App Showdown finalist profile A2X: Helping Amazon sellers and their accountants

Software engineers Paul Grey and Ashley Schroder, creators of the A2X app for Amazon sellers and their accountants, know the Amazon marketplaces inside and out from first-hand experience – and all of the problems and challenges that can exist.

The two first started working together more than a decade ago at Peace Software, then New Zealand’s largest software developer. Paul was chief technology officer and Ashley was nominated as “developer of the year” by his peers. With the rise of Amazon marketplaces, the two began working together to sell internationally with Amazon and FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon).

"When it comes to selling on Amazon, we’ve felt the pain. As software engineers, we’re the right people to solve some of those problems. That’s what motivated us to create A2X. It’s a software solution to a challenge that every successful Amazon seller will run into sooner or later: how to get proper accounting for Amazon marketplace sales. A2X takes a tough problem and makes it easy."

The A2X app for Amazon sellers and their accountants:

Saves time every month. It’s time-consuming logging in to Amazon Seller Central, downloading big transaction files and wading through them in spreadsheets. One seller said it was taking 20 hours every month. A2X connects Amazon’s systems to QuickBooks® and automates it all.

Helps sellers grow internationally. A2X connects to Amazon marketplaces worldwide and supports all the currencies involved.

Gives Amazon sellers accurate, reliable accounting for their Amazon marketplace sales and fees. A2X reconciles to the penny, and posts revenue and expenses to the correct financial periods, enabling accurate accrual accounting.

Besides being grounded in their own front-line experience selling on Amazon marketplaces worldwide, the pair leveraged crucial customer feedback along the way.

A2X in its formative stages was adopted by specialist e-commerce accounting firms and deployed for their Amazon seller clients. The experience gained allowed it to be proven at scale to hundreds of thousands of orders per month, and provided the input the team needed to add multi-client features that save time for accounting firms, such as custom account mapping templates to streamline the roll out to each new client.

In Europe, the feedback from UK accounting firms highlighted specific needs for European VAT compliance that A2X has been able to meet.

Paul says he’s impressed with the way the Intuit® app ecosystem is matching up specialist software capabilities to industry segments.

"That’s going to open up opportunities for accounting firms to specialize in particular areas to serve business segments or niches. For example, an accounting firm can specialize in e-commerce by developing expertise in the apps that work best for e-commerce businesses."

A2X was a finalist in this year’s Small Business App Showdown held at QuickBooks Connect 2017.

"The Showdown pitch competition was an awesome experience," the partners say. "We were excited to be among the top 10 and to get this chance to showcase A2X."