/U/Xero

Whether you’re trying to bridge a cash gap or secure funding to grow your business, the Xero marketplace offers a suite of apps that can help. From add ons that help you to secure funding to ones that help you manage it, there’s something to help you every step of the way.

Because of local regulations, finance solutions tend to be specific to different countries, so we’ve split the options out for you:

Xero apps for funding UK businesses

Xero apps for funding US businesses

Xero apps for business funding in Australia

Xero apps for business funding in New Zealand

Best Xero Apps for Securing Funding (UK businesses)

Invoice Financing – Market Invoice

Market Invoice allows you to access funds tied up in your unpaid invoices, freeing up capital you can use to pay bills and staff wages or gives access to money that can be used for growth.

This add on connects to your Xero account to automate the application process, meaning there’s no need to upload documents. Once your account is set up Market Invoice will display the invoices in your Xero account and you can then choose which ones you’d like financed. You could receive 90% of your invoice’s value in 24 hours.

Line of Credit – Iwoca

Iwoca supplies businesses with a flexible line of credit of up to £100,000. This means that if your business is approved for £100,000 of credit then you are free to borrow what you need up to this amount and you only pay for what you borrow. One benefit of a line of credit is that it provides flexibility; you can be sure you have finance in place to purchase equipment when needed, weather a sales downturn or pay an unexpected bill.

The connection with Xero simplifies the application process and speeds up approval times. Credit rates are based on your business performance, which is assessed via your Xero account. You could have access to funds in a matter of hours and you only pay interest on the amount of money borrowed and the number of days you have the funds.

Tip: Apply for your line of credit when your credit score is strong and revenue is up, this will greatly increase your chances of approval.

Cash Advance – Liberis

With a cash advance by Liberis you could be paid an advance on your credit and debit card takings giving you access to funds in as little as 24 hours. Their link with Xero provides a streamlined process meaning you get a quote in 60 seconds, your application takes 5 minutes and finally, the link to your Xero account will provide automatic updates to reflect the status of your advance.

80% of applications are accepted and because repayments are taken as a percentage of your card drawings this saves your business from being locked into consistent monthly repayments that can be crippling if you have unpredictable revenue.

Best Xero Apps for Securing Funding (US businesses)

Invoice financing – Fundbox

Fundbox let’s you access the money that’s tied up in your customer’s unpaid invoices, you could receive the cash in a matter of days instead of the weeks or even months you’d normally expect to wait. Fundbox offers ‘peace of mind guaranteed’ so that your operations don’t grind to a halt when things get tight.

Linking your Xero account ensures you don’t need to upload any financial information, Fundbox can get all the information they need from your accounting software. You can be set up in minutes and the clearing fee will be fully displayed for each invoice you choose to fund, meaning no nasty surprises at the end of the month.

One caveat is that you do need to have at least 6 months of data in your Xero account. But we feel this is a fair tradeoff for instant access to working capital.

Working Capital Loan – Kabbage

Kabbage offers working capital loans of up to $150k to help you meet payroll, cover general expenses and pay your suppliers during slow months. The whole process from application to approval takes about 10 minutes, and while this is a little slower than some of the other apps on the Xero marketplace getting a loan from Kabbage still comes in light years faster than getting a loan from a bank.

You only pay for what you use, with repayment terms sitting between 6 and 12 months, and there are no fees if you decide to pay your loan off early.

It’s worth bearing in mind that to qualify for a small business loan your business needs to be at least a year old. You should have revenues of $50,000 annually or $4,200 per month over the last three months.

Line of Credit & Invoice Factoring – Blue Vine

Blue Vine offer 2 financing options, access to a flexible line of credit and an invoice factoring service. With the flexible line of credit you could have access to up to $100k approved within 24 hours, meaning your business will have the funds available when needed. You can expect fixed repayments terms over 6 months and interest rates starting from 6.9%.

The other funding option available through Blue Vine is invoice factoring. You could free up the cash your business has trapped in unpaid invoices, allowing you to borrow up to $2.5 million against your receivables due within 90 days. You could have the cash in as little as 1 day and choosing to factor your invoices through Blue Vine means you will be able to fund only the invoices you want, instead of your whole ledger.

Best Xero Apps for Securing Funding (AU businesses)

Working Capital Loan – Moula

Moula gives you fast access to up to $250,000 of working capital and repayment terms of between 6 and 12 months. The link to Xero means you can apply online in just 10 minutes and you could have the funds in your account in 24 hours. What’s more, thanks to their partnership with Xero, Moula are offering savings of between 2.5% and 5% on the APR of your loan.

