Whichaddon Magazine - Issue 5 (The App Advisory Discussion)

AUTOMATION IN THE CLOUD

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Client Story: Funky Monkey Bars Case Study

Client Story: Lee Mathews Case Study

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THE APP ADVISORY DISCUSSION

Why DEAR Inventory trumped Lightspeed for Keane Ceramics

Case Study

Jason Proctor Biography

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The WAO team will be there...

Staying at Novotel Melbourne South Wharf.

info@whichaddon.com

CONTACT US ON NDERS ETING WITH THE CO-FOU TO BOOK IN A 1-ON-1 ME

Marlon and Jeri Wambeek.

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WHAT’S INSIDE THE CLOUD

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04 The WhichAddOn way - WAO WAO Mission, Vision and Values

05 Welcome Jeri Wambeek

06 11 Best Apps to Automate Your Inventory Management System to the Next Level Software Partners

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14 How to set and smash your goals in 2019 Goal Setting

16 Introducing n2 Product Review

20 Client Story: Funky Monkey Bars

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Case Study

24 QB Connect

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Software Partner

26 Client Story: Crittendon Case Study

28 QBO vs Xero : Sales Software Comparison

36 Client Story: Lee Mathews Case Study

39 Jason Proctor Biography

40 Client Story: Keane Ceramics Case Study

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42 The App Advisory Discussion At Xerocon in 2018

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THE WHICHADDON WAY

Word Origin / n._

WhichAddOn = WAO

THE WAO MISSION

\PRONOUNCED “ WOW ”\ Noun

To empower businesses through cloud

Used to express an exclamation of wonder, pleasure or a striking success.

technology to enable connection, comfort and care.

THE WAO VISION To bring the possible to life - one business at a time.

THE WAO WAY / OUR VALUES The WAO Way are the guiding principles that dictate how we behave daily to achieve our mission and vision: to empower businesses through cloud technology - bringing the possible to life - enabling connection, comfort and care.

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• Be loving and kind • Be reliable • Be a good steward • Never stop learning - continue to grow every day.

• Help our local communities • Above all, family and good health comes first.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Welcome to WhichAddOn’s first edition for 2019!

Jeri Wambeek – Co-Founder of WhichAddOn It has taken us a while to release this magazine.

Our last edition was back in August 2018. A lot has happened since then, both in our industry and more so at WhichAddOn. Unfortunately in August, Marlon and I lost our baby at 27 weeks, which was a huge shock and devastating, given we have so blessed a big, healthy family of 8 already. We were certainly not expecting to have any problems. However, this situation made us internally look at our priorities and what we want to achieve at WhichAddOn. It also led us to look at the situation as co-founders and consider if something were to happen to us, how would the company survive. We broke down the areas that Marlon and myself were doing, and worked out that we were doing 12 different roles split between two of us. That really did not make sense, and in all honesty, it reflected in our inability to meet deadlines and time frames.

This led us to take decided action to improve this situation. Our team had already started growing, we had a couple of staff working with us, but in the last quarter, we really started to grow our team.

We went from two workers to a team of eleven by the end of December. We systemized our internal operations and support services, and this has really brought about a dramatic increase in the quality of work we produce.

So in essence 2018 was that transition year for WhichAddOn, from just Marlon and me to a team of skilled professionals all committed to ensuring clients have the best possible experience.

We are so excited to share with you what's been happening at WhichAddOn in this issue with four amazing client stories we were so grateful to be a part of (page 20, 26, 36 & 40), sharing the top 11 apps that we are working with in this ecosystem with product-selling clients right now (page 6), another in-depth analysis or QBO vs Xero (page 28), introducing you new apps we have found (page 16) and our growing team (page 39).

In 2019, we hope to grow our team from 11 to around 20-25 staff. We also are planning to expand into the US and the UK. In Australia, we are already the largest Cloud integrators and by the end of 2019, we hope to be the largest implementors in the QBO/Xero ecosystem in the world.

I would also like you to take a moment (about 2mins) to check out the new video on page 19 and on our website about WhichAddOn. It's going to be an amazing year! Hope you enjoy!

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11 Best Apps to Automate Your

Inventory Management System to the Next Level

Inventory is a core part of every business, and if you’ve been a victim of stock related discrepancies, then you probably know too well why an airtight inventory management tool is inevitable in the current business setup.

According to 1000s of studies, one of the core reasons why businesses fail today is due to poor inventory management practices; if, for instance, a business is not able to track inventory levels, there’s a likelihood of a stock out which results in lost sales and disgruntled customers. Also, a good inventory system is meant to monitor and evaluate the maximum stock levels to avoid excess holding costs or incurring losses due to products expiration or value depletion.

All these problems can be caused by an inadequate inventory management regime; thankfully, we’d like to help out with that.

In this post, we will discuss some of the time-tested inventory management systems that can help you stay in control of your stock, sales, and more. You will learn about 11 applications that can help you automate your inventory management processes today.

Of course these solutions do so much more than the few features we have listed here - but this article is designed to share with you the apps that are available and a little about them. If you need help deciding which one is right for you, Book your free Discovery call with us today. Let’s get started!

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1

Cin7

Cin7 is a complete, fully automated point-of-sale and inventory management tool suitable for both the small and large businesses. The application brings all your sales and inventory functions under one platform making it easier for businesses to seamlessly manage their records.

Cin7's point-of-sale (POS) can be operate in offline mode if required once logged in. This is great for larger businsesses that have a retail store, warehouse, online and more.

The platform boasts a number of unique features to help you manage your inventory.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Features Connects inventory to sales: This tool simplifies the process of selling your warehouse stock by eliminating the need to manually check the availability of various items of inventory when creating sales orders. This leads to a faster and accurate processing of customer orders.

Multiple integrations: Cin7 integrates with multiple ranges of solutions in the areas of accounting, e-commerce, EDI, 3PL, and more to streamline your business processes.

Track multiple branch stocks: Do you have more than one store to manage? Don’t worry; Cin7 makes it possible to manage numerous warehouses allowing you to worry less about management and concentrate more on serving your customers.

Available in offline and online versions: Cin7 POS will run in offline mode if you have a retail store and the internet goes down.

At WhichAddOn, we always suggest having a back up internet or you can use your phone, but offline mode can be a lifesaver.

Source of image: https://www.cin7.com/

2 DEAR Inventory DEAR Inventory is a business solution that enables retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers, and e-commerce operators to flawlessly manage their inventory. The cloud-based solution eliminates the tedious processes associated with stock taking, valuation, or monitoring of business inventory.

DEAR offers a range of inventory management features to help you keep track of your business stock as seen below.

Features Integrates with your e-commerce platform: When you integrate your e-commerce and inventory tools, you can focus more on building your business without worrying much about stock discrepancies.

Purchases management: The platform maintains a record of all historical purchases and also sets a reorder level that generates timely purchase orders.

Sales management: DEAR ensures that your sales record match with your inventory and also keeps track of orders after dispatch.

Barcode scanning: The tool allows users to scan items when selling leading more accountability while reducing human error.

Source of image: https://dearsystems.com/

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Multi-user functionality: Tradegecko provides for the creation of individual accounts for all the system users. Additionally, you can allocate each user some speciďŹ c access rights and roles in the system.

Easy payment channel: The tool enables businesses to simplify their payment processes by allowing customers to settle their invoices online.

