Xero provides the ideal platform for firms of all sizes to provide superior services to their clients, along with the practice tools needed to stay organized and grow a profitable practice.
Xero was built from the ground up for the cloud, allowing for its use anywhere, anytime, on any device. Designed to deliver a beautiful user experience, Xero is easy to use for business owners/managers and built for collaboration with their accounting professionals. Xero is constantly innovating. Recently introducing new tools like Projects and Expenses. Partner tools such as Xero Practice Manager and Xero Workpapers keep your firm on track and are included as part of the Xero Partner Program. Rounding out the benefits is Xero’s best in class API (application programming interface) and the 700+ apps in the app marketplace.
The Xero accounting application, unofficially referred to as Xero Blue, has everything a business needs to keep their books and manage the necessary business practices. Sales invoicing, credit card processing, purchase bills, payroll (up to 5 employees) and most importantly bank account reconciliation are all included in the standard subscription plan. This allows business owners to run their business from the web browser of their computer, or mobile app on their phone or tablet.
Bank feeds are key to making Xero easy to use. The transactions that clear the bank appear in the left column waiting to be matched to existing transactions (seen in green in the picture to the left) or recorded as part of the reconciliation process. To speed up this process, bank rules can recommend transaction coding based on specific conditions in the bank feed detail.
Xero 1
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Cash Coding is even more efficient, allowing the user to reconcile transactions in bulk. This is extremely helpful for those clients you see once a year (and can get access to their bank account). Once completed, the transactions are recorded in the ledger and the transactions reconciled. This makes for an easy monthly bank reconciliation.
Invoicing customers is a breeze from the web browser. You can also invoice on the go utilizing the Xero mobile app. While on the go, send the invoice to your customer multiple ways including via SMS allowing the customer to pay you with Apple Pay. It does require you to set up the payment service with Stripe, which is a simple process. Speaking of Stripe, Xero has made reconciliation so simple using the Stripe Payment Service. The fees are recorded and the invoice marked paid, and the payment ready to reconcile on the reconciliation screen. All you need to do is to click the OK button.
There are a number of “Advisor” only tools within Xero that make our lives easier as accounting professionals. The Xero Assurance Dashboard helps ensure high integrity of your clients data, showing you anomalies in the data that can be quickly verified. Find & Recode locates transactions based on the criteria you set and allows you in bulk to change the contact and the account and/or tax code the transactions were originally coded. This is a huge time saver!
Xero has elevated the reports game with its release of the Layout Editor. You now have the flexibility to add text blocks, schedules, notes, footers and to group rows of data, add columns for dates, budgets, tracking categories and to create formulas. In addition, Report Templates are firm wide, standardized report packs that firms can use for their clients. Create the report template once, map it to your clients Chart of Accounts and use over and over……Some uses of Report Templates might be franchises, where identical income statements are required, or for tax preparation, where you can map your reports to match the input in your tax software.
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The newest additions to the Xero product family are Projects and Expenses.
Xero Projects is a simple to use project management tool. It gives Xero that job-costing feature that has been needed for some time. From time tracking to invoicing, get the insights into your jobs and see which ones are profitable, and which ones give you opportunities to improve. Collect deposits or billing by percentage, flexible and powerful invoicing options.
Xero Expenses is the answer for employee expense reimbursements. Capture expenses via photos of receipts and submit details. Approve expenses and pay to see where the money is going. Flexible user permissions ensure each user has the rights they need. Assign expenses to projects or customers, which then allow you to invoice easily for those expenses.
Projects and Expenses each have iOS and Android mobile apps
The Xero partner program provides firms the tools and resources to run and grow their practices. At the core is a free Premium subscription of Xero for your firm. Use this to your advantage, learn Xero on your own business. Add Xero HQ, the hub for your practice, Xero Practice Manager, for job and profitability management, and Xero Workpapers, compliance management.
As a Xero partner, you get access to support and education for you and your staff. From Xero U (Xero’s education platform) to the Partner Toolkit, you get the resources you need to learn Xero and market and grow your business.
The more clients you have on Xero, the higher you level up your partner status level. This gives you more resources to grow your business. Benefits such as discounts on your Xero Subscription and the opportunity to access up to $6,000 in matching marketing funds are available to you to expand your business.
Xero is great all on its own, but it also offers you the opportunity to build a powerful back office system utilizing Xero’s add-on ecosystem partners via the Xero App Marketplace. This is where you will find the 700+ apps that are built to directly integrate with Xero. Whether you are looking for a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) like Insightly, an Inventory app like DEAR or a document management system such as Hubdoc you will find those solutions on the App Marketplace.
Build your internal app stack for efficiency and your external app stack for meeting your clients needs.
To learn more about Xero and its benefits for your practice, read more here.
Jay Kimelman
Author Bio: Jay Kimelman, CPA, CiTP is the Founder and Chief Technology Officer of the digital CPA, a technology focused accounting firm. Jay has served in the role of CFO, CIO and business owner. His passion is helping other bookkeepers, accountants and CPA firms utilize technology to support themselves and their clients to do beautiful business. He was awarded the "Xero MVP" award in 2016, and now serves as a National Xero Ambassador.