Executive summary
A product-build partnership, not an implementation.
This case study is different from most engagements we talk about. Aedon is not a client we implemented Salesforce for: Aedon is a Salesforce-native product that iTechCloud helped design and build. Since November 2019, we have partnered with Aedon to turn an insight about the accounting software market into a shipped, commercial Salesforce product: Aedon Accounting.
The insight was straightforward. The accounting software market has strong products for small businesses (Xero, QuickBooks) and expensive enterprise ERPs for the largest organizations. In between sits a large and underserved segment: growing UK and Irish businesses that have outgrown the small-business tools but do not want, or need, the complexity and cost of a full ERP. Aedon's hypothesis was that a Salesforce-native accounting platform could serve that segment better than anything else on the market, because it would unify finance and CRM on a single platform, eliminating the integration overhead that defines most finance stacks, and would inherit Salesforce's scale, security and ecosystem by construction.
iTechCloud was engaged to turn that hypothesis into a product. What we built together is a full Salesforce-native accounting platform (multi-company, HMRC-connected, scalable, and designed to be deployed in less than one VAT quarter) that is live and competing in the UK and Irish markets today.
- Client
- Aedon Accounting (aedon.co)
- Industry
- FinTech: accounting software ISV
- Challenge
- Build a commercial Salesforce-native accounting platform engineered for UK and Irish businesses that have outgrown Xero and QuickBooks
- Solution
- Full ISV product build on Salesforce: custom accounting engine, HMRC integration, multi-company and recurring invoicing, package/plan commercial model, dashboards, mobile and offline access, AppExchange extensibility
- Engagement
- Multi-year product partnership since November 2019, evolved from trusted partner to trusted advisor, delivered under an outcome-based commercial model
The client
Aedon: a Salesforce-native alternative in a market that needed one.
Aedon Accounting (aedon.co) is a Salesforce-native accounting software product, built for the UK and Irish markets. Aedon's positioning is specific: an easy-to-use Salesforce financial package that offers advanced features Xero and QuickBooks cannot, aimed at growing businesses that are outgrowing the small-business accounting tools but are not ready to take on a full enterprise ERP.
The product covers the full breadth of what a modern business needs from its finance platform: multi-company accounting, recurring invoices, revenue recognition, bank feeds, UK and Irish VAT compliance with HMRC integration, and a full suite of dashboards and reports built on native Salesforce. Implementation takes less than one VAT quarter and training is minimal, because the whole product sits inside the Salesforce environment the finance team may already be working alongside.
iTechCloud is Aedon's product build partner. We began the engagement in November 2019 as the technical builder behind the Aedon vision, and over the years have evolved into a trusted advisor, collaborating with Aedon's leadership on product direction, architecture and go-to-market readiness alongside the day-to-day build work.
The opportunity
A market gap between Xero/QuickBooks and enterprise ERP.
The accounting software market is well served at the top and the bottom, and underserved in the middle. Xero and QuickBooks dominate small-business accounting with simple, cloud-based products that work well at small scale. Enterprise ERPs (Oracle, SAP, NetSuite) serve the largest organizations with deep, highly configurable platforms that come with the cost, complexity and implementation timelines you would expect.
In between sits a large segment of growing businesses that have outgrown the small-business tools but are not ready for enterprise ERP. Xero and QuickBooks were designed for simplicity at small scale and begin to show limits as the business grows. Growing businesses commonly encounter:
- Scalability limits. Performance degrading as transaction volumes grow, file size limits, complex transactions the system was not designed for.
- Security concerns. Generic cloud configurations that may not meet the standards a larger business is now expected to maintain.
- Feature ceilings. Advanced capabilities for specialized industries, complex revenue recognition, multi-entity accounting or sophisticated inventory management simply not available.
- Cost scaling. Pricing structures that grow quickly as the business adds users, services and modules.
- Access and user-count constraints. Subscription tiers that limit simultaneous users, with costs that climb as the team grows.
- Reporting constraints. Standard reports that work for simple businesses, with limited customization and advanced reporting for more complex needs.
- Integration complexity. Connecting accounting to the CRM, operations and other business systems becoming increasingly painful as the stack grows.