Source of image: https://www.tradegecko.com/

4 Unleashed Unleashed software is a powerful online inventory management tool that serves the small, medium, and large organizations.

3 Tradegecko

The application is quite extensive; it was created with the modern day inventory management needs in mind.

But before we hop on to its features, let’s listen to what one of the Unleashed software users had to say about the platform:

Tradegecko is a cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tool that helps small and medium-sized business to manage their inventory. The application is focused on serving businesses internationally and as a result, many businesses in various parts of the world including Australia, the US, Britain, Singapore use the tool in their day-to-day running of the business.

Features Inventory management: Being the core purpose of this tool, it provides a wide range of functionalities to help you organize your inventory activities; you can easily search for an item, keep track of stock history, add product images, adjust prices, and more.

Multi-warehousing: Tradegecko allows you to add more warehouses and consignment shops depending on the plan you subscribe to.

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https://youtu.be/Qg7bFvTiIsw

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Features Integrates your e-commerce tool with inventory: Unleashed offers a seamless integration of your e-commerce with your business inventory to ensure that your customers place their orders speedily without surprise stockouts.

Available to mobile users: Unleashed mobile sales app is one of the platform’s best innovations to help users keep track of their inventory activities from their mobile devices.

Offers real-time inventory reporting: Being a cloud-based app, you can effortlessly access your inventory reports instantly from any internet enabled device.

Sales management functionality: The application provides for various sales order management features including the ability to create invoices and quotes, manage customer returns, view profit margins, and more.

Source of image: https://www.unleashedsoftware.com/

5 Locate This is a full-featured online inventory management tool for small, medium, and large businesses. The application supports over 20 integrations ranging from accounting to e-commerce tools.

At the moment, the application boasts a user-base drawn from all parts of the world including Australia, the US, the UK, and more.

Features Order fulfillment: With Locate, businesses can have a real-time view of orders dispatched together with the tracking details.

Keep track of vendors: Locate allows you to stay connected to your vendors by tracking their warehouses and order fulfillment right from the supplier sites.

Plan manufacturing processes: The application enables businesses to manage manufacturing workflows by organizing and coordinating various operations including part tracking, batch manufacturing, audit visibility, and more.

Detailed reporting: Locate contains over 100 inventory reports to help you get a bird’s-eye view of your inventory operations.

Source of image: https://locateinv.com/

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6 MRPEasy MRPEasy is a manufacturing tool consisting of planning, CRM, procurement, supply chain management, as well as inventory management functionalities.

With the application, the project manager can make use of the drag-and-drop feature to allocate resources to various jobs.

But that’s not all; let’s have a look at some of its other core features.

Features Real-time view of your business inventory: MRPEasy provides for an instant overview of the inventory levels to help you avoid stockouts, view purchases, and also track the stock movement.

Accurate estimation of production processes: Estimating an accurate lead time can sometimes be difficult; but with MRPEasy, you can now know a precise duration for a job completion, lead times, and other related processes.

Grants you complete control of operations: The application contains communications and reporting tool as well as accounting integrations for seamless business processes.

Customer support: MRPEasy provides for a customer support channel for all queries relating to potential and past orders.

Source of image: https://www.mrpeasy.com/

7 N2 N2 is a fully integrated online Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tool developed by First Software. At the moment, the solution has its operations in Australia and New Zealand.

Designed for the retail sector, the ERP automates processes thereby lowering your operational costs while enhancing efficiency.

Features Purchases processing: N2 has a detailed purchasing dash that allows users to raise and track purchase orders.

Contains a complete inventory toolkit: The application features a full retail distribution sector that caters for multiple branches, electronic receipting of stock, pallet tracking, and more.

Mobile application: N2 also features a convenient mobile application that allows customers to make product inquiries, place orders, and pay for goods.

The business, on the other hand, is able to monitor stock movement, order histories, sales summaries, and more on the mobile app.

Strategic integrations: N2 integrates with EDI, 3PL and many shipping providers. If you have a unique integration requirement, they may even build it for you.

On top of these seven inventory management applications, you can use some extra applications to help improve the overall functionality of these tools.

Let’s look at a few recommended complementary applications.

Source of image: https://www.firstsoftware.co.nz/

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Complementary

Applications 9 AutoEntry

8 A2XAccounting A2X is an addon that automates accounting for Amazon marketplace sales orders and the associated costs.

The application works with two of the world’s renowned accounting applications, QuickBooks and Xero to simplify your accounting process.

A2XAccounting automates data transfer between your Amazon channel and your accounting application thereby minimizing human errors while saving you time.

Features A2X automatically fetches your Amazon settlements: When Amazon creates a new settlement file, A2X automatically fetches it, crunches the data and generates a summary of revenue, expenses and other transactions.

A2X posts summarised transactions to QBO or Xero: A2X generates invoices or journal from each settlement and posts them to your cloud accounting system, either automatically or at your command.

You can select the ledger accounts and tax rates that apply to each type of Amazon transaction.

AutoEntry is a popular data capturing tool that transfers your business data to your accounting application such as Xero and QBO. Build for accounting purposes, the application captures receipts, invoices, and expenses; the data is then sent to your accounting tool.

Features Go paperless: AutoEntry eliminates tedious processes associated with data transfer from one system to the other. This not only reduces paperwork but also errors and related costs.

Mobile app: With AutoEntry’s mobile application, businesses can now submit invoices, receipts, or payment voucher from their mobile devices.

Line by Line Extraction: Invoice Line Items are available as an option for all Invoices processed by AutoEntry. A full extraction will be made of the item description and individual item price and net/tax/total where available.

Source of image: https://www.autoentry.com/

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Integrates with social media platforms: As a Shopify store owner, you will be able to integrate your store with your social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube to enable you to advertise your products.

24/7 customer support: Customer support is a core part of any business, and at this point, I’m tempted to say that it is perhaps the important business practice in this day and age. With the ability to access customer support both day and night, you can now stop worrying about having your queries resolved and concentrate more on serving your customers.

Source of image: https://www.shopify.com/

11 Neto

10 Shopify Shopify is one of the world’s most popular e-commerce website builder that enables businesses to create their online stores in a matter of minutes. The platform was initially meant to serve the Canadian market; but close to one and a half decades later, the platform now boasts a worldwide coverage.

Shopify plays host to many online stores; but why exactly is that? Below are some of its distinct features.

Features Store customization: The platform allows its users to build their stores with their business and customer needs in mind; this is one of the reasons why Shopify does not provide for a one-fits-all model of building online stores.

Unlimited product listing: If you’re worried about your store’s bandwidth, then Shopify has you covered. The platform allows for unlimited product listing and customer information to ensure that everything you need stays only a click away.

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Neto is an all-in-one platform used by the retail and wholesale businesses as an e-commerce, point of sale, inventory and fulfillment tool.

The platform currently operates in the Australian space and is entirely cloud-based; this enables you to stay on top of your business operations from anywhere around the world.

Features Multi-location: With this app, users can be able to manage more than one store under one platform; you can easily add other stores under the same platform and have a better view of your business operations on various locations.

Improved security: Most online businesses are prone to hacking and other forms of security breaches; with Neto, the security of your information is taken a notch higher with their enhanced security controls including SSL Certification, offsite data backup, as well as password controls.

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Batch order processing: Neto enables you to process and dispatch bulk orders saving you both time and money.

