Xero

SMBs and agencies use Xero as the single source of truth for finance: invoices raised from the CRM or project tool, bank feeds auto-reconciled, and payroll, GST, and BAS handled natively. For service businesses this removes hours a week of manual bookkeeping and shortens month-end close from days to a single afternoon.

Operations teams connect Xero to Airtable, Stripe, and Shopify via Make so that every sale, refund, and expense flows into the right tracking category automatically. Typical setups include auto-creating draft invoices from signed proposals and matching Stripe payouts against invoiced work with no manual keying.

Finance leaders at growing companies use Xero as the hub for cashflow visibility and advisor collaboration — giving bookkeepers and accountants scoped access, running budget-vs-actual reports, and feeding board packs without exporting spreadsheets. It is a common stepping stone before a business moves onto NetSuite or similar at enterprise scale.