed in the A2X accountant directory and they also receive a certification badge.

Link My Books

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• Profit & Loss by Channel: Link My Books has an advanced analytics feature called Profit & Loss by Channel. This, as the name suggests, enables users to compare the performance of their different sales channels, including Shopify. You can do side-by-side comparisons of metrics like sales, refunds, storage fees, and advertising fees. And, filter the dates you want to view. This will help you make informed decisions based on real data.
• Benchmarking: Link My Books Benchmarking is a revolutionary, first-of-its-kind feature, that enables customers to compare their Shopify store with similar stores. It applies a cohort analysis, and data is anonymised to give everyone a level playing field. You'll get a percentile ranking of metrics like sales growth, fee ratio, and refund ratio. And, you get a visual representation of where your business stands in relation to industry averages.
• Guided Tax Wizard: Link My Books has a very handy Guided Tax Wizard which you'll encounter during the short setup process. If you choose to set the tax rates yourself, you'll be asked just a few questions and be guided through the process. Alternatively, you can take advantage of your free onboarding call at this stage where you'll get 1:1 help via a video call with one of our experts. This ensures your tax rates, and your whole account, is set up correctly.

Where Link My Books Excels

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Link My Books really excels with its range of analytical accounting tools. In particular, our new feature, Benchmarking, ensures a definitive understanding of your business's performance compared with industry trends and competitors as a whole.

With Link My Books' analytical accounting tools, you can access data that you won't get with A2X. This data can help you scale your business by giving you unique insights of success and failures across multiple sales channels.

Where A2X Excels

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With that being said, we can't ignore the additional features that integrating with NetSuite offers A2X users. This software will help you keep your business organised, for example, with order management and inventory management tools. Additionally, the daily payment gateway summaries is a useful feature for Shopify sellers and the accounting process.

Comparing Integrations

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Both Link My Books and A2X offer a good number of integrations. Integrations are key for scaling a Shopify store and growing a business. Even if you don't currently sell across multiple sales channels now, at some point in the future, you might want to branch out. Therefore, the sales platforms that your automated bookkeeping solution connects with should be something you consider.

A2X

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A2X integrates with QuickBooks Online, Xero, Sage, and NetSuite. Additionally, it integrates with various payment processors. But when it comes to sales channels, these are the ones it can connect with:

• Shopify
• Amazon
• Etsy
• eBay
• BigCommerce
• Walmart

Link My Books

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Link My Books connects with two of the best accounting softwares; QuickBooks Online and Xero. It also integrates with all major payment processors, including PayPal and Klarna. And, these are the sales channels Link My Books integrates with:

• Shopify
• Amazon
• TikTok Shop
• Walmart
• Square
• Etsy
• eBay
• WooCommerce

Where Link My Books Excels

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Link My Books offers more eCommerce platform integrations than A2X. This gives your business extra potential for expanding into new territory. The inclusion of TikTok Shop is also a big plus point. As you might know, TikTok Shop is rapidly gaining traction as a go-to marketplace, particularly for younger generations.

Where A2X Excels

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A2X has a larger choice of accounting software integrations though. So you'll be able to use it if you work with Sage Accounting or NetSuite Accounting. Although not necessarily as widely-used as Xero and QuickBooks Online, sage and Netsuite are good, dependable softwares.

Comparing Support

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Now we're going to look at the all-important aspect of support:

A2X Support

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A2X provides round-the-clock support. Users can get in touch through email and live chat. If you get the Premium 5K plan, you'll also benefit from 'Premium 1:1 support'. In addition to that, A2X offers a good selection of resources to help you learn the ropes when it comes to the software, your business, and your accounting responsibilities for your Shopify store.

A2X has templates and checklists specifically for accountants and bookkeepers to use. It also has a community hub that covers a wide range of topics, from marketing your business to backdating your books.

Link My Books Support

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The Link My Books support team is made up of knowledgeable eCommerce and accounting experts. We're are on-hand to answer your questions and support you through your Link My Books and Shopify journey. We offer live chat support, email support, and a free onboarding session for all our customers.

In addition to fantastic support from our expert team, you can browse our wide range of learning materials. You'll find articles, guides, webinars, and a podcast covering all sorts of topics. From setting up your Link My Books account and tracking cost of goods sold, to Shopify payment gateways and gift cards, we share the information you need through our range of learning materials.

Where Link My Books Excels

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One of the things that makes Link My Books excel in its support is its podcast, "The eCommerce Profitability Show". This podcast is crammed with knowledge as Link My Books co-founder Dan discusses all-things-eCommerce with other industry experts. The podcast talks about growth strategies in the world of eCommerce, and how you can scale your business and boost your revenue.

Where A2X Excels

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The obvious here is the fact that A2X offers 24/7 support. This is useful because it means you can get in touch with the team whenever you need to, regardless of your time zone. Or, of course, if you typically work on your Shopify store at odd hours, you don't need to wait until the morning to reach someone.

