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Top 5 Xero cash flow add-ons for your business

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The GoCardless content team comprises a group of subject-matter experts in multiple fields from across GoCardless. The authors and reviewers work in the sales, marketing, legal, and finance departments. All have in-depth knowledge and experience in various aspects of payment scheme technology and the operating rules applicable to each. The team holds expertise in the well-established payment schemes such as UK Direct Debit, the European SEPA scheme, and the US ACH scheme, as well as in schemes operating in Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand. See full bio

Last editedOct 20222 min read

We know how important cash flow is to your business, especially in an often turbulent and unpredictable commercial landscape. In order to manage your cash flow effectively, you want total visibility over your business finances, with a centralised data repository to track revenue streams (accounts receivable) and the myriad expenses that come with doing business (accounts payable).

Xero is one of the world’s most trusted and widely used accounting platforms, providing SMEs with a centralised data repository accessed from anywhere. It provides a real-time overview of your finances and helps to inform agile decision-making. What’s more, with over 1,000 app integrations, there are a number of tools to further empower businesses to take control of their cash flow.

GoCardless and Xero: a powerhouse cash flow combination

GoCardless is designed to simplify the payments process, helping businesses to improve their cash flow while also avoiding the hefty fees that can come with processing card payments.

Seamless integration of GoCardless with Xero allows you to attach payment links to your Xero invoices, for quick and easy one-off payments via Instant Bank Pay. Alternatively, use GoCardless to set up Direct Debit payments in Xero.

Even when you’re using this powerhouse combination, there are still other Xero cash flow add-ons that can help you to improve your company’s liquidity quickly, easily and efficiently.

Let us show you 5 of our favourites.

Yodlee

Visibility is the key to managing your cash flow effectively. If your company has multiple bank accounts, this can become complicated. While some banks, such as HSBC, NatWest, RBS, Santander, Silicon Valley Bank and Metro Bank, supply bank feeds directly to Xero, others do not.

Yodlee acts as an intermediary between banks and Xero, accessing data from business accounts, downloading transaction data and sending it to your Xero account.

ApprovalMax

Taking control of your business finances often means subjecting more business spending to high-level approval. In some cases, this can be needlessly time-consuming and potentially result in opportunity loss. ApprovalMax automatically monitors Xero for new purchases and sends emails to a set workflow of approvers when purchases reach the threshold established. Approvers simply open the email and approve with a single click.

Deputy

Staffing makes up a significant proportion of your company’s expenses. Understaffing could lead to a drop in quality that harms your brand, while overstaffing could lead to needless expense. Deputy helps to manage personnel costs more effectively. Schedule shifts, manage leave allowances and requests, record employee working hours and export data easily to your payroll provider.

Fergus

The correlation between cash flow management and workflow management is extremely important, especially for traditionally low-margin fields like construction and trades. Fergus is one of the best Xero construction add-ons designed by tradespeople for tradespeople.

It takes care of everything from creating job estimates and invoicing to job scheduling, on-site work management and communications with teams.

Float

Float is an excellent Xero cash flow forecasting app that helps you insulate your future cash flows against risk.

Float pulls data from Xero to ensure cash flow forecasting with real-time accuracy. It also has a useful scenario planning feature, using predictive models to assess the impact of potential future events on cash flows to inform future strategy.

We can help

GoCardless is a global payments solution that helps you automate payment collection, cutting down on the amount of financial admin your team needs to deal with. Find out how GoCardless can help you with one-off or recurring payments.