To be eligible for a Moula loan you must have an ABN or ACN, been operating for at least 12 months, a fair or better credit history and at least $5000 in monthly sales.

Line of Credit – Waddle

With a line of credit from Waddle you can draw funds from your unpaid invoices allowing you to bridge cash gaps. Waddle provides a no obligation finance offer of up to 80% of the value of your invoices (with a limit of £1million) and your funding allowance will automatically update as you raise invoices.

You only pay for what you use and you won’t be locked into any contracts. Rates start at 6.95% per annum and their link with Xero means you could be setup in minutes.

Working Capital Loan – Capify

If you are looking for working capital for your business, you can access up to $400k through Capify. Their link to Xero means you could have a decision in 60 seconds (that’s even accounting for the seconds it takes to connect your account!). You can then expect to have the funds in your account within a matter of days. You don’t have to manually provide any financials, Capify can make their decision from the numbers in your Xero account, making the process even smoother.

Capify offer flexible repayment terms between 3-12 months. Additionally, if you’re a seasonal business then capify offer a ‘flex’ programme which allows you to match your repayments to the highs and lows of your business.

Best Xero Apps for Securing Funding (NZ businesses)

Invoice financing – Fuelled

Fuelled is Xero’s first lending partner in New Zealand and offers a cash advance of up to 90% of your invoice. You typically receive the cash the same day, which helps to avoid the cash crunches caused by lengthy payment terms of up to 90 days. This frees up cash that can be used to pay bills, take on projects or buy more stock.

Fuelled doesn’t lock you into any long term contracts or charge set monthly fees and their link with Xero means no paperwork so you can get the cash

Line of Credit – Waddle

As above, this Sydney, Australia, based app has expanded into the New Zealand market, offering their Easterly neighbours equally enticing terms on lines of credit. You can get up to 80% of your invoices value (up to $1million) with rates starting at 6.95 per annum. Linking Waddle to your Xero account means you could be set up in minutes.

Best Xero Apps for Managing Funding (Global)

Cash Flow Forecasting – Float

Now that you’ve got the funding, it’s time to make sure you are spending it wisely!

A cash flow forecasting app such as Float will help you to confidently manage a cash injection to ensure you are able to cover costs in the long term. You can also model scenarios to project the impact of different funding amounts and how they will help you reach your business objectives. But most of all, Float is an indispensable tool to safely grow your business as you can identify exactly the right time to seek funding and see when to reinvest at the click of a button.

So whether you are looking for funding or looking to manage the funding you already have, the Xero ecosystem has an app to support you every step of the way.

There are hundreds of Xero accounting add ons on the market that can help your practice and your clients save time and streamline your day to day activities. But which ones should you try?

We ask all of our accounting customers which add ons they’re using, and we’ve compiled this into a handy list for you, so you don’t need to go through all the trial and error yourself.

Bill.com – AP/AR Payment

Bill.com is an AP/AR bill payment solution that helps accounting firms automate bookkeeping tasks and manage all of their clients, eliminating paper and saving time. It streamlines payments processing and approval workflows, and automatically syncs with Xero, bringing in all transactions, invoices and reconciled items. You can automate your clients’ billing through electronic payments and built-in reminders with a clear and customisable approval process. You can also access online documents, contracts, notes and invoices for collaboration.

Hubdoc – Document Management

Hubdoc is one of the most popular Xero accounting add ons on the market. It automatically imports all your financial documents and allows you to export them into data you can use. Hubdoc extracts key information from any bill, invoice or receipt, doing the data entry for you. You can also view all historical documents that are stored in one secure place online. Hubdoc enables accountants and bookkeepers to support more clients in less time while providing more value. It also automates a significant amount of the document collection process required to maintain accurate and auditable financial information.

Float – Cash Flow Forecasting

Float offers cash flow forecasting software that is super accessible and easy for your clients to understand. Using the direct cash flow method of pulling in individual bills and invoices from Xero and using them to ‘fill up’ your budgets, Float helps you and your clients understand their future cash position. This isn’t a three-way forecasting tool, but rather a Xero accounting add on and business owners that will show you how much cash a business will actually have in the bank at any point in the next three years. The connection to Xero eliminates the data entry traditionally required for an accurate operational cash flow forecast, which your clients will thank you for.

