XU Magazine - Issue 09 - Digital Edition by XU Magazine

The independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users

ISSUE

magazine Cover story

Q&A with digital agency SourceCode Running a better, beautiful business with AppsForOps and Xero

ISSN 2054-7226

FOR A

XERO LL

USERS

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Issue 09 / 3

Welcome to issue 09... magazine The independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users

6 / 4 hidden profit leaks which are limiting your practice income

36 / Working over the holidays? Ten ways to stay productive

8 / Simplify, streamline, rationalise, increase and enhance

39 / Digital marketing for the Xero accountant

10 / What does Xero’s no-code accounting mean for your firm?

42 / So, you’re ready to collect sales tax...

14 / TUTORIAL - Entering purchases in Xero - The benefits of entering expenses as ‘Bills’ instead of ‘Spend Money’ transactions

Issue 09 CEO: David Hassall (Co-Founder) Managing Editor: Wesley Cornell (Co-Founder) Strategic Partnerships: Alex Newson Staff Writer: Bethany Cox

44 / COVER STORY - Q&A with SourceCode on how they run a better, beautiful business using AppsForOps and Xero

16 / How Tyrrell and Company achieved their advisory dream

Editorial/News Submissions: If you have any editorial content (news, comment, tutorials etc.) that you would like us to consider for inclusion in the next edition of XU Magazine, please email us at editorial@xumagazine.com

20 / INTERVIEW - Q & A with Chris Ridd Moula

48 / How your clients keep the the sales pipeline full and how you can help

Advertising: advertising@xumagazine.com T: +44 (0)116 298 60 80 E: hello@xumagazine.com W: www.xumagazine.com

50 / Help owners of home businesses to claim more

‘Xero’ is a trademark of Xero Limited (New Zealand). XU Magazine is collaboratively produced by an independent group of Xero users and is not affiliated in any way with Xero. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. © XU Magazine Ltd 2014-2016. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. XU Magazine is published by XU Magazine Ltd (08811842), registered in England and Wales. Registered office: 12 Jordan Street, Liverpool, L1 0BP, United Kingdom. All information contained in this magazine is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. XU Magazine cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. If you submit unsolicited material to us, you automatically grant XU Magazine a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in all/any editions of the magazine, including in any physical or digital format, throughout the world. Any material you submit is sent at your risk and, although every care is taken, neither XU Magazine nor its employees, agents or subcontractors shall be liable for loss or damage. The views expressed in XU Magazine are not necessarily the views of XU Magazine Ltd, its editors or its contributors.

52 / INTERVIEW - Q & A with Dandapani - Hindu priest, entrepreneur, speaker and former monk of 10 years

25 / What can you do in 0.05 seconds? Create your first impression! 28 / APPS COMPARED - Time Tracking Apps 30 / How to protect your business from fraud 32 / How to stop the domino effect of late payers ruining your business 34 / Converting traditional accounting firms over to Xero Practice Manager

55 / Retail loves cloud

> Find out more on page 68 4 / Issue 09

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56 / TUTORIAL - How to set up Approvals for Purchase Orders and Bills 58 / There’s a new look to Xero Education 60 / Number Nurses handle the dirty work 61 / More Services, More Revenue, Less WorkTM 64 / Price discrimination: How to grow your profits by 50%, without raising your fees 66 / TUTORIAL - Growing your services with ProfitSee 68 - Managing the spending of a fast-growing and distributed business using approval workflows 70 / Why every nonprofit needs a CRM 72 / Going beyond customer service 74 / TUTORIAL - Dryrun: Create a sales forecast alongside your cash flow 78 / Xero Multi-Currency takes accounting global 80 / Changing the game in outsourcing

82 / Making sense of ‘time tracking’ 86 / App/Service Directory - over 500 Apps listed 92 / Why do you need an accountant with Xero? 93 / What’s new in Xero users 94 / Solopreneur Bookkeeping 101

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Issue 09 / 5

4 hidden profit leaks which are limiting your practice income

Words: Heather Townsend, Lead Tutor, Spotlight Advisor Academy Heather is the author of ‘The Go-to Expert’ and the lead tutor of the Spotlight Advisor Academy. In 2015 the ICAEW decided Heather was the number one online influencer for the accountancy profession. For more advice on winning bigger and better clients see www.growingyourfirm.co.uk @heathertowns

