Xero is a globally leading piece of accounting software that has gained more than 2 million users since its release in 2016, Xero is available on both PC and Android/IOS, giving you instant high level access to your companies digital accounts, including pending payments and your P&L – even on the go! 🏃‍♂️

What is Xero and how does it work?

Xero is accounting software for small to medium-sized businesses with the aim of making everyday accounting easier for its users, moving away from the traditional accounting software and out of the Dinosaur age 🦕
Xero boasts a variety of features, including:

• Accepting payments
• Bank reconciliation
• Capturing data
• Claiming expenses
• Creating and sending purchase orders and invoices
• Finance reporting
• Inventory tracking
• Keeping track of projects
• Online filing system
• Paying bills
• Payroll
• Quoting
• Storing customer, client and supplier contact information
• Submitting VAT returns

Xero also comes with its own App store which enables its users to use additional software that directly feeds into your Xero account, tailoring your software to what your business needs 🥇

All from the comfort of the cloud ☁

What are the benefits of using Xero?

Xero is essential for us at Gravitate Accounting, we use Xero as the basis for all our client’s bookkeeping, cashflow, budgeting and financial management, tax returns, payrolls and pension requirements.

From the cloud our clients can send us all the information we need, whether that be a new customer (winning! 💪), a late payment from a customer (there is always one 🙈), or even what currency their customer will use!
Our clients can do all of this on the go through the Xero app on the go all in real time 📲

Giving you the time, you need to do what you do best- running your business!

5 Xero hacks

For us, everything we’ve said so far already justifies the reasons why all our clients should invest in Xero, but there are some additional features that users may not be aware of that saves even more time now and later down the line when tax and VAT returns are due:

Uploading photos of receipts  

Receipts play a massive role in any business operation; as you purchase equipment for your business, computer software, fuel to get you to your client meetings or even a coffee whilst on the move ☕ you’ll need to have proof these if you want to claim them through your business and your bank statement alone isn’t enough.

Xero stops you from storing them in a big plastic bag and going through the dreaded processing at the end of every month and allows you to snap your receipts on it’s app and processes them straight away- which means you can take a picture and throw them away!

Which means no more hassle with receipts and eliminates the requirement to store them for years as per HMRC guidance as they are held electronically💃

Recharging expenses

When you need to purchase materials, equipment or you want to charge for labour hours worked to complete a project, you can recharge those expenses to the customer directly from Xero.

When you add a billable expense to a project, Xero will remind you add the billable expense to your next customer invoice… meaning that nothing can get missed and you won’t be out of pocket!

Invoice reminders

Late payments can be very frustrating and often time consuming! Unfortunately every business will come across a customer who may consistently miss their payment deadlines 😫

Xero helps you avoid those awkward conversations and uncomfortableness by their Automatic Reminders feature. Once the user has turned on this feature, Xero will send automatic reminders to your customer on a weekly, fortnightly and monthly basis leading up to payment deadline and then on a regular basis until the customer has paid the invoice, saving you the headache! 🙌

This feature can also be directly tailored to your business, meaning that the communications your customer receives is directly from your brand.

Aged receivables reporting

Aged Receivables is a term we use for a Sales Invoice report that shows you how much money is owed by customers to you at a specific point in time. This report in Xero can be customized to show the name, email addresses and phone numbers of any customers that are overdue payment so that it makes contacting your customers even easier!

Even better Xero has addons that can collect your debts on your behalf

Two-step authentication

We couldn’t talk about practical Xero hacks without touching on the other, less desirable type of hack. Two-step authentication is important in protecting your businesses’ information from online hackers and it is super easy to set up!

Setting up Two-step authentication is done in two easy steps:

1. Enter your username and password into Xero
2. Choose what authentication app you are going to use (Xero Verify or Google Authenticator). Gravitate Accounting use their Xero system knowledge to showcase five hacks that will make managing the money side of your business easier. Find out more.

The authentication app provides additional security that only one user can access, it provides a randomly generated code every 30 seconds which provides that extra layer of security and peace of mind.

These are just some of the many ways you can use Xero for smoother processes, better organisation and hours of saved time.

If you have any additional questions on how to use Xero or adding Xero into your business, please get in touch with one of the team!

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