15 Best Xero Add-Ons For Your Business in 2024 (Compared)

Managing your business finances efficiently is crucial, but the default Xero software doesn't always provide all the features and tools you need. This is where Xero add-ons come in handy.

Xero add-ons are apps created by third-party developers that integrate with Xero to enhance its capabilities. With the right add-ons, you can automate workflows, gain better insights into your financial data, and streamline processes.

But with so many add-ons available, how do you choose the right ones for your business?

This guide compares 15 of the top Xero add-ons to help you find the perfect fit.

Managing your business finances efficiently is crucial, but the default Xero software doesn't always provide all the features and tools you need. This is where Xero add-ons come in handy.

Xero add-ons are apps created by third-party developers that integrate with Xero to enhance its capabilities. With the right add-ons, you can automate workflows, gain better insights into your financial data, and streamline processes.

But with so many add-ons available, how do you choose the right ones for your business?

This guide compares 15 of the top Xero add-ons to help you find the perfect fit.

What are Xero add-ons?

Xero add-ons are software applications that supplement Xero's core accounting features. They are designed to integrate seamlessly with Xero to provide extended functionality tailored to your business needs.

Add-ons enable you to do things like:

• Automate data capture and bookkeeping
• Enhance reporting and business insights
• Improve inventory and order management
• Streamline invoice management and payments
• Integrate other software tools with Xero
  

Unlike standalone software, add-ons work from within your Xero dashboard for unified access to information.

Xero add-ons vs integrations

The main difference between Xero add-ons and integrations is that Xero add-ons directly enhance Xero with new features and tools accessible from within Xero.

Integrations, on the other hand, connect Xero to external software platforms to facilitate data flows between systems. They don't necessarily add new capabilities but allow Xero to communicate with other tools you use.

Best Xero Add-Ons

• Link My Books
• Dext Prepare
• Hubdoc
• Vend
• Chaser
• Spotlight Reporting
• Float
• Expensify
• Fathom
• GoCardless
• QuickBooks Commerce
• Unleashed
• ApprovalMax
• Square
• Deputy

1. Link My Books

The best Xero add-on for Amazon sellers

Link My Books is an indispensable accounting solution for Amazon sellers looking to simplify financial management. It eliminates manual work by automatically importing Amazon settlement reports into Xero and converting complex Amazon data into comprehensible financial records.

Designed specifically for ecommerce businesses selling on Amazon, Link My Books saves hours spent on bookkeeping and provides real-time performance insights.

Features

• Automated Amazon Data Import
• Multi-Marketplace Support
• Granular Sales Reporting
• VAT/GST Automation
  

Benefits

Streamlined Bookkeeping

Link My Books saves Amazon sellers significant time by automating the import of Amazon settlement data into Xero. It eliminates the need for sellers or accountants to manually enter Amazon transactions, which can take up to 16 hours per month. With automated imports that sync on a near real-time basis, sellers can be confident their Xero accounting is always up-to-date.

Tax Compliance

Operating on multiple Amazon marketplaces across borders presents complex VAT/GST requirements that Link My Books helps sellers manage seamlessly. By automatically calculating taxes owed per marketplace and generating complete reports required for tax filings, Link My Books ensures sellers remain compliant wherever they sell on Amazon.

Operational Insights

With detailed breakdowns of Amazon transaction-level data including fees, advertising costs, refunds and more, Link My Books empowers sellers to make informed business decisions. Sellers can pinpoint profit leaks, identify best selling items, assess the ROI of Amazon ads, and implement other data-driven optimizations. The valuable insights unlocked by Link My Books are a game changer.

Seamless Integration

Link My Books offers seamless integration between Xero and popular global online marketplaces:

• Amazon to Xero integration
• eBay to Xero integration
• Etsy to Xero integration
• Shopify to Xero integration
• Walmart to Xero integration
• TikTok Shop to Xero integration
  

Overall, Link My Books provides end-to-end automation for Amazon sellers' bookkeeping needs, ensuring accurate, up-to-date financials while unlocking valuable insights and freeing up time.