Where do you think your firm is leaking profit? It’s not always the main or obvious culprits. In this article, Heather Townsend, author of ‘The Go-To Expert’, explores the common but hidden sources of profit leaks from accountancy practices... If you ask any owner of a small accountancy practice where they think the biggest source of profit leaks is in their practice, they will probably say something along the lines of “not charging enough” or “the wrong sort of clients”. In my experience, there are often more deep seated but largely hidden reasons why many firms are haemorrhaging profit. Clients not on the cloud As your practice uses Xero you truly understand the power of getting client’s

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data in the cloud. However, have you got all your clients up onto a cloud based accountancy package? A client that I am working with had 80% of her practice on Xero. However, the remaining 20% were not on a cloud based accountancy practice. These 20% paid the same, sometimes even less as they were longstanding legacy clients, as her clients who were on the cloud. You don’t need to be a genius to realise that these 20% of clients took much longer to sort out their affairs, and were therefore unprofitable. Interestingly when my client told these

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clients that their fees would double if they didn’t move to Xero, the clients all moved to Xero. Even those who had historically said they would never move to Xero. The key lesson here is, if you have clients who can’t or wouldn’t move to Xero or other cloud accounting packages your firm offers, then you need to up their fees to take account of the extra time it takes to process their accounts and books.

Process efficiency Getting your processes right is generally not the first thing that owners of accountancy practices think about when aiming to improve their bottom line. In my opinion, this should actually be one of the first things that they look at when trying to improve their profitability. When was the last time you asked your staff how your practice could be more efficient? I strongly suspect you will get a rich source of inspiration on what is working and what really isn’t working. It is so easy for the following to occur:

When was the last time you asked your staff how your practice could be more efficient?

Lack of delegation to more junior staff Show me an owner of an accountancy practice and I’ll show you someone who likes to be in control. This need to be in control can unfortunately often translate into poor delegation to your team. This behaviour then gets replicated throughout the organisation. The impact of this poor delegation leads to your senior team hanging on to work that they should be delegating down. Then, when you want to delegate high value work to them, you get push back because “I’m too busy at the moment”. As a result your bottom line gets hit twice. Firstly because expensive senior staff are doing work that more junior staff should be doing. Secondly because the practice often remains stuck in ‘status quo’ because the leadership of the firm don’t have the time to do anything other than the day-to-day work of the firm.

• Staff are not used to new technology or software so duplicate effort. E.g. preparing a set of year end accounts AND then using Xero Working Papers to prepare these accounts again (true story!). • Process creep, where over time the process has morphed into something else in response to client situations, individual preferences and software evolving. As a result the process has now completely over-engineered what needs to happen resulting in duplication of effort. • Different partners and directors like things to be done in different ways. This results in multiple different ways to do things and work often slips through the cracks.

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• Technology has now improved so you don’t need to do all of the manual processes you used to do. However, the staff and the practice haven’t yet caught up with all these technological advances. High turnover of staff We all know that high turnover of staff is bad. After all, none of us want to spend money on recruitment agents OR over time to make up for a lack of resource. However, having a high level of staff churn is also incredibly damaging to a practice’s bottom line, and in more ways than just recruitment agency fees. For example, high staff turnover often results in: • New staff being unprofitable until they have properly got up to speed • Low morale • More staff leaving because they can see the grass is greener outside of the practice • Mistakes and re-work • A backlog of work • Firefighting In summary There are many reasons why a practice is not as profitable as it should be. However, it’s not always the main culprits which are the reason why your practice is unprofitable. Before you decide to put up your fees, firstly look internally and check that your processes are working effectively, your staff are happy and fulfilled AND you are not delivering a noncloud based service at a cloud-based price to your clients not on the cloud.

Issue 09 / 7

Simplify, streamline, rationalise, increase and enhance 5 ways a Business Owner can benefit from using Xero and its Ecosystem... Simplify to gain time for thinking... There cannot be many business owners sitting up a 1.00pm hunched over their computer, sorting out their paper bills and invoices who hasn’t thought, ‘there must be an easier way’...