Fathom – Reporting

If you prefer seeing visual reports of your clients’ financial data rather than staring at spreadsheets all day, then Fathom might be for you. One of the top rated Xero accounting add ons for accountants, Fathom is a management reporting and business performance tool that takes your clients’ data from Xero and enables you to generate dashboards and presentations to impress your clients. Fathom’s reports and dashboards offer financial and non-financial KPIs, benchmarking, consolidation, customisable alerts, white labelling, and easy collaboration, helping you assess business performance, monitor trends and identify improvement opportunities.

Practice Ignition – Practice Management

Practice Ignition covers all the bases of helping you engage and charge a client. This includes automated client on-boarding, proposal generation, engagement letters, workflow deployment, recurring invoices and client collaboration. Practice Ignition helps to set clear expectations for billing your clients and vastly reduce the admin time to get paid.

Chaser – Credit Control

Chaser helps you to automate debtor chasing to get your clients paid on time. You and your clients can use Chaser to customise polite, persistent credit control emails that get sent automatically, saving you countless hours of manual persistence. The tool offers easily customisable email templates that get sent from your regular email address with a range of frequency and escalation options, including automatically CC’ing more senior staff members. These emails all get stored on their platform, allowing you to see all communication regarding a particular invoice in one place. Even better, their insights reports help you see who your best and worst payers are.

Further reading – The Best Xero Add Ons for Managing Cash

We ask all of our accounting customers which add ons they’re using, and we’ve compiled this into a handy list for you, so you don’t need to go through all the trial and error yourself.

Bill.com – AP/AR Payment

Bill.com is an AP/AR bill payment solution that helps accounting firms automate bookkeeping tasks and manage all of their clients, eliminating paper and saving time. It streamlines payments processing and approval workflows, and automatically syncs with Xero, bringing in all transactions, invoices and reconciled items. You can automate your clients’ billing through electronic payments and built-in reminders with a clear and customisable approval process. You can also access online documents, contracts, notes and invoices for collaboration.

Hubdoc – Document Management

Hubdoc is one of the most popular Xero accounting add ons on the market. It automatically imports all your financial documents and allows you to export them into data you can use. Hubdoc extracts key information from any bill, invoice or receipt, doing the data entry for you. You can also view all historical documents that are stored in one secure place online. Hubdoc enables accountants and bookkeepers to support more clients in less time while providing more value. It also automates a significant amount of the document collection process required to maintain accurate and auditable financial information.

Float – Cash Flow Forecasting

Float offers cash flow forecasting software that is super accessible and easy for your clients to understand. Using the direct cash flow method of pulling in individual bills and invoices from Xero and using them to ‘fill up’ your budgets, Float helps you and your clients understand their future cash position. This isn’t a three-way forecasting tool, but rather a Xero accounting add on and business owners that will show you how much cash a business will actually have in the bank at any point in the next three years. The connection to Xero eliminates the data entry traditionally required for an accurate operational cash flow forecast, which your clients will thank you for.

Fathom – Reporting

If you prefer seeing visual reports of your clients’ financial data rather than staring at spreadsheets all day, then Fathom might be for you. One of the top rated Xero accounting add ons for accountants, Fathom is a management reporting and business performance tool that takes your clients’ data from Xero and enables you to generate dashboards and presentations to impress your clients. Fathom’s reports and dashboards offer financial and non-financial KPIs, benchmarking, consolidation, customisable alerts, white labelling, and easy collaboration, helping you assess business performance, monitor trends and identify improvement opportunities.

Practice Ignition – Practice Management

Practice Ignition covers all the bases of helping you engage and charge a client. This includes automated client on-boarding, proposal generation, engagement letters, workflow deployment, recurring invoices and client collaboration. Practice Ignition helps to set clear expectations for billing your clients and vastly reduce the admin time to get paid.

Chaser – Credit Control

Chaser helps you to automate debtor chasing to get your clients paid on time. You and your clients can use Chaser to customise polite, persistent credit control emails that get sent automatically, saving you countless hours of manual persistence. The tool offers easily customisable email templates that get sent from your regular email address with a range of frequency and escalation options, including automatically CC’ing more senior staff members. These emails all get stored on their platform, allowing you to see all communication regarding a particular invoice in one place. Even better, their insights reports help you see who your best and worst payers are.

Further reading – The Best Xero Add Ons for Managing Cash