2. Dext Prepare

The best Xero add-on for automating data capture

Dext Prepare (formerly Receipt Bank) eliminates manual data entry by using AI to extract key information from receipts and bills. It matches transactions to bank feeds for simplified reconciliation in Xero.

Features

• AI-powered data extraction
• Secure digital storage
• Real-time syncing with Xero
• Mobile app capturing
• Multi-currency support
  

Benefits

Time Savings

By extracting and matching receipt data automatically, Dext Prepare can reduce the time spent on manual data entry and bookkeeping by over 80%. Accounting teams get countless hours back in their day, freeing them up to focus on more value-adding tasks. The hours saved each month directly translate to bottom line benefits.

Accuracy

With data extraction powered by AI-assisted machine learning, Dext Prepare delivers incredible accuracy in capturing receipt details. This minimizes human error that can easily occur with manual methods. Further accuracy assurances come from bank statement matching to reconcile transactions seamlessly.

Process Efficiency

Dext Prepare enables accounting teams to assess financial data and generate reports in real-time. This facilitates data-driven decision making to help businesses operate proactively. It also eliminates the need for handling tedious and repetitive manual entry tasks. The benefits cascade across the finance function through time savings, error reductions, and simplified bank reconciliations.

Overall, Dext Prepare streamlines accounting workflows by automating the traditionally tedious process of receipt and invoice data capture.

3. Hubdoc

The best for centralizing financial documents

Hubdoc automatically retrieves financial documents from different sources and extracts key data for direct import into Xero, acting as a central document hub.

Features

• Document fetching
• AI-based data extraction
• Secure cloud storage
• Xero integration
  

Benefits

Improved Efficiency

Hubdoc delivers massive time savings by extracting key data from documents automatically versus tedious manual processes. It enables finance teams to quickly process documents digitally as they arrive rather than getting bogged down with piles of paperwork. The hours saved allow staff to provide higher-value services.

Enhanced Reporting

With all financial documents organized neatly in Hubdoc, businesses can access their historical transactional records seamlessly. This facilitates detailed auditing and eliminates time wasted searching for specific documents. Clean digital documents also improve the accuracy of reporting.

Centralized Data

Having all of a business's financial documents stored securely in one centralized, cloud-based repository offers immense benefit. Digital document workflows help reduce clutter and improve organization. Connecting documents digitally also allows for smoother workflows between tools.

Overall, Hubdoc eliminates laborious manual processes by digitizing document management and data extraction, enabling finance teams to focus on value-driven analysis.

4. Vend

The best retail POS add-on for Xero

Vend is a powerful cloud-based retail management platform with POS, inventory, and customer loyalty features. It syncs all sales and product data with Xero for unified reporting and accounting.

Features

• Cloud POS and inventory
• Omnichannel sales unification
• Customer profiles and loyalty
• Real-time Xero sync
  

Benefits

Unified Commerce

Vend unifies data across physical and digital sales channels, ensuring customers have consistent experiences regardless of how they shop. With real-time syncing, retailers have a single source of truth for all their commerce data, eliminating silos that limit visibility. A unified view of inventory, sales, and customers also enables informed omnichannel strategies.

Business Insights

Vend provides 360-degree visibility into retail performance through detailed reports on sales, inventory, margins, customer engagement and more. Retailers gain data-driven guidance to optimize staffing, inventory levels, promotions, store layouts, customer experiences and all core operations. These are the insights needed for smart omnichannel growth.

Omnichannel Success

For modern retailers, unified commerce is critical to success, and Vend delivers on this in a powerfully integrated way. With one platform managing in-store, online, mobile commerce as well as order fulfillment and inventory, retailers can deliver the top-tier shopping experience consumers now expect. The future of retail is true omnichannel engagement.

Overall, Vend offers retailers the tools and data needed to deliver excellent unified commerce experiences. It unlocks omnichannel success by centralizing operations and providing valuable business insights.

5. Chaser

The best for automating invoice chasing

Chaser removes the manual work of chasing late customer invoices with automated reminders and insights to improve collections.

