OdataLink is developed by Accounting Addons.
With over 20+ years of experience creating custom reports for MYOB and Xero, Accounting Addons is a leader when it comes to creating integration solutions and custom reports for Australian and New Zealand businesses.
Our Story
The story of OdataLink began with that of Accounting Addons.
Accounting Addons first started in 1997 by Jeff Stephenson. Jeff’s vision was two-folds:
- to empower businesses by unlocking insight within their own data
- and to automate repetitive processes
Over time, this vision became reality with key products such as BudgetLink, ODBClink and eventually OdataLink.
OdataLink is the latest incarnation of this vision, inheriting over 20+ years of experience in developing solutions for the MYOB and Xero community.
Whereas ODBClink was built to synchronise data to databases (a key concept of the 90s and 00s), OdataLink’s aim is to provide a live link to this data. This offers a more modern approach to data access, a hallmark of the distributed cloud-computing era.
To achieve this, OdataLink embraces the OData specification as designed by Microsoft and subsequently standardised by Oasis.
Development of OdataLink began in early 2020 and within 6 months, became available to MYOB users to start using with tools such as Power BI and Excel.
In 2021, and with only 2 weeks of development, OdataLink became available for Xero users.
Our Values
Accounting Addons holds four values at it’s core when developing solutions. OdataLink was built with those four pillars in mind.
- Simple
- Flexible
- Performs
- Supported
Simple
The most important facet of software is to offer simple solutions to complex problems. This is why we chose OData as the standard we adopted. Noting is more evident of this principle as the use of a simple url to access your data.
Flexible
We know that all business might have have common needs, but each have unique characteristics, challenges and requirements. As such, flexibility is paramount.
We do not push a single solution to all organisation. Instead, we try to offer many approaches.
Performs
Perhaps the biggest challenge is to ensure that OdataLink performs in the real world. Where possible, we always strive to ensure performance is at the forefront.
Supported
Lastly, and more importantly, we at Accounting Addons take pride in the level of support and expertise we can provide.; whether via online help, videos or email and live chat.
Our People
Jeff Stephenson
Founding Managing Director | Solution Architect | MYOB Professional Developer
Jeff founded Accounting Addons in 1997.
Formerly employed by MYOB as Design Analyst and MYOB Certified Consultant.
Formerly a BI Reporting Specialist working with cutting edge solutions used by some of Australia’s largest companies.
What we now know as Accounting Addons and it’s signature product BudgetLink, have been Jeff’s vision and labour of love since 1997. In its embryo form, BudgetLink was first released around 2002 and continues to grow and mature to this day. Accounting Addons became a proprietary limited company in 2007.
Nicolas Emmerich
Lead Developer
Nic joined Accounting Addons in early 2007, after having worked with Jeff at MYOB during the early 2000s.
Nic is a well-rounded developer, familiar with most technnologies (.Net, SQL, vba, etc.). As lead developer, Nic wrote every line of code and sql present in OdataLink (and most of the other products).
He also tends to waffle and be overly technical but seems to have a knack at explaining things in videos.
“Whereas Jeff has the vision, I am his right-hand man that will try to make his vision a reality.
You can blame me for every bug, issue and flaw in OdataLink.”