Sales reporting: Neto has inbuilt reports that give you a summarized overview of your business sales; the reports could be run according to the stores, regions, and so on.

Source of image: https://www.neto.com.au/

Recommended Accounting

Applications This guide would not be complete without a recommendation of the best accounting applications that integrate with the eleven applications discussed above.

For easier integration and improved usability, we recommend you use either QuickBooks or Xero for accounting purposes.

These two applications are some of the best accounting applications globally; they are customized with the modern business in mind to ensure that whichever line of business you are in, you are covered.

Should you decide to choose one of these two, you’ll also realize that most other business solutions such as Point of Sale systems integrate seamlessly with either one of them.

However, if you have any doubts about which one to choose between the two, don’t worry; we’re always A Call away.

Conclusion There you have it! These are the solutions we already use and recommend for our clients in different businesses for different reasons every day.

We hope you found this guide useful; of course, the list is not quite exhaustive. There are numerous other applications that equally improve business operations.

The bottom line is that you need to understand which application works best with your business and most importantly, your customers.

Also, never hesitate to talk to an expert in this regard; you may end up saving yourself a ton of money and time simply by getting it right from the word go rather than going the trial and error route.

That said, may the best application win and of course, do Get in Touch with us for any specialized assistance.

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GOAL SETTING

How to set and smash your goals in 2019

By Jeri Wambeek

Another year has come and gone. You have welcomed in 2019 with renewed excitement and intention to make this year your best ever. I love this time of year.

The hope for what’s possible is in the air, gently pushing everyone to step up and believe it can be done.

Amid all the hype, just how do you set realistic goals - and more importantly - how do you smash them this time. This article is a mash-up of the many methods I have learned along the way as we have grown WhichAddOn whilst balancing our large family of 8 and what works for me. If you are still on the hunt for what works for you, I hope this helps you.

STEP 01,

Get it all out Get it all out. Get a pen and paper, or open a Word document, a Google Doc or an email. Whatever works for you. Write down all the things that are working for you right now and all the things that aren’t. Once you get it all out, ask yourself this question: What do I want? Now write down everything that you want to bring into your life this year. I want… I want…

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Keep on writing until you can’t think of anything else. Once you are done, ask yourself (or pretend I’m asking if it helps to have a coach-like voice in your head): If I could achieve any one of these things right now, which one would make the biggest impact on my life today? Circle it or highlight it and do this again until you have picked your top five goals.

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STEP 02,

STEP 03,

Write out the Make it easy “How” One of the things that we do to Take your first most important goal and write down what it’s going to feel like once you have achieved that goal. What does your life look like when you have achieved this goal? What do you need to do to achieve this goal? Write down every single thing that you can think of that can be done now, that you need to learn and action today and in the future. This is your task list. If you do this for each goal, you will have now have a list of actionable tasks that you can pull from as you plan your days ahead.

Don’t skip this step. It’s the part that most people never do. You owe it to yourself - to do this step.

Put some headphones on. Get a tea or coffee. Put on a timer for 5 mins per goal and get it done. You can thank me later. :)

sabotage our success from day one, is that we don’t make it easy to review our goals daily and stay focused. How many times have you written a list like this, set your goals in a notebook, never to be looked at again? I feel like I’ve tried them all. Goal setting apps. Notebooks.

Pretty planners. Paper diaries.

Vision boards. And even bullet journaling. Every one of these organising tools are useful, but I don’t think that they are designed to stand alone. A few months ago, I found Trello. Trello is the missing piece I needed to bring all that I had learned together into one place. It’s my electronic journal and diary with an easy to manage vision board, right in the palm of my hand. What else could you want!?!

For every goal, I have a Trello board. In that Trello board, I have my list of actionable tasks for that goal. In another list in the board, I put pictures and quotes that remind me of what it’s going to feel like when that goal is a reality in my life. As we all know, motivation passes - like a summer hailstorm, it comes and goes. In another list, I record my progress towards that goal, so that when I review that goal, I am always reminded how far I have come. It so easy to focus on the goal too much, that we don’t appreciate the steps to success we make along the way.

The final piece to the Trello puzzle for me was creating a Trello board for each month of the year. I have each day listed for the month.

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And every night I plan my next day.

I write all the tasks I need to do, my appointments, my personal and family commitments and anything else I need to remember that day.

As a final step, I review my goal boards and copy a few actionable tasks into my next day list, with a click of a button. If I am needing some extra motivation, I copy a picture or quote over there too.

STEP 04,

Take action I know when you look at the above, it might sound like a lot of work.

Really, it’s not. You might feel like it’s a waste of time to write a to-do list if you don’t like lists, but I promise you, you are already writing a list in your head anyway.

And when you have goals you want to achieve - a lot more things to do come along with that - so, make your life easier to manage and write it down. If you are easily overwhelmed and unfocused, just the task of writing it all down will help.

Don’t fall into the trap of planning without taking action. Even with you fail to get it all done, don’t be discouraged. When you are failing, you aren’t a failure. Be comfortable in knowing that you are trying.

Try your best and forget the rest.

From the WhichAddOn team to you, we have some exciting goals to smash this year and we want to help you smash yours too. If there is anything we can do to help you, please don’t hesitate to get in contact with your Account Manager or chat to us live at WhichAddOn.com.

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OD DU UC CTT R E V I E W PPRRO

Introducing This Xerocon 2018, we were excited to meet the N2 team and discover their product as a wonderful inventory addon to Xero that we hadn't seen yet. This article introduces N2 and some of the common FAQs about N2 in a recent interview with their team.

Using this experience, they developed N2. Knowing the frustrations of having different systems, they developed anintegrated platform and called it N2.

What are some misconceptions?

What is the background of the company bringing us N2?

N2 ERP software is a product of the New Zealand-based company, First Software. So, to get a clear understanding of N2, it is better first understand that First Software is a company that developed software in retail and distribution areas in the past.

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N2 is not just for large businesses.

Although, ERP is generally as system that only large businesses require, in this day and age, the expectations customers have on all businesses is so high, that the small business needs to be just as agile and amazing at fulfilling orders and managing customers requests ASAP. N2 enables this with it’s own in-built CRM. B2B, POS, e-commerce platform and more.

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By Jeri Wambeek

There are so many cloud inventory systems on the market, what makes you different?

N2 stands out for its integrated nature. Most of the software in the market offers only one or two services in retail and distribution areas, but with N2, the business owner can relax as our software take care of all the required activities from buying, storing, selling, and recording.

Technology to Power Your Business Growth

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What are the key features of N2 that make it stand out from the crowd?

1.

Procurement: As with all inventory management software, N2 provides all the procurement features a product-selling business needs. But N2 doesn’t stop after creating a purchase order and managing landed costs, N2 also enables the business to cater to customer demand by purchasing on actuals, setting customer budgets and enabling drop shipping direct from the supplier to the customer if needed.

2.

Inventory management: Again, as with an inventory management software, N2 provides you real-time visibility into all your stock in multiple locations, even bin locations. Managing stock as it moves through the warehouse is a breeze with barcodes, quick product setup, stock item variations and more. N2 can even build integrations with your 3PL warehouse to automate your supply chain and eliminate mistakes by integrating with your 3PL.

want to record contact details, addresses etc. N2 provides you with the ability to record all customer integrations, lodge complaints and issues and mark them as resolved, manage your customers out in the field on the mobile app and set customer level budgets… just to name a few things. You have to see it to believe it.