Features

• Customizable reminders
• Payment tracking
• Xero sync
• AR dashboard
  

Benefits

Cash Flow Improvement

By automating payment reminders, Chaser can accelerate invoice payments by up to 4x, resulting in massive cash flow improvements. Companies reduce invoice payment times from an average of 25 days down to just 6 days. With the cash coming in faster, businesses gain financial confidence and flexibility to fuel growth plans.

Process Efficiency

Chaser saves substantial time spent following up on late customer payments, allowing AR teams to refocus this time on more value-add initiatives. It eliminates the tedious manual work of sending reminders, logging responses, assessing risk etc. Just set automated rules, and Chaser handles the chasing.

Enhanced Visibility

With Chaser's AR dashboard, businesses gain real-time visibility into all outstanding invoices and customer response trends. This allows for proactive decisions on payment terms, credit limits, and prioritizing high-risk customers. Proactively managing collections and cash flow improves financial stability.

Overall, Chaser automates the critical but time-consuming process of collecting owed payments, accelerating cash flow while saving time and providing insights.

6. Spotlight Reporting

The best for in-depth financial insights

Spotlight Reporting transforms Xero data into presentation-ready financial reports, KPI dashboards, and forecasts to uncover deep business insights.

Features

• Custom financial reports
• Interactive dashboards
• Forecasting tools
• Consolidated reporting
  

Benefits

Easy Reporting

Spotlight Reporting enables the creation of board-ready financial reports in minutes instead of hours. It also allows for scheduled delivery to stakeholders. By consolidating reporting across business entities, it provides holistic insights. The ease of use helps democratize financial reporting.

Strategic Insights

With interactive dashboards and easy drill-downs, Spotlight Reporting reveals trends, opportunities, and performance gaps that would be hard to surface in static reports. Business leaders gain visibility to cut costs, identify growth levers, and make other data-driven decisions.

Proactive Planning

Detailed forecasting capabilities in Spotlight Reporting allow businesses to model scenarios, continuously refine projections with actuals, optimize budgets, and minimize risks. By enabling collaborative planning, Spotlight transforms financial planning from a cost center to a value-driver.

Overall, Spotlight Reporting enables comprehensive financial insights through automated reporting while unlocking the power of data to guide strategic planning.

7. Float

The best for cash flow forecasting

Float offers accurate, real-time cash flow forecasting that syncs with Xero data and adjusts to your actual cash transactions.

Features

• Live forecast updating
• Budgeting tools
• Bank feed integration
• Cash management insights
  

Benefits

Real-time Visibility

Float provides always up-to-date visibility into cash positions. Businesses can track bank balances against forecasts to anticipate shortages or surpluses rather than being caught by surprise. Confidence in cash flow is invaluable.

Proactive Planning

With Float, businesses can model cash scenarios, adjust forecasts when plans change, and manage bills to avoid cash crunches. Having the flexibility to course correct based on real-time cash data enables growth.

Simplified Forecasting

By integrating directly with bank feeds, Float eliminates the need for complex spreadsheets. The automated forecasts save significant time while improving accuracy. With Float, finance teams spend less time projecting and more time analyzing the drivers.

Overall, Float delivers real-time cash flow visibility that empowers businesses to proactively manage their financial position and spending decisions.

8. Expensify

The best for streamlining expense management

Expensify simplifies business expense reporting and approvals with smart scanning technology and clear visibility into spend.

Features

• Automated report creation
• Configurable approvals
• Receipt scanning
• Xero integration
  

Benefits

Process Optimization

By automating manual processes, Expensify cuts the time spent on expense reports by up to 2 hours each. It reduces reporting costs by over 50% and eliminates paper-driven processes. The streamlined workflows increase productivity.

Visibility & Control

Expensify provides configurable approval rules and visibility into spend trends, ensuring tight control over expenditures in line with financial policies. The integrated reporting enhances transparency and accountability.

Employee Benefits

Employees save time through mobile receipt capturing and expedited reimbursements. Removing frustrating paperwork improves employee satisfaction while ensuring they follow travel and spend policies.

