Xero
Xero is a financial accounting system for small to medium sized businesses with a simple but intuitive user interface.
Manage your bills and invoices as well as your payroll through this cloud-based application.
Xero allows you to automate regular invoices to your customers allowing them to receive their bill without any user interaction.
Xero will also allow them to click a link and pay online. The software enables your employees to add their expenses while they are on the move by uploading pictures of their receipts along with details of the expense.
The integrated bank feed makes reconciliation much simpler by bringing in all payments (both incoming and outgoing) allowing a user to quickly reconcile against existing bills and invoices. Combined with Dynamics 365 this software allows full management of your processes wherever you are.
Xero Features
Xero Features Explained
Having a simple and intuitive user interface is vital for making small and medium business accounting easier. By automating day-to-day tasks, Xero will allow you to streamline your accounting tasks and increase your efficiencies.
- Use Xero wherever you are, from a phone, tablet, or computer
- Dashboards provide real-time cash flow and debtor information at the click of a button
- HMRC-recognised for Making Tax Digital (MTD) for ease of submitting VAT returns
- Integrate Xero with your Dynamics 365 instance for complete management of your business
- Connection with 800+ other apps allows simple eCommerce and payment systems integration
Watch Videos on Xero
Video: Making Tax Digital with Xero
Video: The Xero Dashboard
Invoicing
Invoicing can be carried out quickly by using item codes for regularly invoiced items. You can also copy previous invoices or setup repeating invoices for memberships or other regular fees.
Your customers can even pay online once they have received their invoice, which contains a link allowing them to pay their invoices there and then.
Inventory
Keep track of what you have in stock in terms of physical quantities and valuations. Xero inventory links in with quoting, purchasing, and invoicing to allow you to reduce manual data entry.
Standard stock reporting includes fast-moving reports, allowing you to make better informed decisions about future stock orders and replenishment
Payroll
With Xero Payroll, you can setup working hours for your employees, manage their holidays, and process their pay with included calculations for statutory leave.
Share the Xero Me app with your employees to give them encrypted access to their payslips, and allow them to submit their timesheet and send leave requests.
Bank Connections
Daily updates from your bank account flow directly into Xero ready for your review. Xero will even suggest potential matches between Xero and bank account transactions, making bank reconciliation a breeze.
Banks such as HSBC, Barclays, Santander, RBS, and NatWest all have connections to Xero, and even if your bank doesn’t have a direct connection, you can use Yodlee to connect Xero with your bank instead.
Dashboard
The Dashboard provides real-time access to your data using easy-to- read charts and graphs.
You can customise the charts to provide focus to the figures that really matter to you, whether that’s for reviewing cash flow, chasing overdue invoices, or accessing management accounting data allowing you to quickly analyse your balance sheet or P&L.
Expenses
The Xero Expenses app allows expenses to be logged while on the move. Your team members can simply take a photo of their expense receipts, and the Xero app will turn it into an expense claim for review and submission.
No longer do you have to wait for the physical receipts – the expense claims will automatically come through to you for approval, meaning no more manual data entry.
Quotes
Produce professional quotes and estimates in Xero by customising them with your logo and contact details. Quotes can be produced and sent from your phone or tablet if you’re on the move, meaning quicker turnarounds for your customer’s requests.
What’s more, once a quote is accepted online by the customer, you can quickly turn this into an invoice in Xero, taking away the manual data entry.
Reporting
Xero comes with various accounting reports as standard, allowing you to quickly produce interactive or printed reports for common purposes such as bank reconciliation, P&L, and trial balances. You can drill down into the figures within interactive reports, giving you real-time access to the data.
You can also create and tailor reports for your own needs, so if your accountant has specific reporting requirements then you can cater to their needs.
Purchases and Supplier Payments
Take the hassle out of paying suppliers with batch payments and scheduled payments. You can also copy previous bills, rather than having to manually recreate them each time.
The in-built purchases dashboard will also give you an easy-to-read overview of your outstanding purchase orders, as well as what’s due to be paid and when, meaning you can avoid those dreaded fees for late payments.
Multi-Currency
Complex multi-currency accounting is a thing of the past with Xero. Simply default each contact to their currency, and all their transactions will be automatically converted into your own local currency in real time.
Exchange rates are automatically updated on an hourly basis from XE.com, meaning no more having to remember to update rates on a regular basis.
Contacts and Smart Lists
Contact lists are easy to maintain in Xero with the ability to import contacts from existing lists. You can even connect your Gmail or Office 365 account to see emails relating to your contacts from within Xero.
You can organise your contacts into smart lists based on their purchasing habits, location, or invoice amounts, meaning you can easily create and send targeted marketing campaigns.
Making Tax Digital (MTD) for VAT Online
Xero is MTD-ready, meaning that simple digital VAT submissions can be submitted directly to HMRC rather than going through the arduous process of filling in complex forms online.
Making purchases from abroad? Xero allows you to define different tax rates to be used when making purchases, and the correct boxes are automatically populated in your VAT return.