Aedon's insight was that a Salesforce-native accounting platform could serve this underserved middle segment better than any available alternative. Building on Salesforce, the product inherits enterprise-grade scale, security and extensibility by construction; unifying finance and CRM on the same platform eliminates the integration overhead that defines most mid-market finance stacks; and an accounting-first experience inside Salesforce lets the finance team work in a tool designed for them, not for a general sales user.
The question was whether that insight could be turned into a working, commercial product. That is where iTechCloud came in.
Our approach
A product build, run as a partnership.
A commercial product build is a different kind of engagement from a client implementation. The success criterion is not "the client goes live on day one" but "the product reaches commercial maturity, finds its market, and keeps evolving." That reframes the whole engagement: the team is not a vendor delivering a scope, but a build partner co-shaping the product with the people who will carry it to market.
That is how we structured our engagement with Aedon from the beginning. Our role was to bring deep Salesforce platform expertise alongside Aedon's deep accounting-domain expertise, so the product would feel like an accounting tool built by accountants, delivered as a Salesforce-native application built by Salesforce specialists. The two kinds of expertise had to work in close partnership rather than in sequence.
Three principles guided the build. First, Salesforce-native by construction: not a product bolted onto Salesforce, but one engineered to feel like a natural part of the platform. Second, unified finance and CRM: accounting data and customer data living in the same system, with the same security model and reporting layer, so integration overhead vanishes for Salesforce customers. Third, enterprise-grade from day one: scale, security and extensibility built in rather than retrofitted, because the target market was businesses that had already outgrown the simpler alternatives.
Commercially, the engagement has evolved from a traditional build model into a fully outcome-based partnership. We now collaborate closely with multiple groups across Aedon's organization on both the product and its strategic direction, the kind of relationship that only forms when a build partner has stayed engaged with a product long enough to understand it as deeply as the people who conceived it.
Building a commercial Salesforce product is a different discipline from delivering a Salesforce implementation. The product has to be excellent in a market with real competition, not just correct against a specification. That changes everything about how the engagement runs.
Subhash Panchani, CEO & Co-Founder, iTechCloud Solution
What we built
Aedon Accounting: a full Salesforce-native finance product.
What we built with Aedon is a complete accounting platform engineered on Salesforce. It is not an integration between Salesforce and an external accounting system; it is an accounting system that lives inside Salesforce, organized around seven integrated capability groups.
A scalable Salesforce-native accounting engine
At the core of Aedon is a Salesforce-native accounting engine capable of handling transaction volumes from tens of thousands to millions without the performance degradation that defines the mid-market pain points of Xero and QuickBooks. We designed the architecture around that volume from the start (object design, data access patterns, bulk processing, and wizards that shape complex processes into workflows that stay fast at scale). The engine handles multi-company accounting, recurring invoices, revenue recognition and the complex transaction types larger businesses rely on, inside a user experience that stays approachable for the finance team.
HMRC integration for UK and Irish VAT
Aedon is a UK and Ireland-focused product, so VAT and HMRC compliance are a central feature, not an option. We built the integration layer between Aedon Accounting and HMRC's digital services to handle VAT submission, tax reporting and the compliance requirements of the UK and Irish markets. Businesses using Aedon file their VAT directly from the platform, with data drawn from live transactional records rather than reconciled across spreadsheets.
Package and plan model with granular permissions
Commercial accounting software needs commercial packaging. We designed Aedon's package and plan model so that different tiers of features (basic bookkeeping, advanced reporting, revenue recognition, multi-entity accounting and the specialized modules) can be sold and provisioned independently. The permission model lets administrators grant specific users access to specific capabilities, supporting the commercial tiering and giving customers fine-grained control over who can see or do what.
Dashboards, reports and export workflows
We built a library of custom dashboards and financial reports covering the operational and financial reporting a mid-market business needs: profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow, AR and AP aging, VAT reporting, revenue recognition schedules and more. Reports can be viewed in the platform, exported in a range of formats, or sent as scheduled email attachments. The reporting layer uses native Salesforce reports and dashboards where possible, so customers familiar with Salesforce reporting work in a tool they already know.
Mobile and offline access
Finance work does not always happen at a desk with a stable connection. We built mobile and offline access into Aedon so users in low-connectivity environments can still view and update records up to defined limits, with changes synchronized when connectivity returns. This closes one of the gaps pure cloud accounting products leave for businesses that work in the field or across multiple sites.