4.

E-commerce: N2 is a little different to other inventory management solutions in the market, that they didn’t start out building integrations to e-commerce platforms – N2 has it’s own website platform, which makes it extremely customisable

and powerful. If you have unique website requirements, it’s always a good idea to ask N2, as they answer may just be yes.

5.

Accounting: Worried you are going to outgrow Xero? Xero has a transaction limit and there is not much we can all do about it. If you love Xero and are looking for inventory solution that will grow with you, N2 just might be the answer. If you outgrow Xero, you can just turn the Xero integration off and active the N2 finance module. It’s really working in the background the whole time and just mirrioring Xero – so it’s not a worry as you grow.

3.

Sales & CRM: Yes! An inventory management system that understands the importance of having a detailed CRM system.

I’m not talking about “contact” relationship system, where you just

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PRODUCT REVIEW

Will I still need add-ons or use integrations with your software?

N2 does provide you with a lot of features already in-built in the software. It has its own POS, e-commerce, C2M and everything you need to run your warehouse. N2 even has it’s own finance and accounting module, which means that if you outgrow Xero or QuickBooks Online and you are using N2 for inventory, you don’t have to change the operational platform you can use N2. If you are an Australian customer, you would still need addons for payroll, Amazon, eBay, EDI and 3PL – it really depends on your business needs.

Where do you see the industry going?

With more and more business opting to operate their businesses in the cloud, the industry apps and cloud business will experience growth for sure. Similarly, according to my observation, within the next 5 years more than 80% of businesses will have moved their operations online.

N2’s plans for the future?

First, we hope to provide the app to help more and more business in Australia and New Zealand, as well as move the app to other countries. Second, with technology growing every day, we hope to develop more integrated apps in all areas of business, as well as continuous upgrading of the N2 software.

If you would like to know more about N2 and work out if it’s the right software for you, book in a free Discovery call with one of our Solution Engineers here and we’d love to help.

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W E L C O M E

T O

WhichAddOn

Welcome to WhichAddOn. It's our purpose as a business to bring the possible to life. We help transform product-selling businesses through cloud software solutions. Our unique method for ensuring that we help you find the right cloud software is just the start of our refined process that helps you move onto a new business-changing solution. We know it's stressful changing systems in any business - let alone one that has inventory when every minute something is sold, it is made or arrives for processing. Your business is constantly changing - so making the right choices and managing all the moving parts of a big project like implementing new systems - is a stressful task. Every day, we help businesses all over the world move to the cloud. We also help those that have tried to do it themselves but need some guidance to create the great experience they were planning for. Our expert team of Solution Engineers - who are all fully qualified accountants - are here to help.

On our website, you will find hundreds of articles designed to educate and inform you about many different topics to do with running your product-selling business in the cloud. Please read and explore WhichAddOn.com, however, if you would like to get answers and speak to one of our Solution Engineers, it's best to reach out in the Live Chat.

We look forward to helping you move to the cloud or guide you to that great experience in the cloud. We know what's possible and we are here to help you bring that to life. Any questions at all, start a chat with us now. Bye for now, see you in the chat.

Book a Discovery call So a Discovery call is our opportunity to understand more about you and your business. We want to know how your business ticks and what challenges you are facing. It's our fact-finding mission to get the information we need to help you find the right cloud solution for your product-selling business, or help you optimise the cloud systems you already have.

The information that we discover on this call is so valuable. When we arrange the next meeting at the end of the Discovery call, this is a very strategic meeting on how we can help bring what you need and want in your business to life and what it is you need from us in order to do that.

If you'd like to fill out the form below and arrange your free Discovery call with one of our expert Solution Engineers. You just need a free hour slot in your diary.

We look forward to welcoming you into the WhichAddOn virtual office soon.

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CASE STUDY

Putting the fun back

in the business for playground manufacturing company,

Clean and simple design, ingenious modular organization akin to IKEA and a smart team who know what kids want. Let me introduce you to a fabulous business, Funky Monkey Bars.

As a parent of young children Perth Dad, Shane Roberts was ecstatic when his daughters found a skill that kept them outdoors being active for hours on end and away from the lure of the television and computer. It was back in 2009 when Shane’s young daughters discovered monkey bars and along with it the strength, endurance and resilience that came with concurring a challenge. So Shane made a monkey bar for the backyard and so great was the response from local kids that he created Funky Monkey Bars in 2011 and now designs and sells monkey bars and play equipment direct to backyards across Australia and around the world.

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Shane was joined in 2014 year by Colin Burdle, a UK structural engineer whose knowledge of steel fabrication and construction has taken the Funky Monkey Bar concept further making it more adaptable to the age and skill of the children and introduced new equipment that can be attached to the original monkey bar frame.

Funky Monkey Bars is all about bringing back the fun and resilience that comes from active outdoor play that we remember as kids sitting atop the monkey bar in the exclusively no adult zone.

Credit: funkymonkeybars.com.au

Problem In one word. Growth. In any business, growth is what we all want, but it comes with the inherent requirement that our teams, our systems and our capacity grow with it. Often, as the case was for the Funky Monkey Bars team, customers and demand for their product grew faster than their systems and teams.

When you receive 10 customer orders a day, you can pick, pack and ship 10 orders a day with the right team and the systems that can handle 10 customer orders a day.

Even if you have to manufacture something for that order - when you have 1 in 10, no worries! When this customer demand grows rapidly and you start receiving 10x this amount of orders in a day, your systems and your teams have to grow and change to handle this.

The FMB team were already big fans of Xero and the flexibility and visibility it provided to keep an eye on the business, whilst running the business, whether they were in the warehouse or travelling around the country. Unfortunately, many businesses who love Xero, quickly realise that they can’t handle complex inventory management requirements in Xero and the FMB team embarked on the journey of finding the right add-on to Xero to manage their inventory and manufacturing management requirements.

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CASE STUDY

Solution After spending many hours and late nights doing their own research on which add-ons could work. FMB tried DEAR Inventory, Cin7, Unleashed and Tradegecko - just to name a few - never feeling 100% confident that the solutions they were looking at were the right fit for their business. After reaching out to their accountant for answers, that was when their accountant reached out to WhichAddOn and asked if we could help.

And of course - the questions FMB needed to answer is exactly what we do everyday. We conducted a thorough scoping session with the FMB team to understand the business needs. With a large increase in customer demand, obviously came the pressures to manage all the processes required to make and deliver the product as soon as possible to wherever it was purchased from around the country. Increased pressure to ensure that all the inputs were available for the manufacturing process - the parts and the people. Increased pressure to ensure that all the parts for the modular products were available on time, no matter what colour or model the customer picked. Any business with such rapid growth and so many moving parts, needs a system to keep their finger on the pulse of the business physically - managing stock - and financially - understanding the costs throughout the entire process from end to end.

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Funky Monkey Bars is the world’s first

height-adjustable monkey bar that is all about

bringing back fun and resilience that comes from active outdoor play.

Software solutions like DEAR Inventory, Cin7, Unleashed and Tradegecko, were only going to solve part of the problem for Funky Monkey Bars. Each of these solutions can help you track your purchases, your landed costs, your inventory and even your production. What they can’t do, is manage the cost of the labour component and the various stages of the production process as a product moves around the warehouse and gets worked on by various people.

