I’m sure you’ve heard of Xero, right? Beautiful accounting software in the cloud?  But why should you be interested and why should your business be using it?

Freedom

Using cloud-based accounting software gives you the freedom to work from anywhere, at any time and on any device.  You now don’t need a redundant old machine sat in the corner of SME business office, just to run accounts.  As it’s cloud-based, there’s no need for backups or worry over version control.

It’s also really easy to share financial information with your team, or with your accountant.  As e-Commerce Agency, we spend a large part of our day on the phone with clients discussing their businesses.  To be able to look at the same information at the same time massively enhances the value of the conversations we can have.

Full Journey

Xero integrates with some great CRM and project management tools, such as Capsule or Insightly CRM’s and Xero’s own project management tool, WorkflowMax.

Having these integrations means that you can follow the development of a lead, right through quoting and right into invoicing.  All in one integrated system.  WorkflowMax has a great timesheet function, so if you are billing by time, you can quickly convert your time into an invoice and push it out right through Xero.

Makes Life Easy

Xero has many great functions that make your accounting life really easy.  We are massive fans of having retainer income in SME business,  wherever possible.  Xero simplifies the billing process for such customers as you can automate the production and sending of invoices.  How much time will that save you when it comes to renewing annual hosting bills?

Your banking transactions with CIMB can now flow automatically into your Xero account

Xero and CIMB* bring you direct bank feeds – an automatic flow of your bank transactions into Xero that saves you time (no more manual bank statement imports!). It’s quick to categorise and match up transactions so you’ve got real-time financials at your fingertips.

Get Paid Faster

It’s so easy to raise and send an invoice in Xero that it will speed up your invoicing process, no end.  You can raise invoices as soon as you finish a job and get it emailed straight to the customer from right inside Xero.  Your customer can view and pay the bill online (with the help of paypall or billplzz).

You have an up to date snapshot of who owes you money on your mobile phone.  Have a quick check before heading into that next client meeting and you’ll know right where you are.

Xero has also introduced an automated email reminder system which sends emails to customers reminding them of overdue debt.  Warning though…if you use this, you’ll need to be on top of that bookkeeping!  No more waiting until the end of the SST year!

Better Financial Decision Making

This, for me, is the biggie!

How much better would your financial decision making be if you had track of all the key financials in your agency.  As a SME businessspecialist in e-Commerce & accountants, we’ve worked with hundreds of business over the years and one of the biggest factors in the most successful is that they knew their numbers…all the time!

Xero helps you understand your customer spend and how reliant you are on key customers.  It also has an awesome project tracking function.  You’ll be able to see at a glance, not just how much each client spends, but how profitable each project is.

Summary

As you can see, we are huge Xero fans for SME business accounting.  It makes your life easier and most importantly gives you much better decision making ability.  Check out our Xero page for more information on Xero and how we can support you in adopting it.

If you’d like to trial Xero or want to discuss more how it could help your agency, please contact us and we’ll be happy to give you the guided tour