Advanced search across large data sets
At the transaction volumes Aedon is designed for, finding a specific record quickly becomes an operational requirement. We built advanced query and filtering on Salesforce's native search infrastructure, so users can locate specific transactions, invoices or customer records across large data sets in near real time, one of the places where choosing Salesforce as the foundation pays off most clearly.
AppExchange extensibility
Because Aedon is Salesforce-native, it inherits the AppExchange ecosystem by construction. Customers who need specialized capabilities can install free or paid AppExchange applications without the custom integration a standalone accounting system would require. We designed Aedon to be a good citizen in that ecosystem: extensible, well-behaved alongside common AppExchange apps, and ready to interoperate with the wider Salesforce platform the customer may already run.
The outcome
A live Salesforce-native product, competing in its market.
The engagement produced what it set out to produce: a commercial, Salesforce-native accounting platform, live in the market and positioned as a credible alternative to Xero and QuickBooks for growing UK and Irish businesses that have outgrown them.
A product that ships what it promises
Aedon Accounting is live and in commercial use, delivering multi-company accounting, recurring invoices, revenue recognition, bank feeds, HMRC-integrated VAT, dashboards and reports in a Salesforce-native experience that implements in less than one VAT quarter with minimal training.
Finance and CRM, unified
For Salesforce customers, Aedon removes one of the most expensive integrations in the mid-market stack: the CRM-to-accounting bridge. Finance and customer data share one system of record, security model and reporting layer, changing what finance, sales, service and leadership can see and do.
Enterprise-grade without enterprise ERP cost
Building on Salesforce gives Aedon enterprise-grade scale, security and extensibility by construction, a foundation that would otherwise need an expensive ERP or a multi-year custom build, and a real advantage over both small-business tools and enterprise alternatives.
A platform designed to keep evolving
Aedon is a product, not a project. AppExchange gives customers an extension path for specialized needs, the native foundation gives Aedon's product team a modern platform to keep building on, and iTechCloud continues as the build partner for that evolution.
Platform & tooling
What's under the hood.
Platform foundation
Salesforce platform: managed package architecture for commercial ISV distribution, native data model, security and extensibility.
Accounting engine
Custom Apex and Lightning Web Components: multi-company accounting, recurring invoices, revenue recognition, bank feeds, scalable wizard-driven transaction processing.
HMRC integration
Direct integration with HMRC digital services for UK and Irish VAT submission, tax reporting and compliance.
Commercial model
Package and plan tiering with granular permission controls for product tiering and per-customer feature provisioning.
Reporting
Custom dashboards and financial reports, native Salesforce reports, export in multiple formats and scheduled email delivery.
Mobile & offline
Mobile access with offline view and update up to defined limits, synchronized on reconnection.
Search & query
Advanced query on native Salesforce search infrastructure: filtering and lookup across large transaction data sets.
Extensibility
AppExchange-native: customers install free or paid apps to extend Aedon, no custom integration required.
Working with iTechCloud
How the Aedon partnership runs.
A multi-year product partnership is a different kind of engagement from a traditional implementation project. Over the years with Aedon, our engagement model has evolved from a conventional build engagement to a fully outcome-based advisor-partner model.
Engagement model
The engagement runs under an outcome-based commercial model. Rather than scoping and delivering discrete projects, we work alongside Aedon's product team on the ongoing evolution of the platform: new capabilities, performance work, ecosystem partnerships, and the architectural decisions that will shape where the product goes next. The commercial structure reflects a shared commitment to the product's success.
Team shape
The engagement is led by a solution architect with deep Salesforce platform experience and ongoing immersion in Aedon's product domain, supported by developers across Apex, Lightning Web Components, integration and the specialized accounting-domain work the product demands. CEO and Co-Founder Subhash Panchani sponsors the engagement and stays personally involved in the strategic direction of the partnership, the founder-engaged model we apply across our product partnerships.
Collaboration model
iTechCloud works directly with multiple groups across Aedon's organization (product leadership, engineering, go-to-market and customer-facing teams) rather than through a single point of contact. That cross-functional collaboration makes the trusted-advisor relationship possible, and it is why the product reflects deep accounting-domain thinking and deep Salesforce platform thinking in equal measure.