MRPEasy was the solution that solved both core problems for Funky Monkeys Bars. An established Xero add-on, based out of Estonia in Europe, MRPEasy, in addition to the inventory management functionality of these well-known solutions, also has detailed production planning with Gantt chart capability, workstation management - to track all the different processes around the factory floor - and labour time

tracking - to capture the cost to the second of what it takes to create a Funky Monkey Bar. MRPEasy enables the business to have complete visibility into what’s on the shelves, what needs to be picked and packed next and using minimum stock levels, what needs to be made next and which process is most efficient to do this.

Final Thoughts Funky Monkey Bars is a testament to the fact that just because a Xero add-on can solve part of the problem for your business, if you aren’t 100% confident that it isn’t the best fit for your business, don’t embark down the road of a half-baked solution. Reach out and ask someone independent that can look at your business needs and help you find the right solution.

Someone who knows the different solutions intimately and can help you make an informed decision on which solution is right for you.

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SOFTWARE PARTNER

“Your next job or even business may be in the clouds” These are common words that sounded impossible a few years ago.

But isn’t it amazing how technology has transformed into a business world? As an accountant I just need to log in to a cloud platform and work from the comfort of my home. How great! For sure, we are all enjoying the technology benefit in one way or another; however this is slowly killing our social interactions.

QuickBooks a company offering a cloud accounting software has seen immense growth as many businesses have moved their transaction online. But QuickBooks officials identified a growing gap of lack of inspiration and motivation of many of the people working in the cloud.

This is because professionals no longer meet or interact in office setting thus they may feel isolated and demotivated. To solve this problem, Intuit came up with a social arm, and called it QuickBooks connect.

QuickBooks Connect aims at inspiring, educating, and connecting not only accountants but also small business owners and developers. And in an effort to offer these services, QuickBooks Connect hold annual conferences and invite attendees from all over the world. During these conferences, they give attendees a chance to interact and network with one another, train and equip them with necessary skills to face the cloud markets and bring well-known speakers to share their stories for inspiration. This has proved to be very successfully. In fact, 97% of the attendees interviewed said they got skills that they immediately applied in their business.

Of great interest, is that the conference is not just an open hall where everyone sits and listens to speakers. QuickBooks connect event offers a well thought out set of activities such as group discussions, brainstorming and so on. They also have unique training to each group of professionals that is accountants, business owners and developers.

In September 2018 conference, they used proper lined up education and motivation sessions for these groups. For instance, they connected Small Business and the Self-Employed with business experts by offering

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a one-on-one mentoring sessions in marketing, design and general business advice. They also trained business owners on key workplace tools, online branding, customer acquisition, leadership insights how to gain additional revenue and so on.

Equally, they provided Accounting Professionals with three days of training courses, sessions and workshops. With most companies using cloud accounting, accountants need to continuously increase their skill in order to solve the ever changing need. In the conferences they learned how to grow in the accounting profession in this technological era and also how to better serve small business and small entrepreneur clients. The accounting professionals also earned CPE credits and to take a QuickBooks Certification cause as it will increase their skills in cloud accounting.

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Also, they provide developers with in-depth sessions that will enable to build solutions oriented Apps for today and beyond with QuickBooks. These sessions included hands-on tutorials and one-on-one support from the Intuit Developer team aimed to accelerate app development and aid those interested in publishing apps on the QuickBooks App Store.

Additionally for developers, the Intuit Developer Group has hosted a hackathon Nov. 3-4, 2018 at Intuit’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. And finally, Intuit opened the small business App showdown where 10 finalists will got a chance to present their App and the winner takes $100,000.

To add to training and mentoring, conference attendees also receive motivation from well-known successful business men. For example this years main speakers were; Alex Rodriguez, founder and CEO OF A-Rod Corp, shared about how he is able to manage two careers successfully and advised

that passion is the key to succeed in business today; Mindy Kaling, actor, writer, producer and director graced the conference as one of the most hard working, self-employed in the entertainment industry; Dylan Lauren, CEO and Founder of Dylan’s Candy Bar, shared his success story of how he created the world’s largest confectionary emporium and lifestyle brand; Alex Banayan, Venture Capitalist and Author, known for the award winning book, The Third Door, which is based on his journey to uncover the secret to success from some of the world’s most iconic business people; and Vinh Giang, Entrepreneur and Master Showman who was awarded south Australia young entrepreneur of the year.

work for themselves to join the interactive sessions in order to gain practical and actionable tips, tricks and takeaways, unique opportunities to connect with others with lounges and activities that foster interaction and well-known speakers who share their personal stories of inspiration.

They offer affordable packages and you should all visit https://quickbooksconnect.com for a chance to attend their life changing conferences.

Attendees received that and many more skills in QuickBooks Connect.

QuickBooks attendees should plan to attend at least of the conferences in order to continue growing the business world.

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CASE STUDY

NO MORE WINERY

Inventory Woes

By Jeri Wambeek

Crittenden Estate is an iconic vineyard, winery and wine centre located in the heart of the Mornington Peninsula, one hour’s drive south of Melbourne. The home vineyard, first planted in 1982, is situated on the lower northern slopes of Red Hill and has ideal conditions for growing traditional cool climate European varieties.

On Monday 2nd July, I was driving through the picturesque hills of the Morning Peninsula to spend the day working on a system implementation. The client, Crittenden Estate, is known as one of the Mornington Peninsula's iconic wineries and a must visit on a winery tour agenda.

My mission: to implement and train the team on their new systems, Vinsight and Xero.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Problem Crittenden Wines reached out to WhichAddOn early in 2018 to find a solution that enabled them to move from MYOB. Many businesses in the wine industry who want to move to Xero often find that they can’t use it in the same way that they used MYOB to handle the Wine Equalisation Tax on their products. MYOB does a great job at handling WET, whilst Xero doesn’t. It is for this reason, Vinsight, a Xero add-on for wineries and breweries, exists and excels in this specialised niche.

Now, wanting to move to Xero wasn’t the only driving force for the move from MYOB. Crittenden was already using a cloud-based POS and online platform, Winedirect, for their retail sales and cellar door.

They needed a cloud-based system to manage their wholesale orders, multiple stock locations around the country and multiple price tiers. Although they had production management handled with a pre-existing winery production management system, they also needed a system to capture the costs from the bulk wine being packaged and the process around that.

Solution The Vinsight winery software implemented now keeps tabs on bulk wine and packaging costs through to a product that is bottled and labeled.

Maintaining and recording accurate data is often the most challenging aspect of the winemaking business. The business is now better adapted for its industry which is highly regulated and needs to be prepared for audit as required, leaving the business owners with a better night’s sleep.

The inventory management systems implemented can now manage the traceability for control across raw goods, tanks, and bottles - right through the end customer, whether they may be retail or wholesale.

Final thoughts As expected, a new system takes time to “bed down”. We were happy to work with the Crittenden team throughout their support period. During this period, additional questions arose as the team started processing and “going live” in their new system. They logged queries and tickets with the WhichAddOn team such as processing orders, Wine Equalisation Tax (WET) calculations, configuration settings, bank reconciliation questions and reporting. We are proud of how far the Crittenden Estate team have progressed in their journey to the cloud and to help them do what they do best - spend more time in the vineyard!