Overall, Expensify reduces the cost and effort of expense reporting while ensuring compliance, improving visibility, and enhancing the employee experience.

9. Fathom

Best for financial reporting and analysis

Fathom provides easy-to-understand financial reports, KPIs, ratios, and benchmarks that deliver insights to guide better business decisions.

Features

• Automated reporting
• Custom metrics and KPIs
• Data benchmarking
• Dashboards
  

Benefits

Easy Interpretation

Fathom transforms complex financial data into clear, visual reports and dashboards accessible to finance and non-finance users alike. The easy absorption of insights helps fuel strategic discussions.

Performance Assessment

By analyzing key metrics across profitability, cash flow, growth and more, Fathom identifies areas of strength and opportunities for improvement. Benchmarking against industry standards offers context for goal-setting.

Strategic Planning

With a 360-degree view of historical performance and growth scenarios modeled, Fathom enables data-driven decision making and planning. Teams can collaboratively prioritize initiatives that drive performance.

Overall, Fathom delivers simplified financial reporting and actionable insights to optimize strategic planning and execution.

10. GoCardless

The best for recurring invoice payments

GoCardless optimizes recurring invoice payments through automated direct debit. Its seamless Xero sync provides updated invoice statuses.

Features

• Recurring direct debit
• Global payments
• Xero integration
• Recurring billing
  

Benefits

Payment Reliability

GoCardless enables reliable, on-time invoice payment through bank debit with a nearly 3x higher success rate than cards. Failed payments and churn are minimized by preventing lapsed or canceled cards.

Financial Efficiency

With accelerated payments at lower cost than credit cards, GoCardless improves cash flow and lowers transaction fees. Automation and Xero sync also dramatically reduce accounting time and costs.

Process Optimization

Automated payment collection eliminates manual chasing and reconciliation work. Combined with Xero integration, GoCardless optimizes the payment process end-to-end. Support for global payment needs from one platform also streamlines receivables.

Overall, GoCardless offers businesses simpler, more reliable invoice payments along with significant operational efficiency gains.

11. QuickBooks Commerce

The best for omnichannel inventory and order management

QuickBooks Commerce is an omnichannel inventory and order management platform integrated with Xero for smart financials.

Features

• Unified inventory management
• Order automation
• CRM capabilities
• Xero sync
  

Benefits

Inventory Optimization

With unified visibility into inventory across all channels, businesses can proactively avoid stockouts, minimize excess stock carrying costs, and adjust levels quickly based on demand.

Fulfillment Efficiency

By automating order processing workflows with barcode scanning, routing, and integrations, QuickBooks Commerce reduces fulfillment times by up to 80% while minimizing errors.

Business Scalability

QuickBooks Commerce provides the visibility and automation needed to efficiently manage the omnichannel sales growth. Deep integrations with Xero, POS, ecommerce, and 3PLs enable a truly unified commerce platform.

Overall, QuickBooks Commerce delivers the tools to optimize omnichannel inventory, fulfill orders efficiently, and provide excellent customer experiences at scale.

12. Unleashed

The best for omnichannel inventory management

Unleashed provides powerful inventory management optimized for retailers, wholesalers, distributors, and manufacturers.

Features

• Real-time visibility
• Planning tools
• Order management
• Automated costing
• Integrated POS, barcoding
  

Benefits

Accuracy

From barcode scanning to inventory costing, Unleashed builds accuracy into inventory management processes. Businesses minimize errors in picking, packing, and selling to improve operations.

Efficiency

By optimizing stock ordering, turning stock faster, and streamlining fulfillment workflows, Unleashed creates considerable time and cost efficiencies for omnichannel sellers.

Optimized Inventory

Unleashed provides the real-time inventory transparency and movement tracking capabilities needed to minimize waste, reduce carrying costs, and drive profitability.

Overall, Unleashed offers comprehensive inventory optimization tools tailored to the needs of product-based businesses selling any combination of in-store, online or wholesale.

13. ApprovalMax

The best for automated approvals

ApprovalMax removes bottlenecks from purchase and expense approvals by streamlining multi-role sign-offs within Xero.