Words: Brad Golchin MTax, CPA, Director, Wise Advice Limited (New Zealand), XO Accounting Pty Ltd (Australia) Brad Golchin has been at the forefront of the accounting industry in Auckland with his commitment to the introduction of new technology to run his accounting practices and the ongoing development this offers for both staff and clients. With sixteen years’ experience in public practice as Director of Wise Advice Ltd and XO Accounting Pty Ltd, Brad has also acquired considerable expertise as a facilitator of a wide range of industry seminars/workshops and is committed to the mentoring and development of SME owners. Brad has a wealth of knowledge in information technology and ensures that his professional practices remain focussed on applying new advancements in cloud-based accounting practice that add value for his business clients. @ BGolchin

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There is... Xero’s online accounting system, coupled with the best Apps available equals an ‘ecosystem’ that fulfils the brief. As a business owner, using cloud solutions represents an operating revolution as the information flows from a bank account, through the system picking up all ‘in and out’ transactions and providing a full breakdown of where you are with your business finances at all times. No need for doing your own double entry bookkeeping! Not only has this simplified the way information is received and categorised but also with the client details securely imbedded, the invoicing and billing processes have become so much easier. The effect is much more significant to a business, particularly in the small to medium range. Owners are finding that they have gained the most valuable commodity they could have by using a cloud-based ‘ecosystem’ – time; time to plan, time to think about growth, time to work on their business, not for it, and time to make decisions based on financial information that is precise and in real

time. Streamline with Apps for Cloud Based efficiencies you did not think were possible... The Tracking facility in Xero is just a basic way that you can streamline your operation. But there is so much more when you consider the streamlining that the ecosystem can achieve; look at the point of sales breakdown you can achieve with Vend.com - what customers buy, when they buy and spend all linked to your cloud accounting system; Unleashedsoftware. com looks after your inventory – stock levels and costs all there for analysis; WorkflowMax.com – essential for job costing, time billing and designed for the service industry, linked to Xero.

...you gain so much time and efficiency you can work on ideas, projections and planning like never before...

Gettimely.com can make your business bookings and link with the customer details and send reminders – a cloud based solution with multiple services. Add Shopify.com and Eway.com.au for payments to your online retailing business and with your online accounting solution linked in, you have just about everything covered. The streamlining that the Xero Ecosystem can create is invaluable for a business owner, you gain so much time and efficiency you can work on ideas, projections and planning like never before, not only that but online systems give you confidence in yourself and your operation and you can be bolder and wiser in decision making.

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Who would have thought that using cloud based business systems could affect your HR resources? Well obviously if you make a process simpler, easier to use and capable of providing complex financial reports and breakdowns – let alone the simplicity of the billing system – it is going to have a major effect on your staff. You can readily rationalise your resources – you can use staff in different more productive ways, combining talents in areas where they can be motivated and competitive and contribute more than just accounts and invoicing – making them more productive. .

Increasing the value of your business? How does this work? When a potential buyer can see that your business is running on a system that is able to demonstrate exactly where it is financially at any given time; broken down into cost centres with tracking summaries and money in and money out detailed in precise and accurate accounting fashion – they will be prepared to pay a premium price. The advantage to a purchaser is that they can see that they could take over an operation, using the same system from day one and that is a distinct advantage. This means you can increase the value of your business accordingly and make confident decisions about succession planning.

Increase sales and what else...? The overall value of your business

Enhance everybody’s experience – yours, your staff and your clients’

How does a cloud-based system increase sales? Through the ‘knock-on’ effect of simplifying, streamlining and rationalising you can work on your sales figures, primarily by being able to identify your best sales, your best clients, your best products and your high performance staff by financial reports targeted to providing you with the tools to enable projections to increase sales.

Another way to consolidate sales and ensure return custom is to make the whole experience of your business a positive and comfortable one. An online system, carefully designed does that – from a client point of view they can interact with you faster, the invoicing and paying is paper free and online – they can get an immediate statement, they can feel confident with their online involvement

Rationalise your costs for efficiency and growth

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with your company in the way we have all come to expect – fast, efficient and secure. Because the client experience is good, staff will enjoy working with them and with you – no delays in processing orders, no billing delays, good client management systems all enhance the staff experience and make them feel motivated and productive – value-added for the business owner. And what about the experience of the business owner? Aside from all the advantages detailed above, with Xero and its ecosystem you now have one platform of information for all the people that you deal with, aside from clients and staff, such as advisors, coaches, partners and consultants. You are able to make financial details about your business available to those industry colleagues there to help and guide you and to use their support and services to grow and prosper in your business life – so yes there are real benefits to a business owner in using Xero – above are only a few, ask your accountant about the rest….