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SOFTWARE COMPARISON

QBO vs Xero S

A

Choosing which accounting software to use can be a daunting task. There are so many choices and so many features to choose from. The most important thing we need to consider is how the software would be a great fit for your business.

When we browse through our software choices, like Quickbooks and Xero, we don’t want to just see a list of features, we want to be able to take a peek at how it is actually done - without having to go through the trouble of doing it ourselves.

L

E

S

That is exactly what we have for you. We will be showing you how some processes are done with both Quickbooks and Xero to help you decide which one best suits your business’ needs.

Let’s start with invoicing.

Invoicing is how we let our clients know when, how much, and how they could send us their payments.

Creating and sending those invoices is one of the most basic features of an accounting software.

Here is how it is done.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

How to edit an invoice in Quickbooks

Creating invoices with Quickbooks From the Dashboard, select Start Invoicing and click on Customize Your Invoices.

Once you have finished your design, click on Content and input your company information, field names, and invoice details.

Click on Emails to customize the email that your clients get with every invoice they receive.

Select Payments if you want to give your clients the option to pay for the invoice. Once finished, click on Done to save the invoice template.

Select the Client you want to send the invoice to from the drop-down list and type the Email Address you are sending the invoice to. The Billing Address and Invoice Terms will auto populate upon client selection.

How to record a payment to an invoice in Quickbooks Recording a payment on an invoice in Quickbooks is easy. You can also record partial payments. Here are the steps on how to do it.

In Quickbooks Online, click on + and select Receive Payment. You can select which invoice to record payment on by clicking Choose a Customer or Find by Invoice No. Select the Invoice Number and fill out the details of the payment (Payment Method, Reference Number, Deposit to, and Amount Received), and click on Clear Payment.

There are instances where we would need to make some changes to an existing invoice. It helps to know how to complete the steps to ensure that there are no errors.

On the upper left side, Click on Sales and select Invoices.

You can also search for the invoice by clicking the Magnifying Glass icon and typing the invoice number, customer name, or any invoice related information.

Select the invoice you would like to Edit. For this example, let us use Jordan Burgess.

Make the necessary changes. For this example, I changed the rate from $400 to $500.

Once satisfied with the changes, click Save (to send later) or Save and Send.

In cases where you would want to permanently remove an invoice from Quickbooks, you would need to know how to delete the said invoice.

Input the invoice charges in their respective fields and attach needed documents. Once satisfied with your invoice, you can either Save for later or Save and Send.

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SOFTWARE COMPARISON

How to delete an invoice in Quickbooks On the upper left side of the Home Screen, Click on Sales and select Invoices.

You can also search for the invoice by clicking the Magnifying Glass icon and typing the invoice number, customer name, or any invoice related information.

Click on the drop-down list on the right and select Delete.

From the invoice screen, you can also click More on the bottom part of the screen and select Delete.

A dialogue box will appear. Select Yes to conďŹ rm and the invoice will be deleted.

Although we live in a digital world, there is still the need to print our invoices sometimes. Here are the steps on how we can print our invoices on Quickbooks.

How to print an invoice in Quickbooks On the upper left side of the Home Screen, Click on Sales and select Invoices.

You can also search for the invoice by clicking the Magnifying Glass icon and typing the invoice number, customer name, or any invoice related information.

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Choose the invoice to be printed, click on the drop-down arrow on the left, and select Print.

You can also go to the invoice screen, scroll to the bottom, and select Print or Preview. There will be an option to either Print Later, Print Preview, or Print Delivery Note.

A window will appear. You can click Print at the bottom right or click on the Printer Icon on the top right of the page.

There are instances where we would need to make some changes to an existing invoice. It helps to know how to complete the steps to ensure that there are no errors.

How to edit an invoice in Quickbooks On the upper left side, Click on Sales and select Invoices.

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You can also search for the invoice by clicking the Magnifying Glass icon and typing the invoice number, customer name, or any invoice related information.

Select the invoice you would like to Edit. For this example, let us use Jordan Burgess.

Make the necessary changes. For this example, I changed the rate from $400 to $500.

Once satisďŹ ed with the changes, click Save (to send later) or Save and Send.

Adding an online payment service like Paypal makes it easier for our customers to make their payments to our invoices. Helpful, right? Here are the steps on how we can get Paypal set up on our account.

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connecting to your Quickbooks account and the next screen will let you know if it has been set up.

Sometimes, we may need to change the tax status of the items on our invoices depending on the products or services provided.

On the middle right part of the screen, click on the drop down list next to Amounts are to choose whether the invoice should be Tax Inclusive or Tax Exclusive. Once changes have been made, you can either click Save or Send and Save to finalize.

How to make an invoice tax exclusive or tax inclusive in Quickbooks

You can also change the tax status of certain items on the invoice by clicking on GST in the item description and selecting the appropriate tax status. Once changes have been made, you can either click Save or Send and Save to finalize.

On the upper left side of the Home Screen, Click on Sales and select Invoices.

How to add an online payment service link to an invoice in Quickbooks

You can also search for the invoice by clicking the Magnifying Glass icon and typing the invoice number, customer name, or any invoice related information.

Now that we have been able to look at the processes in Quickbooks, let’s look at how these things are done in Xero to be able to really compare and decide which one is for you.

On the Dashboard, hover over the Banking icon and select Banking.

Click on the Add Account icon on the top right.

Select Paypal among the choices on the screen.

Enter your Paypal Email Address and Password and select Continue.

Click on the Verification and select Continue. Paypal will then start

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SOFTWARE COMPARISON

How to create an invoice in Xero From the Dashboard, You can select New Invoice on the Invoices owed to you section.

You can also click on the Plus sign on the upper left of the screen and select Invoice.

Once on the New Invoice screen, fill out the invoice details. To (Customer Name), Due Date, Reference Number, and Item Description are mandatory fields.

Once all the needed fields have been filled out, you can select Save from the drop down list options Or select Approve from the drop down list options. Voila! You now have a new invoice ready to be paid.

Once a customer has paid their invoice, we need to record the payment on Xero. Here are the steps on how to record a payment on an invoice.

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How to record a payment to an invoice in Xero From the Dashboard, click on Business and select Invoices.

You can also search for the invoice by clicking the Magnifying Glass icon and typing the invoice number, customer name, or other details associated with the invoice.

On the invoice list screen, select the invoice you are recording the payment to. For this example, we will be using ABC Furniture.

Once on the invoice screen, scroll down to the bottom left and fill out the details of the payment that was made and select Add Payment.

A confirmation will appear that the payment has been successfully recorded.

There are instances where we might need to make changes to an invoice. It is vital that we know how to make these changes properly to ensure error free record keeping.

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How to edit an invoice in Xero From the Dashboard, click on Business and select Invoices.

You can also search for the invoice by clicking the Magnifying Glass icon and typing the invoice number, customer name, and other details associated with the invoice or clicking on the Invoices on the Invoices owed to you section.

On the invoice list screen, select the invoice you are making changes to. For this example, we will be using Bayside Club.

Once inside the specific invoice screen, select Invoice Options on the upper right and click on Edit.

Make the necessary changes, and select Update on the lower right side of the screen.

The are invoices that sometimes need to be deleted. Unlike Quickbooks, there is no option to delete an invoice. We can only void it.

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How to void an invoice in Xero From the Dashboard, click on Business and select Invoices.

You can also search for the invoice by clicking the Magnifying Glass icon and typing the invoice number, customer name, and other details associated with the invoice or clicking on the Invoices on the Invoices owed to you section.

