Add-ons to the cloud accounting program.
BoxFreeIT has put together a quick wrap-up of four vendors for those who missed out on Xero’s first Australian users conference last weekend.
All vendors’ products are web-based and plug into the Xero platform.
- What is it?: Investment portfolio management
- Founded: 2008
- Origin: New Zealand
- Customers: “thousands of users”
- Price: $5-$39 per month
Sharesight is a program for tracking investment assets such as shares and funds. It takes feeds from brokers and creates a record of share buys and sells, tabulates the dividends from all shares held and calculates the return on investment of a share portfolio.
“Is it beating the market, and which sectors are up or down?” executive director Andrew Bird says.
It also records when a dividend has been paid. The program is designed to replace the shoebox of dividend statements or an Excel sheet used by small investors. Sharesight automatically shows total dividend revenue and capital gains.
Transactions are pushed into Xero for reconciliation. This can cut down the work for accountants who otherwise have to reconstruct the transactions, Bird says.
The major banks’ share management services report which shares have been bought and sold but can’t produce a tax return or a record of dividends, he adds. Sharesight has formed alliances with online brokers and accountants to sell its software to their customers.
- What is it?: Receipt and business-card data entry
- Founded: 2007
- Origin: US
- Customers: “high thousands”
- Price: $20-$100 per month by volume of receipts
Shoeboxed is a service that aims to take away the hassle of entering expense receipts and business cards. A business mails their receipts and cards in a waterproof and tear resistant satchel to Shoeboxed’s Australian processing centre.
Receipts and cards are scanned and the scans checked by human operators in Australia. Despite higher labour costs, Shoeboxed’s processes mean Australian operators can compete with overseas outsourcers. The company claims to have flipped an accounting firm from a similar service in Malaysia.
The savings in time for small businesses can be considerable. It cost a Sydney cafe $40 a month to use Shoeboxed for the week’s receipts and avoided six days of data entry, says Simon Foster, Australian managing director.
Shoeboxed also takes care of email receipts from online businesses, which are forwarded on and included in the database (in CSV, vCard or Excel formats). Shoeboxed can upload the receipts’ details directly into Xero, and add contacts from business cards to Salesforce.com. A Google Apps sync is in the works.
What’s the biggest sales objection people have? “People didn’t believe us.They initally thought it was a scam because it was too cheap,” Foster says.
- What is it?: Financial performance reporting
- Founded: 2009
- Origin: New Zealand
- Customers: 67 chartered accountants firms
- Price: $175-$300 per month for up to 12 businesses, $19 per month for each extra.
Spotlight Reporting sells its add-on to “progressive accountants and bookkeepers” who use Xero with their customers. Spotlight takes financial data in Xero and rolls out performance reports with charts, analysis and KPIs which accountants can use to guide their clients.
Spotlight’s CEO Richard Francis says the software gives accountants an extra revenue stream as they can sell reports to their customers for up to $600.
An end-user version is in the works, with accountants partners filling the role of trainer and adviser to businesses that want to create reports themselves.
A cash forecasting and scenario budgeting tool called Spotlight Forecasting is due to launch this month.
Spotlight has only been around since February and most of its customers are in New Zealand and Australia, though it has made some sales in the US and the UK.
- What is it?: Point-of-sale
- Founded: 2009
- Origin: New Zealand
- Customers: 2200
- Price: US$29-US$99 per month
Vend claims to be the only web-based point-of-sale program that doesn’t require software to be installed on the PC opreating a cash register. It is also the only point-of-sale that integrates with Xero.
Vend has been written in HTML5 which means it operates on a web browser on iPad, iPhone, Mac, Android and Windows phones, tablets and desktops. Sales recorded on a device are sent wirelessly to Xero. “With a click of a button you can get the full day’s sales history,” CEO Vaughan Rowsell says.
Vend is selling its software through accountants who can collect 20 percent commission for the life of the customer. Vend sells training and certification for accountants at US$299 and promotes a partner directory to funnel sales leads.