One platform to store all your financial data
Advisorfi is an online dashboard that synchronises with all your accounting software, to gather insights and measure the health of your business in real-time. It will then crunch the numbers and show you awesome insights that you choose to see right in the dashboard, in an easy to understand format.
the client
Will Lopez
Florida based innovator, pioneer in online accounting, Will Lopez is the man behind Advisorfi. He himself is the founder and CEO of the firm. Working for over a period of 12 years in different companies in account section, it was Lopez's dream to help people especially when it comes to business. And that thought is today's awesome Advisorfi!
The Concept
To build a fast and robust web app, that can connect to multiple accounting software to gather business data and analyze it to create meaningful insights to be visualized in an easy to understand format.
Creation
From imaginary to implementation
Requirement analysis
Analyzed the client requirement and did market research
Deciding technical stack
Based on the requirement analysis, a technical stack was chosen that was deemed most appropirate for the tasks at hand. The tech stack included Node.js, MongoDB, Socket.IO, Backbone.js etc
Design
The initial UX designs were created.
Prototyping & Development
A basic prototype to try out connecting to Xero and then calculating the financial insight data was developed in the initial sprints, which were later expanded to the full featured product
Future
Currently Advisorfi app supports syncing from the Xero accounting software. A next phase of development is in plans, which will adds more features that we are excited about. Planned features include integrations with popular online accounting suites, such as FreshBooks and Wave Accounting. Another area that we are actively working on is the business intelligence features, that calculate Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) based on business's financial data and then compare them with industry specific benchmarks to identify and provide simple actionable items that boost business performance. Advisorfi will also analyze business development practices such as traditional and social media advertisements and tell clients what is working and what is not. Advisorfi's upcoming business intelligence features aims to bring it one step closer to its ultimate goal - improve it's customers decision making thereby boost their business performance.
Challenges & Solution
Challenge 1Writing client for the Xero API using Node.js
One of the major challenges we faced was with the integration of Advisorfi with Xero accounting software. Xero has a very secure OAuth API, which is double encrypted, with two separate sets of keys at different stages in the request procedure. Our team had previous experience dealing with OAuth API integrations, but still making API calls to Xero proved to be more difficult than we anticipated.
SolutionVery soon we realized the previous knowledge we had with writing OAuth API clients is not going to be good enough. We also couldn't find any account of writing Xero Partner API client using Node.js online. We got in touch with the API integration specialist at Xero, who confirmed that it was the first time anyone was trying to connect to the Xero Partner API using Node.js. So we decided to write our own node module for connecting to the Xero API. We took an existing OAuth client, tore it apart and added the extra parts that were needed for it to handle requirements specific to Xero API, such as handling double encryption, refreshing expired tokens, sending custom header parameter as Xero required etc. In the end, with the client's permission, we shared the implementation details of the API client we created with the Xero developer relations team to help them help other developers in the future.
Technology
These are the technologies we used to develop Advisorfi
Architecture
Takeaway
An awesome platform for business insights integrated with Xero, Kashoo, Harvest, Freshbooks, Intuit, Wave and much more. Your accounting data in real-time. It's all online. A peaceful entrepreneurship. That's incredible!
TATE J HOWE
CEO at Scenes, Inc.
"I believe that Toobler provided me the highest level of communication & coding during my product development. The world has greatly benefited from hands of their innovative team!"WILL LOPEZ Founder of AdvisorFi
developer's comment
The concept which William came up with was really interesting. To be a part of a cool platform which is very much useful for entrepreneurs is certainly a great thing."
Saurab Software Engineer
Of course, we are proud of creating such an accounting web application along with William that lets tons to run a trouble-free business. Though the project was a bit tough, we could finally make it to the level of William, we believe."
Anoop AmbujanSoftware Engineer