Using Trade Assist with Xero for Your Decorating Business

Xero is a popular cloud accounting platform used by many UK small businesses, including painters and decorators. It handles the formal accounting side — VAT returns, bank reconciliation, year-end accounts and Making Tax Digital submission.

Trade Assist complements Xero by handling the day-to-day business management that Xero was not designed for — quoting, job management, scheduling, client CRM, progress tracking and snagging. Trade Assist is built specifically for decorators; Xero is built for general accounting.

Together, they give you a complete system: Trade Assist for running your decorating business day to day, and Xero for your formal accounting and tax submissions. This page explains how they work together.

What Trade Assist Does That Xero Does Not

Xero is excellent at accounting — tracking bank transactions, reconciling accounts, managing VAT and producing financial reports. But it was not designed for the day-to-day workflow of a decorating business.

Trade Assist handles the things Xero cannot do: creating professional decorating quotes with room measurements and paint calculations, tracking jobs from quote to completion with area-by-area progress, managing client relationships with a decorator-specific CRM, scheduling jobs and assigning team members, and tracking snagging and variations.

Trade Assist uses decorating terminology — rooms, surfaces, coats, paint products, snagging — rather than generic accounting terms. It feels natural to decorators in a way that generic accounting software does not.

What Xero Does That Trade Assist Does Not

Trade Assist is not accounting software and does not replace Xero. Xero handles the formal accounting functions that Trade Assist does not attempt: bank reconciliation, VAT return submission to HMRC, year-end accounts, payroll and Making Tax Digital bridging.

If you are VAT-registered or need to submit MTD-compliant returns, you need accounting software like Xero to handle the actual submission to HMRC. Trade Assist keeps your records organised and exportable, but it does not submit directly to HMRC.

The recommended setup is to use Trade Assist for your day-to-day business management and Xero for your formal accounting and tax submissions.

How to Use Trade Assist Alongside Xero

The typical workflow is simple: use Trade Assist to create quotes, track jobs, invoice clients and log expenses throughout the month. At the end of each month or quarter, use the Tax Export feature to produce a summary of your income and expenses.

Provide this export to your accountant or import the data into Xero. Your Xero records stay up to date for VAT returns and MTD submission, without you needing to enter data twice in Xero itself.

This division of labour means you get the benefits of decorator-specific business management in Trade Assist and the accounting power of Xero, without duplication.

Tax Export for Xero

The Tax Export feature in Trade Assist produces a complete summary of your income and expenses for any tax year or any month. The export includes all invoices, expenses, payments and VAT amounts, categorised and totalled.

Your accountant can use this export to populate Xero with your trading data, ensuring your Xero records are accurate and up to date for VAT returns and MTD submission. The categorised expense data aligns with standard accounting categories.

This saves hours of manual data entry in Xero and reduces the risk of errors from double-handling data.

VAT Handling Across Both Systems

Trade Assist calculates VAT automatically on every quote and invoice when you set your VAT rate in your settings. The VAT amount, net total and gross total are shown on every document. Your VAT registration number is stored in your business details.

The Tax Export includes a VAT breakdown by period, showing the VAT you have collected on invoices and the VAT you have paid on expenses. Your accountant can use this for your VAT return in Xero.

This means your VAT figures are calculated and organised in Trade Assist, ready for your accountant to submit via Xero — no manual calculations required.

Expense Tracking for Xero

Trade Assist lets you log expenses against each job — materials, fuel, subcontractor costs and equipment. These expenses are included in the Tax Export, categorised in a way that aligns with standard accounting categories in Xero.

The mileage log feature tracks business miles for tax-deductible travel costs. CIS records can be tracked for subcontractor payments with verification numbers and deduction rates.

All of this expense data feeds into the Tax Export, so your accountant has a complete picture of your costs for Xero without you needing to enter them separately.

Frequently Asked Questions