Heather Smith - Xero For Dummies

I have a client who went on a cruise around the Greek Islands. While he lay on a deck chair eating dolmades and drinking ouzo, he reflected on one of his many businesses that imported electronics and sold them in Australia: Why was the business not making money? The electric bikes had a significant profit margin applied to them, so why was the business running up losses? He considered winding up the business, but before he pulled the plug he called me in to review the records. I examined and corrected the custom invoices. I delved further and realised the bookkeeper had overwritten the purchase price and entered the exact same purchase and sales price. (Bizarre but true.) The reworked accounts improved the bottom line of that segment by a quarter of a million dollars! It removed it from another segment, which they had thought was profitable.

Running a successful business involves continually making correct decisions. While no magical formula exists for always making the correct decisions, I do know the process needs guts, foresight and intuition — and correct, timely data. So you bring the guts, foresight and intuition, and this book shows you how to surface accurate, complete and timely data in Xero!

An older accountant told me a story. He worked for a large organisation producing and distributing monthly management reports. A cheeky upstart joined the company, took the older accountant’s reports, added colour to them, turned the main data into graphs and everyone loved them. Imagine that! Well, Xero is that cheeky upstart.

Colour and graphs guide you around your business reports in Xero. Teeny red and green indicators scattered across many reports alert you to be pleased or concerned with comparative movements. Management Reports highlight cash movements, profitability, performance and the position of the business. (See Chapter 12for more on Xero’s Management Reports and the Budget Manager tool.)

If you have any questions about Xero, hopefully the following chapters in this book can provide all the answers. But, if your problem is perhaps beyond the scope of this book, you do have other support options available. Xero offers an amazing amount of support material on its website, including training videos — go to www.xero.com/training , www.xero.com/tv and community.xero.com to check them out.

You can also access support around the clock from Xero. First click the Help icon (the question mark) and use the field that allows you to search for support articles. If you can’t find the answer you need in the articles, you can then click Go to Central at the bottom of the drop down box which takes you to central.xero.com/s/, where you can click on the relevant topic. The new window that opens up at the bottom right includes the option to Contact Xero Support. Click through and you get to central.xero.com/s/contact-supportwhere you can describe your issue in detail, and even add up to three attachments to your email. In most cases, you’re best to skip over the existing support material and go immediately to central.xero.com/s/contact-support to contact support. I also have an online Facebook group to support the community: www.facebook.com/groups/xerofordummies .

Once signed up to Xero, you’re sent regular e-newsletters updating you with all the relevant news. When you’re logged onto Xero, a small envelope also appears at the very top of the screen. Clicking on the envelope displays messages from Xero — informing you, for example, about feature updates and any bank feed issues. If you have an issue when reconciling your accounts, you can also make use of the Discuss tab to leave a message for your Xero Adviser (see Chapter 8for more).

You can download the Xero Mobile app from the App Store and use it on Apple and Android mobile devices. Limited features that can be accessed via the mobile version include the following:

A dashboard view of bank account balances

Bank reconciliation

Ability to create new invoices, and view draft, unpaid and overdue invoices (see Chapter 6)

Ability to view contact details — and call contacts from your phone ( Chapter 5)

Ability to submit receipts and expense claims ( Chapter 7)

Ability to upload files to the organisation’s Files inbox and attach files to receipts or invoices

Access your Advisor and submit a Support ticket

You can access full Xero features on your mobile device via a browser at m.xero.com. It is ubercool that Xero can be accessed on your phone!

Access any support you need to help your business. For example, an IT specialist can ensure you’re accessing a high-speed internet connection. This may involve reviewing your existing network and your internet provider’s plan. Technology is rapidly advancing, so reviewing this set-up on a regular basis can improve productivity.

Xero For Dummies is a comprehensive resource for any Xero training environment. At the time of writing, no Xero training platform is available, so if you want to organise a training session you need to establish your own live Xero training file — which is easy to do.

I recommend taking the following steps as you prepare for a workshop-style training session:

1 Set up a single Xero file.See Chapter 2for more on setting up a Xero file. This file can also be re-used for different training groups — though you may prefer to start with a fresh file each time.

2 Before you start the session, invite students in as Users to the file.Make sure students have time to accept their access to the Xero organisation. Let them know that if they already have access to another Xero file, they should use that same email address and password. Also, remind students to bring their email address and password to the training session. Remind users that they’re entering information into a shared training file, so they shouldn’t enter private information.

You can access sample data and lesson plans at www.heathersmithsmallbusiness.com/XeroTM ; the password to access these files is ‘Charlie’.

Chapter 2

IN THIS CHAPTER

Getting together everything you need for set-up

Making your way through the set-up guide

Organising your Chart of Accounts

Checking your balances and increasing your payment accounts

Confirming your consumer tax rates