Comparing Pricing

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Now we get to the big deciding factor for many Shopify stores; the price! Let's go through the pricing structure for A2X and Link My Books Shopify plans.

A2X

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The A2X plan you choose will depend on the number of Shopify stores you have and the number of other sales channels you want to connect it to. If you have stores across multiple channels, like Shopify, eBay, and Walmart, for example,  you'll need to choose a multi-plan option.

The smallest A2X plan for one Shopify store is called the 'Mini' and it costs $29 per month; a recent increase from $19. This affords one store up to 200 orders per month. For the example above, with the three different platforms, you'll need the A2X Multi 2K which costs $115/month and allows up to 2,000 orders across the three platforms combined.

A2X offers a free trial to new subscribers.

Here are some examples of A2X plans available:

Link My Books

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Link My Books is the cheaper, more straightforward, option. It also provides better value. Our smallest plan is just $17 per month. This allows for up to 200 orders on your one channel. For those that sell on Amazon too, you can also connect an unlimited number of marketplaces to all plans. For example, Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, etc.

For just $29 per month (the same cost as A2X's Mini plan), you can connect 5 sales channels to Link My Books and manage them all from the one account.

If you're a Link My Books customer with higher order volumes, you can connect 5 channels with a combined 5,000 orders per month for just $65. More still, if your budget allows, you can sign up for a full year and get two month for free.

You can also get a free trial with Link My Books.

Here are some examples of Link My Books plans available:

Which E Commerce Bookkeeping Automation Solution Should You Choose?

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The solution you choose depends on the four factors we've gone through above:

Features

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The features of each option should play a part in helping you decide which one to go for. But as we said, this can be difficult when we're talking about two solutions with very similar features as a whole.

Link My Books and A2X both serve the same overall purpose after all; to ensure accurate accounting by automatically sending details of Shopify financial transactions over to your accounting software. In both cases, these are in the form of payout summaries that include sales, fees, taxes, and refunds, among others.

To get to the heart of the matter then, you'll need to look deeper at the more subtle differences between the two. For example, Link My Books has more powerful analytics that'll help you grow your eCommerce business. A2X, on the other hand, has an in-depth certification course for accountants and bookkeepers.

Integrations

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The integrations for each solution might force your hand when it comes to choosing between them. Both have most integrations in common; QuickBooks Online, Shopify, Amazon, etc. But there are differences. If you have a BigCommerce store as well as Shopify, you'll naturally opt for A2X. Whereas if you have a WooCommerce store, Link My Books will be the one for you.

Although A2X facilitates a NetSuite integration, which will be really useful for some businesses, Link My Books offers more eCommerce platforms to connect with. So when it comes to integrations, it's really about honing in what's important to you as a business. And, weighing up your options with the cost.

Support

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Again, support is something that you need to decide for yourself. Both Link My Books and A2X have their advantages. A2X's round-the-clock support makes its team more accessible.

However, Link My Books is made up of a team of accounting experts. And, both co-founders have in-depth eCommerce experience and expertise which they share with their audience. The Link My Books team is committed to helping eCommerce stores grow, which is essential for top-notch support.

Pricing

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Whichever way you look at it, the pricing aspect of your decision is pretty clear-cut. Link My Books is not only cheaper, but it also gives you more for your money by quite a long stretch, particularly with A2X's recent price increases. Consider the number of channels you can connect, the number of orders plans allow per month, and the historical Shopify sales data you can access.

What if I Want to Migrate to Link My Books?

If you're an A2X user and you're keen to migrate to Link My Books, the process is super simple and can be done in four steps. And it all starts with clicking on that free trial button. Once you've clicked that button, the steps are as follows:

• Step 1: Answer the few questions, connect your Shopify account and your bookkeeping account.
• Step 2: Copy the mapping you used in A2X into Link My Books during the tax rate setup process.
• Step 3: Stop sending Shopify data from A2X to your accounting software.
• Step 4: Start sending Shopify data from Link My Books to your accounting software.

This article goes into much more detail about migrating to Link My Books. If you have any trouble at all, make sure you contact the team, who'll be happy to help. Or, select the option to book a 1:1 onboarding call when you sign up.

Shopify Accounting Accuracy You Can Trust With Link My Books

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Link My Books is an automated eCommerce accounting software that ensures your accounts reconcile perfectly. Calculating your Shopify sales tax and tracking your Shopify cost of goods sold, Link My Books accounts for sales, fees, taxes, and shipping so that your records are accurate and organised. Link My Books is the perfect bookkeeping automation solution for Shopify sellers.

And if you're a Shopify accountant or bookkeeper with multiple clients, automatically sending client data to your accounting software makes tracking codes, taxes, and transactions that much simpler.

What's more, Link My Books gives you access to powerful analytics that help Shopify sellers grow their store and boost their Shopify sales. We keep our costs low and our value for money high.

Sign up for your free trial today (no credit card necessary) and enjoy accurate Shopify bookkeeping in as little as 15 minutes.