Xero is a great piece of accounting software for both accountants and businesses. What we love most about Xero is its extensive line up of top apps which helps accounting practices and businesses do everything from process payroll to collect bills. But with so many top apps out there, how do you know which ones to choose? We've curated our list of the best Xero apps. We've chosen the top Xero app from each of the most popular app categories:

Fergus logo

Fergus helps trades and service businesses worldwide manage the costs of running a trade business, keep jobs on track, and find profitability. The app's functionality is divided into three parts: set up jobs for success, get more from your team, and stay ahead of the game. For setting up jobs for success, there are four key features, namely: time tracking (track progress, job lists, and costing), document management (job cards, supplier documents, and version management), admin simplification (quotes, invoices, and purchase orders) and automation (integrations, sms reminders, and a payment gateway).

Getting more from your team has three key features, namely: organization and scheduling (calendars and notifications), communication (notes, photos, time entries, notice board), and tracking efficiency (GPS tracking, real-time job information, employee summaries). Staying ahead of the game has four key features, namely: speedup turnover (dashboards, work-in-progress reports, automated invoice reminders), margin reports (financial summaries and business activity reports), cash flow reports (invoice builder and a payment gateway), and control reports (employee summary and gross profit summary).

Fergus has two pricing plans:

Basic is built for tradies looking for an easier way to manage their jobs from anywhere, while Professional takes it to the next level. Both plans include job cards with job details, notes & history, files & photos, timesheets, supplier documents, and more. They both include scheduling, quoting & invoicing, and free support from teams based in Australia, the UK, and NZ.

We recommend the Basic plan for when you're starting out.

Syft Analytics logo

Syft is a simple yet powerful analytics and reporting app for Xero. Syft helps accountants and businesses uncover insights into financial data and automate monthly management accounts. Syft has some neat features, including the ability to brand PDF reports (which can be sent to clients, investors, and staff) and visualize data in easy-to-understand graphs.

Better yet, Syft's AI-powered insights engine automatically uncovers insights in your visualizations to help you quickly understand what's going on.

Syft has other bells and whistles, including the capability to consolidate entities (combine two or more entities into a single entity), forecast financials, and create budgets. Benchmark is another unique feature that allows you to put your financial performance alongside your industry and competitors. Benchmark helps you understand how your business compares from a revenue, expense and accounting ratio perspective so you can really get a sense of whether or not your financial performance is good.

Syft has four pricing plans (these are the prices for when you pay monthly and commit annually):

The key additional features in Plus are deeper insights, more report customization, and multi-currency support. Advanced allows you to merge financial and operational insights with white-labeling options and tailored onboarding assistance. Scale has all the power of Advanced, along with add-ons, enhanced security, audit logs, and centralized controls.

The Advanced plan.

Click here to visit Syft.

Gusto logo

Gusto is an app that lets you run payroll, manage employee benefits, and support HR. Gusto's payroll capability enables you to automatically calculate and file employee tax returns whether your employees are full-time or part-time. Compared to competitors, the user interface and reports are particularly easy to use, which is a refreshing improvement over other payroll apps. Gusto also helps you manage employee benefits such as medical insurance, retirement savings, and pension contributions. Gusto will incorporate your employee benefits and the tax advantage that comes with them directly into the payroll process, so you don't have to.

Gusto has extended its core payroll functionality to include other tools that support HR processes. These tools include generating offer letters for prospective employees, building organizational charts, onboarding employees with digital contracts, and anonymous employee surveys (wow!). These Gusto tools are incredibly useful for any small business and reduce the admin associated with hiring and managing a team.

Gusto has three pricing plans:

The Simple plan comes with a full-service single-state payroll including W-2s and 1099s, full support, employee profiles and self-service, basic hiring and onboarding tools, Gusto-brokered health insurance administration, employee financial benefits, payroll and time-off reports, custom admin permissions, and integrations for accounting, time tracking, expense management, and more.

The Plus plan also includes:

You can also add on priority support and HR resources at $8 per month per person.

Start with the simple plan and see how it goes. If your company grows and you feel you need more comprehensive payroll and benefits, then you can always upgrade.

Dext logo

Dext is still our favorite app for tracking and managing expenses (it could also be the most used app of all time!). Accountants and bookkeepers can scan receipts, bills, and invoices with the Dext mobile app, available on the Apple App Store or Google Play. With a single touch, you can capture invoice data, upload it to your personal secure cloud storage, and push it to either Xero, QuickBooks, or Sage for review. You can also review and search for receipts, bills, and invoices directly in the app, which is an added benefit and particularly useful to view exactly what was expensed.

Dext Prepare has plans for accountants and businesses. For accountants, there are two plans:

Both of these plans allow for 10 clients and unlimited users. They both empower you to simplify your document collection, optimize document processing, use pre-accounting automation tools, and provide a comprehensive solution for you and your clients.

The advantages of choosing the advanced package over the essential one are the following:

We recommend using the Dext Essentials plan, as this is suitable for most small practices. As you grow, you may want to consider the Advanced package.

You can find out more here.

We hope you enjoyed our review of the top Xero apps in 2020. If you have any feedback or would like to suggest a topic for us to write about, email us at support@syftanalytics.com.

Take care,
Syft