A2X for UK Sellers: Accurate & Automated Ecommerce Accounting

My name is Joe Pollard and I'm the CFO at Applied Nutrition PLC. We are a manufacturer and distributor of sports nutrition products. That means anything from pre-workout powder to whey protein and also health and wellness products. And we sell to over 85 countries in the world. We sell both Amazon and on our own website. And we also sell now on Amazon UK, various stores in Amazon Europe and Amazon US.

Principally, before A2X, we'd begun selling on Amazon, Amazon Marketplace in the UK. And the issues that we were having were the sheer number of different transactions that were coming through from Amazon. Some of them were quite hard to understand what they were, why Amazon was giving or taking away money. And then there was a significant time requirement in order to, each time Amazon made a payment to us, work out what transactions that reconciled to and where the various postings should go.

Over time, our Shopify orders have increased. Over time, the website has become more complicated to reconcile. So, for instance, there are now multiple different ways to pay, for instance, on Shopify itself via Klarna, via Clearpay. And also, we now have an Applied Nutrition app which integrates with our website, and also there are now online stores like TikTok which also integrate onto the online shop. And plus, the sheer volume of transactions had grown significantly over time to the point that where, while at the start it was very easy to manually reconcile the transactions coming through on the website because they reconcile straight into our stock system, it had just become almost someone's effectively almost half their time per day being spent on reconciling the various transactions coming through on the website, even though web sales are about 10 % of our sales, but it was taking 50 % of one of the accountant team's time in order to reconcile all of those.

A2X is a solution for posting large volumes of transactions on our website and Amazon store. I would say A2X probably saves us between three and four hours a day. The integration is really good between A2X and Xero. It allows us to post various things, differentiate between, for instance, the different Amazon stores, the different types of gateway that we might be using on Shopify, be it the order gateway or the payment gateway. And we can also, one of the big time savings is, we're able to post all the European VAT transactions to their own accounts.

That means when we're reconciling the European VAT at the end of the month, it saves a lot of time because the transactions have already been posted to the right code. So instead of going through and splitting them out and analyzing them, actually it's just making sure that the VAT transaction out of Xero matches the balance that we've got on our Balance Sheet at the end of the month.

Into the future, we're looking at expanding our Amazon online presence into new jurisdictions. We're still relatively early in our journey on Amazon Europe. We're expanding that into other countries, and that's going to be part of our strategy. We'll be looking to A2X to make that easier, make sure the VAT postings are correct, make sure we're all set up, and it's generally a seamless integration when we go live with a new Amazon storefront.

The ROI is quite a significant time saving – three to four hours a day of one of my team member's time. That's freed them up to run other things that we have to do on a monthly basis or a weekly basis. They're able to get to them quicker. And also, it's created an ability for us to do analysis quicker.

We're really happy with how it's working, how it's reconciling, the accuracy it's giving us, and it really has taken a lot of time out of my team's day.

Hi, I'm Elspeth and I'm the UK/EU Customer Success Team Lead at A2X. We're so excited that A2X has been recognized as Xero UK's 2024 Practice App of the Year. In this video, I'll quickly show you A2X and why it's a top-rated app in the Xero App Store and used by thousands of Xero accounting partners.

For those who don't know, A2X is an ecommerce accounting tool designed to bring data from sales channels such as Shopify, Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and BigCommerce into Xero for easy reconciliation and accurate bookkeeping. It was founded in 2014 by ecommerce business owners trying to solve their own accounting challenges and is now used by the top ecommerce accountants and bookkeepers in the world.

If you're working with ecommerce clients, you know that their bookkeeping needs can be complex and take up a lot of time. Or maybe you've been hesitant to take on ecommerce clients because you want to avoid the complexity altogether. Using A2X with Xero can make your ecommerce bookkeeping accurate and easy. Let me show you how.

For this example, we'll show you how A2X works with a Shopify store. First, sign up for an A2X account at a2xaccounting.com. Next, connect A2X to Xero. All you need is your Xero login.

Then you'll need to connect A2X to Shopify. Again, all you'll need is your client's login information, or you can request access to the store. Once A2X is connected to Xero and Shopify, it's time to map your Shopify transactions to your Chart of Accounts. Navigate to the Accounts and Taxes page, where you can choose how to categorize your Shopify transactions to the Chart of Accounts. A2X can help you automate this part.

A2X allows for VAT mapping, including splitting zero-rated and standard-rated transactions as well as non-UK transactions and One-Stop Shop. A2X also allows you to use your Xero tax rates on all transactions, meaning your VAT can be calculated within Xero. You can also make deductions for VAT-inclusive expenses.

Once you've completed your accounts and tax mapping, go to the Payouts tab. This is where you can review and post payouts from A2X to Xero. The final step is to reconcile in Xero. A2X will post settlement data as an invoice in Xero. Log in to Xero and navigate to the bank feed. Find the payout from Shopify. Next to it, you will see the invoice from A2X, ready to be reconciled. And there you go! Shopify bookkeeping with Xero can be that easy when you use A2X.

As an accountant or bookkeeper, you're also eligible for our free A2X Partner Programme designed to help you at every stage of your ecommerce journey, whether you're supporting a handful of clients or going all in on ecommerce. Partner benefits include one-to-one onboarding with a dedicated expert trainer who will assist you in connecting your first client to A2X, unlimited training sessions where you can learn the nuances of various sales channels, top priority support for prompt assistance with client challenges, and scaling up.

As your A2X client base grows, you'll unlock even more benefits: volume discounts, a dedicated Account Manager, co-marketing opportunities, a listing in A2X’s accounting and bookkeeping directory, and so much more. We'd love to chat with you more about how A2X can help you make bookkeeping easier for your ecommerce clients and about the A2X Partner Program. Reach out to us at any time at contact[at]a2xaccounting.com.