How to email an invoice in Xero

On the invoice list screen, select the invoice you are making changes to. For this example, we will be using Bayside Club.

Once inside the specific invoice screen, select Invoice Options on the upper right and click on Void.

There will be a prompt to confirm if you would want to void the invoice.

Select Ok to void.

A confirmation will appear that shows that the invoice has been voided.

Voiding an invoice will only make it null, while deleting it completely erases it from the system.

How to print an invoice in Xero From the Dashboard, click on Business and select Invoices.

You can also search for the invoice by clicking the Magnifying Glass icon and typing the invoice number, customer name, and other details

From the Dashboard, click on Business and select Invoices.

associated with the invoice or clicking on the Invoices on the Invoices owed to you section.

On the invoice list screen, check the tick box of the invoice you want to print and select Print. For this example, we will use Marine Bayside.

You can also go to the specific invoice screen and select Print PDF on the upper right side.

A dialogue box will pop up and you can either Mark as sent or Leave as is. Select which option applies. For this example, let us choose Leave as is.

An option to save the invoice as a PDF file will appear, please click Save.

You can now print the invoice like you would any regular PDF file from your computer.

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You can also search for the invoice by clicking the Magnifying Glass icon and typing the invoice number, customer name, and other details associated with the invoice or clicking on the Invoices on the Invoices owed to you section.

On the invoice list screen, check the tick box of the invoice you want to print and select Email. For this example, we will use Marine Bayside.

You can also go to the specific invoice screen and select Email Invoice on the upper right side. A dialogue box will appear and you can fill out the necessary fields like the email address to send it to, etc. and click Send.

A confirmation will appear that the email has been sent.

Adding online payment services makes it easier for you to get paid.

This helps clients pay your invoices while on the go from their mobile devices.

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SOFTWARE COMPARISON

How to add an online payment service link to an invoice in Xero From the Dashboard, click on Accounting and select Bank Accounts.

On the upper left of the screen, select Add Bank Account.

Type Paypal on the search bar and select the option on the drop down list.

Input your Paypal Email Address and Currency being used and click Continue.

A confirmation will show that the account has been successfully linked.

How to make an invoice tax exclusive or tax inclusive in Xero From the Dashboard, click on Business and select Invoices.

You can also search for the invoice by clicking the Magnifying Glass icon and typing the invoice number, customer name, and other details associated with the invoice or clicking on the Invoices on the Invoices owed to you section.

Once on the invoice list screen, click on the invoice you want to change the status of. For this example, we will be using Marine Systems.

On the upper right side of the screen, and click Invoice Options and select Edit.

On the middle right part of the screen, click on the drop down list next to Amounts are to choose whether the invoice should be Tax Inclusive or Tax Exclusive. Once the necessary change has been made, click on Update on the bottom right of the screen to save.

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How to add an attachment/file to an invoice in Xero From the Dashboard, click on Business and select Invoices.

You can also search for the invoice by clicking the Magnifying Glass icon and typing the invoice number, customer name, and other details associated with the invoice or clicking on the Invoices on the Invoices owed to you section.

Once on the invoice list screen, click on the invoice you want to add an attachment to. For this example, we will be using Marine Systems.

Once on the specific invoice screen, click on the paper icon and select Upload Files.

Choose the file you want to upload and click Open.

You can now attach the file along with the invoice on an email.

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So there it is. Quickbooks and Xero can do pretty much the same thing that the other can. For the most part, when it comes to invoicing, they are almost identical to each other. Invoice details can be more detailed with Xero, and there are features, like being able to delete an invoice, that Quickbooks can do but Xero cannot.

Thing about Quickbooks is you can capture a signature to an invoice in the app if you want to - which is a great little feature that Xero doesn’t have. The ease of entering details in invoices makes Xero the ideal choice as it doesn’t require you to enter in the specific product or service in the invoice that Quickbooks does - especially for eCommerce stores.

Final thoughts We hope that you found this review helpful. If you have any other questions regarding Quickbooks and Xero or other software that integrate with it, please feel free to contact us. We at WhichAddOn totally get how difficult it is to choose between these two great software and we are always more than happy to assist.

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CASE STUDY

A Fashion Dilemma

By Marlon Wambeek

INTRODUCTION

In another life Lee Mathews, founder of her eponymous brand, would have been an artist. Much of her joy comes from looking at a rail of clothes in the abstract – taking a painterly viewpoint in terms of their colours, textures and patterns and observing how they juxtapose in a way where one piece contributes to the dynamism of another.

Since Lee Mathews ďŹ rst collection, launched in 2000, they have built a loyal community of women based on their core brand beliefs.

D I A N A

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S A T I N

D R E S S

LM collections are designed, patterned and sampled in Sydney, Australia - where their company is still 100% owned and operated including their print development for key silk, linen and cotton pieces.

LM designs revolve around high quality, natural woven textiles.

Sourcing signature cotton and linens from Japan, silks from China, wool from Australia and Italy and cashmere from Italy. They aim to work with small mills who are experts in their craft.

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PROBLEM

Lee Mathews was using an ERP type solution called DANT. It was an older legacy system that was US based. It was server based and support was provided from the US. The biggest issues it had was its lack of connectivity to their e-commerce store, wholesale customers (JOOR Marketplace), large retail (David Jones), and most importantly not having any clear insight into their inventory levels at a shop/ retail level as well as in the multiple warehouse locations.

SOLUTION

The solution was Cin7 without a doubt. Cin7 caters for fashion as well as has all the necessary connections to e-commerce, EDI, JOOR marketplace, 3PL, and gives you real-time visibility of your stock.

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CASE STUDY

SOLUTION

Lee Mathews had never really had to deal with stock at a system level, despite being a stock driven business. The reason was, that DANT was so poor at managing inventory, as a result stock skills were almost forgotten.

Predominantly DANT was used to manage sales at a retail level, and it was quite good at doing that.

The reason I mention this is that the team at Lee Mathews really struggled with stock management skills. This made the implementation a bit more cumbersome and we did have to spend a lot more time from a consultative point of view in assisting the Lee Mathews team to understand things like: 1. Stock takes 2. Inventory costing methods 3. Supply chain management/ordering 4. Product integrity in the system 5. Inventory management These were just a few concepts that did not have a system, process or a knowledge base present prior to Cin7. As such this presented quite a unique challenge to assist in trying to grow the knowledge base/internal systems, as well as implementing Cin7.

Despite the challenges and the large team of 50 plus workers that needed to be trained across retail and operations, the system was implemented, and Lee Mathews is now in the ďŹ ne-tuning stage and looking to us to create a dashboard across a number of dierent systems for them.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Jason Proctor SENIOR SOLUTION ENGINEER

BIOGRAPHY Jason grew up in South Africa and attended university in Cape Town where he majored in accounting. After several stints abroad, working in accounting and education Jason shifted his focus to the space where IT and finance meet, and decided to pursue a career in financial systems.

When not in Cape Town Jason spends most of his time in Bangkok, his favourite city in Southeast Asia. Jason recently fulfilled a life long dream of watching Liverpool Football Club play at Anfield. Over Christmas 2018 he visited the UK and went up to Liverpool for a boxing day game against Newcastle.

