Xero in on Xero
“My business isn’t big enough to let an accountant do my bookkeeping,” a small business owner (i.e., SMB) once told me during our first call in trying to figure out if partnering together would work, “But, what I really need is support and training. I’ve worked with four accountants in the past and none were helpful in supporting and training me as a business owner. I’m not there yet to hire them in deeper ways. So, what I need is to be supported and trained in very basic accounting and be given some strong tools to help me run my business.” I heard their desire loud and clear, it’s the typical understanding and desire for millions of business owners around the world.
As the founder of AdvisorFi, a cloud-based accounting firm serving entrepreneurs around the U.S., I resonated deeply with that business owner's thought process. So much so that we structured our pricing plans early on to include the idea of empowering business owners to take over their bookkeeping themselves (refer to our Starter CoachBoard plan that includes ‘Bookkeeping Support’) without being denied good support and training from a team of professional accountants. It is pivotal as accounting professionals to fully support SMB’s in their entrepreneurial dream even if it means the partnership has gives-and-takes in the relationship, especially when it comes to using powerful tools like Xero’s Find and Recode.
Back in 2015, Xero released its long-awaited Find and Recode feature which has saved thousands of bookkeeping hours since its launch. The then-new tool is designed to help bookkeepers and accountants save time, increase efficiency, and improve accuracy. While many business owners are accustomed to spending hours tracking and manually updating issues across multiple transactions and accountings within their accounting software, Find and Recode offers a tremendous boost to productivity to accountants. No more needle-in-the-haystack digging for that one transaction error in your bookkeeping. Find and Recode allows users to build complex, multi-value search criteria and conditions, choosing from nine different conditions to scan bank accounts, expense claims, invoices and bill transactions for specific errors. Visit Xero Central for more detailed information about Find and Recode.
But, this doesn’t have to save just accountants and bookkeepers time, this tool can empower business owners as well to enjoy the same fruits of issue-resolving bookkeeping time. That is what we do at AdvisorFi, by going downmarket and including options such as training and supporting “business owner led” bookkeeping we can provide a proactive amount of time effectively training them in features like Find and Recode (we also provide Xero’s video tutorial) to maximize the partnership.
By training your clients effectively on Find and Recode, I believe they can become the best bookkeepers they can be for their business; until an external one is needed, or in our case they upgrade to a larger AdvisorFi plan that supports full bookkeeping. That way, if your clients make mistakes (even mass amounts of mistakes), with your oversight and support they are fully capable of fixing mistakes fast, easy and accurately by searching transactions quickly and updating the issues en masse via Find and Recode. Any small business owner will testify that is an accountant-business owner partnership they will thoroughly enjoy for however long they are with you.
Will Lopz Xero
Author Bio: Will Lopez is Founder of AdvisorFi.com, an online accounting firm for the next generation of business owners. We provide accounting and consulting services that help unify the entrepreneurial endeavor and empower that endeavor to be universally accessible and useful. We also release entertaining YouTube videos on a regular basis to provide business owners learn tough ideas in a fun way. Twitter Handle: @advisorfi