How we list and order tools

We list software. Every tool in the directory is a product a firm can buy and run, or put a client on: ledgers, practice management, receipt capture, reporting, payroll, tax and the rest.

People and services are listed elsewhere. Coaches are at /coaches, implementation partners at /implementation-partners, and outsourcing providers at /outsourcing. A firm that sells a service rather than software belongs there, not here.

To be added, a product must be published in the Xero App Store, the Intuit QuickBooks App Store or the Sage Marketplace, which means it has passed that platform's app review. We check the marketplace listing, and that accounting or bookkeeping firms genuinely use the product, before we list it. A submission never publishes itself: a person at The Firm creates the listing. Listing is free, and so is claiming a listing.

We compile each listing from the vendor's own website and its marketplace listing, and we write it as a fact sheet: what the tool does, who it is for, what it connects to, how it charges and where it is available. We do not use superlatives, and a listing never recommends one tool over another.

A few rules keep the facts honest:

• Prices. We show a price only when the vendor publishes one, with its currency, its unit (per user, per client, per month) and the month we read it. A price without a date is not a price.
• Regions. We name a region only when the vendor says the product is limited to it. A listing with no region means the vendor states no restriction, not that the tool works everywhere.
• Evidence. Every fact we record is checked against the text of the vendor page it came from. If the wording is not on that page, the fact is left out. Common questions on a profile (trials, cancellation terms, data hosting, support) link to the vendor page that answers them.
• Software helps, a person decides. We use AI to read vendor pages and draft the fact sheet. It may suggest a category but never sets one. A person reviews every batch before it goes live, and nothing is applied automatically.

Every change to a listing is logged with its date and who made it (the vendor, our editors or our research pass). The full log is public at /partners/changes.

A vendor can claim its listing for free. We confirm the person works for the vendor, using their work email address, before we hand over the profile. Once claimed, the vendor can keep its description, features, integrations and links up to date. Some fields stay ours: the editorial pin, awards and paid placement are never editable by the vendor.

Each category is ordered by the same rules, in this order. A step only matters when every step above it is tied.

1. Our pick. Tools our editors pin because firms genuinely run them.
2. A current Xero App Award. A winner in this year's Xero App Awards, then a finalist. The award is Xero's decision, not ours, and each one links to Xero's announcement. Awards from earlier years still show on a profile but no longer change the order.
3. Paid placement. A tool whose vendor pays for placement, labelled Sponsored.
4. Claimed and verified. A vendor who has claimed and maintains its listing sits above a listing we wrote without them.
5. Completeness. A listing with a description, logo, features and integrations sits above one without.
6. Name, A to Z.

All of this happens inside a category. Paying moves a tool within its own category, never into another one. We do not rank by popularity yet: there is not enough reader traffic for it to mean anything, and ranking on noise would only reward the one tool people happened to click.

Listing is not a ranking. A tool sitting third in a category is not our third favourite. It is third because of the rules above.

"Our pick" is The Firm's editors saying, out loud, that firms run this tool and it does the job well. It is editorial and it is never paid for. A tool whose vendor pays for placement is never shown as Our pick, even if our editors pinned it before the vendor became a sponsor. We pick a handful at most in any category, and many categories have none.

Sponsored means money changed where or how often a tool appears. That covers the paid partner plans, older sponsorship arrangements, the Category Partner position at the top of a category, and sponsored tools shown beside articles. Wherever it appears, it is labelled Sponsored, and every link we send to a vendor carries a sponsored attribute.

What payment can and cannot do:

• It can move a tool up within its own category, below our picks and below current Xero award holders.
• It can add a screenshot gallery and video to the profile, and put the tool in front of readers in our articles and newsletter, labelled.
• It never makes a tool Our pick, and a Sponsored tool is never shown above one.
• A category carries at most one Sponsored tool in its top section, and only one Category Partner, ever.
• It never changes the facts. The price, integrations, regions and description we record are the same whether a vendor pays or not.

Some pages compare two tools, or list alternatives to one. These pages state facts, not our opinion.

• Every claim is cited. Each fact links to where we found it: the vendor's own pricing page or documentation, an app store listing such as the Xero App Store, or an aggregate rating on a named review platform. Each source carries the date we checked it.
• No opinion. We do not say which tool is better, easier or the best. "Choose this one if…" appears only when the condition is a cited fact, such as which ledger a tool connects to or how it is priced. If a review platform's aggregate data shows something, we say so and name the platform, the rating, the number of reviews and the date.
• Ratings from other sites are aggregates only. We show a platform's overall rating with its review count and a link, once a tool has at least five reviews there. We never paraphrase an individual review as our view.
• What we could not verify, we leave out. If we cannot confirm a fact, the page makes no claim about it either way, and it says so where the gap matters.
• Paid placement is labelled on the page. A tool that pays for its position is labelled Sponsored on every comparison it appears in, with the line "pays The Firm for this position".
• Facts are re-checked at least every 90 days, and each page shows the date it was last verified.

Reviews come from people who work in firms, under their own name. To write one you sign in, and the review is signed with your name and your firm, with your role and firm size so readers can weigh it. A reviewer whose own shared tech stack includes the tool is marked as running it. A review is marked Verified firm only when one of our editors has confirmed that the reviewer works at the firm named on it. An editor checks every review before it is published, and we remove reviews that break the rules.

We show a score only once a tool has five published reviews. Until then a profile shows the reviews themselves and how many more are needed. Five is a small number, but it stops one early review, or a vendor's friend, from setting a tool's score. A profile's score uses reviews on The Firm only, never ratings from other sites. Comparison pages may show another platform's aggregate rating, under the rules in Objective comparisons above.

Some tools pay The Firm for a position in the directory, such as the Category Partner slot in a category. Wherever a paid tool appears in the directory or our guides, it is labelled Sponsored and says it pays The Firm for this position. Its listing is compiled under the same rules as every other tool, and a paid tool is never shown as Our pick.

If a listing is wrong, tell us. Email hello@thefirm.media or use the contact form with the tool's name, what is wrong and a link to the page that shows the right fact. Vendors can also claim their listing and fix it themselves.

We fix errors as soon as we have checked them, and the change appears in the public log at /partners/changes with its date. Corrections to our articles are listed on our corrections page. Our wider editorial standards apply to the directory too.