HERO Software raises the invoice where the bookkeeping data already lives.
HERO Software is an end-to-end product for trades businesses: projects, orders, the CRM and the invoicing all happen in one place. That makes it the system where the bookkeeping data is created, and the only question left is whether it survives the trip to whichever accounting system the business keeps.
The integration went smoothly, and the range keeps growing
“The support provided is truly first class, with impressively quick response times. The documentation is thorough and easy to follow, which made integration a smooth process for me. I also appreciate the wide range of accounting integrations and endpoints available. It's clear that the endpoints are continuously being developed and expanded, which adds even more value to the platform.”
Who HERO is, and what runs on Maesn
- Website
- hero-software.de
- About HERO Software
- HERO Software GmbH from Hannover, a cloud product with a companion app for trades businesses of two to fifty employees, across every finishing trade from plumbing and electrical to roofing, joinery and solar. Its own site names Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands as its markets, and Maesn publishes 40.000 tradespeople on the platform.
- What runs in HERO
- Project management, order handling, the CRM, time tracking and the invoicing, including the receivables. The invoice is raised in HERO and sent from HERO.
- Use case
- Reading the customer master data and posting the booking back once the invoice is out. The workflow itself, independent of any one product, is on the payment reconciliation page.
- Accounting systems
- DATEV and further accounting systems inside and outside the German-speaking market, on the same connection
The invoice decides what the booking will look like
A trades business does not do its accounting in the evening. It does it by raising an invoice, and everything a booking later needs is settled in that moment: what was delivered, when, and at which rate.
Because invoicing happens inside HERO Software rather than in a ledger, HERO is where the accounting-grade detail comes into existence. The items and services are already maintained there, the time tracking supplies the period the work fell into, and the invoice carries the rate per line for customers inside and outside Germany. None of that is bookkeeping work in the usual sense, and all of it is what a clean set of books depends on.
The risk is not in getting it right. It is in what happens at the handover, because a booking has to arrive in the shape the receiving system expects, and there is no shared shape: the German market alone offers several, and HERO sells into four markets. Rebuilding that per system, and keeping it rebuilt, is a second product next to the one the trades businesses actually buy.
One posting, and the shape is somebody else's problem
HERO writes the posting once. Whether it lands as a journal entry or as a booking proposal is a property of the system on the other side, and on most systems there is no second option.
The booking is made, for a business or an advisor who keeps the books themselves.
The booking is suggested, and somebody reviews and releases it on the other side.
Exact Online, Dynamics 365 Business Central and Xero. Everywhere else the shape is fixed for you.
On fourteen of the seventeen there is nothing to choose, so a product that writes postings itself has to know per system which of the two shapes exists, what it is called there and what it demands. The common data model is where that difference is absorbed, so HERO writes one posting and the customer master data comes back in one shape as well.
The other half of the ramp-up is that nobody at HERO is in the room when a connection is switched on. A trades business with four people connects its own accounting system, and it has to work the first time. Unified authentication is the part that carries that, including for the systems where a customer runs more than one company.
Several hundred connected businesses in the first weeks
HERO Software went from launch to several hundred connected end customers inside the first weeks. That is a self-serve curve rather than a rollout, and it is only available to a product whose customers can switch the connection on themselves.
“I also appreciate the wide range of accounting integrations and endpoints available. It's clear that the endpoints are continuously being developed and expanded.”
The range is the part that decides whether the fourth market is a project or a configuration. Of the seventeen systems that take a posting, five belong to the German-speaking market and the rest are spread across the Netherlands, the Nordics, the UK and the global platforms.
HERO publishes Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands as its markets, and the Dutch accounting landscape has nothing in common with the German one. What changed is that this stopped being an engineering question: the same posting reaches a Dutch ledger and a German one, and the difference is absorbed before it reaches HERO's code. Reading customer records the other way is the neighbouring workflow on customer and supplier data sync. And since the people who felt this most are the ones who built it, the case for it is laid out for product and engineering teams in their own terms.
Common questions
What does the integration actually move?
Journal entry or booking proposal, and who decides?
Does this work outside Germany?
Why does the bookkeeping data have to be right this early?
How quickly did it ramp up?
Can another vertical product use the same setup?
Reads the ledger through Maesn and keeps the bank side on its own connection, then writes the reconciled bookings back.Read the case study
Automates the full accounts payable cycle and posts every payment back into the customer's ERP.Read the case study
Turns tracked project time into draft invoices inside the accounting system the customer already runs.Read the case study