Features

• Multi-role workflows
• Bulk approvals
• Xero integration
• Approval analytics
  

Benefits

Efficiency

By eliminating time-consuming spreadsheet and email approvals, ApprovalMax accelerates the approval process up to 4X. Automation also alleviates administrative workload

Compliance

ApprovalMax strengthens compliance by ensuring the right approvers digitally sign off based on customizable rules. It maintains clear audit trails of all spending decisions.

Process Optimization

With comprehensive data and analytics on approver performance, bottlenecks are easily identified enabling continuous improvement of approval workflows.

Overall, ApprovalMax brings order, speed, and compliance to previously chaotic approval processes to optimize procurement and invoicing.

14. Square

The best integrated POS and payments solution

Square provides a seamless POS, payment processing, and business management solution integrated with Xero.

Features

• Integrated payments
• POS and sales management
• Inventory tracking
• Xero sync
  

Benefits

Streamlined Transactions

Square delivers fast, integrated payments across channels providing a smooth commerce experience for businesses and customers alike.

Real-Time Data

With sales data automatically synced to Xero in real time, Square provides up-to-date visibility into performance trends to inform critical decisions.

Simplified Accounting

By eliminating manual payment data entry, Square reduces accounting workload. The automated sync with Xero also minimizes reconciliation work.

Secure Payments

Square processes all payments securely, minimizing fraud to build customer trust while protecting the business from liability.

Overall, Square simplifies omnichannel commerce operations with integrated POS, payments, and automated accounting.

15. Deputy

The best hourly workforce management solution

Deputy simplifies shift scheduling, time tracking, and integrated payroll powered by Xero.

Features

• Shift scheduling
• Time and attendance tracking
• Team communication
• Xero integration
  

Benefits

Optimized Scheduling

Intelligent shift scheduling ensures proper staff coverage while accommodating employee availability and labor regulations.

Accuracy

By synchronizing hours worked in real time to Xero payroll, Deputy eliminates discrepancies that lead to payroll errors and compliance risks.

Visibility & Productivity

Deputy provides visibility into team performance and facilitates communication and task management to drive higher employee productivity.

Streamlined Payroll

Automated hourly data transfer removes manual processes enabling payroll processing with simplicity and accuracy.

Overall, Deputy offers robust yet easy workforce management that seamlessly connects with Xero payroll.

How to Choose the Right Xero Add-On

With so many options, selecting the best Xero add-on for your business needs some consideration around:

Your Core Business Processes

Focus on solutions that optimize your most frequent or pain point processes for maximum impact. Are you wasting time on data entry or inventory? Choose tools like Receipt Bank or Unleashed that target these areas.

Your Industry & Business Model

Opt for industry-specific tools like Vend for retail POS or GoCardless for subscription billing models. Solutions tailored to your niche will offer the most relevant features.

Number of Users

Consider your team size and number of users. While some add-ons are unlimited, core features in others may be capped per user.

Budget

Add-ons range from $10 to $100+ per month. Analyze the ROI based on expected time and cost savings to set realistic budgets.

Ease of Use

Complex tools with steep learning curves won't provide value quickly. Look for intuitive UIs, easy rollout, and robust but accessible features.

Sync Your Ecommerce Data Seamlessly with Xero

As an ecommerce seller, you deal with sales data from multiple online stores that needs to be accurately accounted for in Xero. But importing reports and entering hundreds of transactions is an operational nightmare.

In this article, we uncovered solutions that can automate importing your sales data from any ecommerce accounting platform into Xero with ease.

Specifically, Link My Books provides direct integration between all major ecommerce platforms and Xero.

With Link My Books, you can:

• Save hours on manual data entry for orders, refunds, fees, and more
• Gain valuable insights into sales and traffic trends across your stores
• Stay tax compliant with automated sales tax calculations
  

If you're ready to eliminate the operational headache of accounting for multichannel ecommerce sales, get started with a 14 day free trial of Link My Books. Experience the ease of syncing your online sales data with Xero in minutes.