Xero is a cloud-based accounting software, easy-to-use for product-making businesses aiming to control and simplify their finances and other every-day business tasks.
However, as a manufacturer selling online you most probably have other concerns, too. You might be selling online via an e-commerce store like Shopify, Adobe Commerce (previously Magento), or WooCommerce, but also via marketplaces such as Amazon or Ebay. It can become difficult to keep track of your stock and orders from all these sales channels. Perhaps you’re scaling and your team needs to better keep track of time to improve productivity. Or maybe you need to bring your A-game when it comes to reporting.
There are many Xero integrations that can help with these issues and many more. But with so many options available on the market, how do you choose the best?
In this article, we look at the 5 top Xero apps for manufacturers looking to optimize their inventory management, time-tracking, CRM, expenses, and reporting.
#1 Inventory Management with Katana
Katana is a Xero inventory management app that gives you a live look at your business. You can automate resource allocation based on prioritized sales orders and integrations with e-commerce, accounting, CRM, and reporting services to centralize all key business operations. You can create bills of materials and track raw materials for make-to-order workflows or fulfill orders from available product stock.
- Top features: live inventory and manufacturing management, batch tracking for end-to-end traceability, a Shop Floor App for total floor-level control, and open API
- Best for: manufacturing businesses
- Price: from $99/month
- Xero rating: 5 stars (55 reviews)
- Katana on Xero: https://apps.xero.com/search/app/katana
#2 TimeTracking with MinuteDock
MinuteDock helps to track time for billing, budgeting and reporting. To track time all you have to do is type in what you did and for how long, or use the live timer. You can also easily switch between tasks and clients, and mobile tracking from your iPhone or Android devices is also a possibility.
- Top features: time tracking, billing, reporting, team management, targets, and and budgets
- Best for: accounting, bookkeeping, or law firms, agencies or consultancies, contractors and freelancers
- Price: from $19/month
- Xero rating: 5 stars (150 reviews)
- MinuteDock on Xero: https://apps.xero.com/search/app/minutedock
#3 CRM with Hubspot
HubSpot is one of the best CRM, online marketing, sales, and customer service growth platforms available on the market. It offers end-to-end visibility into customers journey, from stranger to paid customer invoice, all in one place, as well as enhanced customer relationships through personalised conversations.
- Top features: visibility of entire sales funnel, automatic customer interaction tracking, all-in-one visual dashboard
- Best for: any business
- Price: from $0/month
- Xero rating: 4.5 stars (35 reviews)
- Hubspot on Xero: https://apps.xero.com/search/app/hubspot
#4 Bills and expenses with ApprovalMax
ApprovalMax compliments Xero’s capabilities with approval automation features for accounts payable and accounts receivable. The app ensures spend control and regulatory compliance and aims to replace approvals based on paper and email with fully automated, multi-role, and multi-tiered approval workflows.
- Top features: purchase order creation, bill review, bill-to-PO matching, sales invoice management
- Best for: internal accounting and financial services outsourcing organisations
- Price: from $39/month
- Xero rating: 5 stars (138 reviews)
- ApprovalMax on Xero: https://apps.xero.com/search/app/approvalmax
#5 Reporting with Spotlight
With Spotlight Reporting accountants and business owners can easily create visual performance reports, dashboards, and cash flow forecasts. The app offers a great range of comprehensive performance reports, full three-way forecasting, customizable dashboards and advanced consolidated reports for multi-entity businesses and franchises.
- Top features: consolidated forecasting, consolidated reporting, white-labelling
- Best for: accounting firms, business owners, CFOs, franchises, and nonprofits
- Price: from $295/month
- Xero rating: 5 stars (289 reviews)
- Spotlight on Xero: https://apps.xero.com/search/app/spotlight-reporting
Managing inventory, sales, keeping track of time, controlling bills and expenses, or reporting are all business areas that can be difficult to manage, especially for scaling organizations. But they don’t have to be! If you use the right software, you can easily stay organized and manage everything from a single place-of-truth. We hope the Xero integrations listed above will come in handy to you!