He quickly realised that this was his passion and found it fulfilling helping businesses achieve their goals through systems setup, training and support. Jason has not looked back since moving into the financial systems space. He has a wealth of experience with a range of international clients and loves consulting with clients whilst traveling the globe.

Jason is excited for 2019 with WhichAddOn. We remain agile by continuing to shape and refine the way we do business as the technology around us evolves.

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CASE STUDY

Why DEAR Inventory trumped Lightspeed for Keane Ceramics

By Jeri Wambeek

Introduction Keane Ceramics is a family-run clay manufacturing business based at Somersby on the scenic Central Coast of NSW, Australia. The company has been established for over 30 years and offers an extensive range of clays, slips, glazes, and ceramic tools and equipment. Keane Ceramics produce over 25 different types of clay and casting slips.

Keane Ceramics has one warehouse with a large production facility and a showroom to purchase any tools and equipment a pottery lover would need. Not only does Keane Ceramics supply schools, government institutions and retailers all around Australia, anyone can also jump online at any time to stock up on their pottery supplies at keaneceramics.com.au.

Problem The Keane Ceramics team got in touch with WhichAddOn to help them find a better solution. They were already using Xero as their accounting software and Shopify for their eCommerce site. The inventory management system that they were using for production and the showroom was Lightspeed POS. Lightspeed, although it is a cloud solution, wasn’t giving them the two-way connectivity they needed with Xero.

There was still a lot of manual data entry to import and export invoices and payments into Xero to manage debtors, reconcile sales from multiple channels and more.

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Problem DEAR Inventory was a great fit for the Keane Ceramics team.

DEAR Inventory has a very tight integration with Xero where invoices are pushed to Xero once created in DEAR and synced. Then the payment detail comes up from Xero into DEAR. DEAR even records the date of a payment, the amount and the source of the payment - pulling all this data up from Xero after you apply the payment in Xero from the bank feed. This means that you can see your debtors in DEAR or Xero.

You can also easily see the status of an invoice and the detail of when it was paid inside DEAR, without having to go into Xero. Surprisingly, DEAR is one of the inventory management solutions that does this process well. A lot of people assume it’s a given in all inventory systems, but unfortunately that’s not the case.

The other added benefit that Keane Ceramics loved about DEAR Inventory once they started using it - is that they now had an easy to use POS with multiple warehouse capabilty, so they could track sales at trade shows, really easily. Right from an iPad. All they had to do was turn on another register in the DEAR POS and transfer the stock into the new “Trade Show” warehouse in DEAR as they took the stock off the shelf to take to the show and off they went.

Final thoughts Really when it came down to it, DEAR Inventory was an easy fix for a simple problem. Lightspeed was a great product for what it did for Keane Ceramics. It had POS, inventory, production, multiple price levels and more. However, the Xero integration was what let it down.

To me, this client’s situation just outlines the importance of taking your time to ensure you have the right solution for your business situation before you get started. I know it’s so easy to just start setting up a software these days you can do it yourself - but it’s really important to know you have the right solution so you don’t waste time with the wrong one.

If you want to chat to one of our expert Solution Engineers about your business and get our help to find the right cloud solution for your business or ensure that what you are currently using is setup right for you, please get in contact with your Account Manager, or chat with us on WhichAddOn.com today.

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The discussion around App Advisory continues in the industry.

It was a feature at Quickbooks Connect earlier in the year, and again at Xerocon Brisbane. As I write these words our team noticed it was up for discussion at the From the Trenches podcast featuring Tim Boyar and Paul Meissner.

Paul cynically observed that app advisory was “the next thing that accountants have to do or they’ll go out of business”. The industry certainly does get tired of being lectured by software vendors that they have to do something or they’ll go out of business. Another slightly cynical observation was that App Advisory was about “getting us locked into their ecosystem”. The pair seemed to agree that a base understanding was needed to answer client queries, but this seemed to be limited to Xero and Receipt Bank.

I think Paul was right when he said it’s difficult to simply tap someone on the shoulder at a firm and say “Ok, you’re now the app advisory department”. As he probably rightly observed, he’d make 2-3 times more in bringing on work that his firm is actually scaled for. As he put it: “My clients don't’ want to pay me the right market value to learn the systems, and sit there and implement and train them on it.”

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The App Advisory Discussion

And upon meeting many clients, we too, support this claim. But more often the client mostly lacks of understanding of the dire need for this service. Just Like a popular cliché, “accountant solves problems you didn’t know you have”.

This has been transferred to the App Advisory industry. But this is not a surprise as most Apps perform accounting and bookkeeping tasks.

Thus failure to understand the complexity involved in acquiring an App for a business lead to under valuing this service.

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Many of our clients, on training them about any App, admit to have had no clue and never thought that the app world is too complex. Upon seeing many advertisements on apps, they thought they could easily identify and purchase the right App for their business. But the fact is, it takes an App advisor who properly understand the client business challenges and

opportunity and the Apps in the market to correctly advise on the App is appropriate for the business and will lead to increased business productivity. Therefore, we need to help the client understand why they need App advice before the actual purchase and that the decision around App needs more than meet the eye. For example, purchasing an inappropriate App

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will only be a loss as it won’t be able to perform the required tasks.

And upon meeting many clients, questions on why they need App advice always stand out.

Fortunately, after understanding they become open minded, become eager to receive the services and have no problem paying for the services as they are aware of the beneďŹ ts from these services.

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So, Why Do Client Need App Advisory Service Before Acquiring An App? With many Apps in the market, selecting an app that meets unique needs of any business is not as easy as it sounds. Business needs vary depending on the size of business, what activities the business carries, the recording requirement and so on. Therefore, it’s misleading to just pick an App based on the advertisement that it worked for another business.

An App advisory services help a business make a decision on the app, by assessing the business need, App price and quality, security and the App ability to be upgrade in case of this need. As mentioned above, every business has different needs and hence requires an App that can meet it unique needs. An App could be able to solve most of its need but fail to solve the most important task for the business. To solve this problem, many App advisory businesses have equipped themselves and are able to assess the business needs and in turn advise on the appropriate App for their business.

Also, with the high growth of the app technology, we can only expect more development on Apps. For example apps which can perform more tasks. No client would wish to be buying a new App every year and this necessitates purchasing an App which can be upgraded easily in case a new need arose. Thus, knowing the App longevity and it ability to be upgraded is very important and for this reason clients should take advantage of App advisory knowledge on this area.

Lastly, I would classify an app as an asset or a project which is expected to bring returns in the future. And just like any investment, purchasing an app needs to be planned, to ensure it is worth the money and will in turn bring profit to the business. But one can not only rely on adverts, since every marketer need to make a sale thus only showing only the good side of a product. So, how do you prove the truth and get the value of your money? It is only by using the App advisory services.

After purchasing and implementing the appropriate App for the business, there is need to train the staff who will be operating the system. For example how do you to start, record data and generate reports. Some app requires knowledge on how to operate them to avoid unnecessary breakdown. Here, App advisory plays a big role of training and ensuring implementation is a success.

Similarly, business confidentiality is of utmost importance. With the growth of technology, there is a growth; cybercrimes have also increased posing a great risk to both businesses and individuals. This means that the business can lose all their confidential information if not security measures are in place. So going the app way could mean threat to the business but this is one of the reasons we offer App advisory services. It’s us in this industry that clearly understands the security software that is appropriate depending on the App.

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ISSUE 5, JANUARY 2018

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