Issue 09 / 9

What does Xero’s no-code accounting mean for your firm? Some professionals are worried, but should you be? At Xerocon in San Francisco back in August 2016, Rod Drury introduced the concept of no-code accounting during his keynote. He then later expanded on this at Xerocon South earlier in September. Xero’s goal: To eliminate coding completely. The switch to AWS earlier this year meant that Xero could now apply far stronger machine learning algorithms to their product, where, according to Xero, up to 90% of all transactions could be coded automatically, without the need for any human intervention. And this is making several accountants The and bookkeepers nervous. But should it? Depends on which side of the fence you sit on... Staying ahead of the curve

Now, we’re on to the topic of machine learning and artificial intelligence, which seems to be the buzzword among forwardthinking accountants and bookkeepers at the moment. Certainly, when this technology hits, it will disrupt cloud the very way we have been used to working. changed things

and saw the advent of some pretty creative accounting firms...

Machine learning and no-code accounting just seems like a natural evolution for the product and just like every type of disruption that occurs, people will get nervous.

Chances are, if you’re reading this magazine, you’re already using cloudaccounting systems like Xero, which means, you have adopted a technology and a way of working that is ahead of the curve (although the gap is closing, or has even already closed). You already have bank feeds and bank rules that automate parts of the reconciliation process for you (just as an example), and unfortunately, the ones that haven’t adopted these basic cloud accounting features are already at a big disadvantage compared to their competitors. Automation is already taking place for a good number of professionals. If you would have spoken to accountants and bookkeepers 10 years ago and talked to them about using Xero, Receipt Bank & Hubdoc to automate a good majority of the record-keeping process, I’m sure most would have been quite nervous. But today, entrepreneurial professionals 10 / Issue 09

seized on the opportunity to automate manual, inefficient workflows and have implemented these methods among their client base. Has more automation hurt their business? Absolutely not. Actually, quite the opposite. Ones that have embraced technology have seen massive amounts of growth at rates that traditional firms have not seen in a very long time or maybe even ever.

A shift in business models As mentioned above, no-code accounting will definitely lead to a transformation of the accounting firm business model. The cloud changed things and saw the advent of some pretty creative accounting firms that created a new way to service their customers. And just like the cloud, machine learning will do just the same. Those that embrace this new technology will likely see opportunities present themselves just like they did when cloudaccounting first hit the market. With the onset of cloud accounting, many were forced to ditch the billable hour, as, with increased automation, accountants and bookkeepers were not able to charge for the data entry portion of their work. In order to avoid reducing their top line, new pricing models emerged, mainly around fixed pricing and value pricing.

Words: Ryan Lazanis, CPA, CA, Founder, Xen Accounting Ryan is not your typical accountant. Destined to bring the traditional accounting firm into today’s modern era, Ryan founded Xen Accounting, a completely cloud-based, 100% paperless Canadian accounting firm which combines online accredited accountants with innovative software. His belief is that today’s technology can make accounting for small business easier and less painful. A tech enthusiast at heart, Ryan enjoys leveraging new technologies to help modern day business owners streamline and automate their accounting. As the founder of one of the first 100% online accounting firms in Canada, Ryan has emerged as a thought leader in the space of how to building a modern firm in the digital age, speaking at various events across North America. Passionate about disruptive technologies in general, Ryan also became immersed in the world of Bitcoin in 2013 and helped Xen Accounting become the first professional accounting firm in North America to accept Bitcoins as payment. When he’s not busy with accounting or tech gadgets, Ryan has been known to be an active DJ in Montreal and enjoys traveling to places that are hard to pronounce. @XenAccounting

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If cloud accounting nudged the billable hour towards extinction, machine learning capabilities and fully automated no-code accounting will surely bury it, at least on the bookkeeping/compliance end of things. As now, not only will certain parts of the bookkeeping process be automated, but very large chunks of it, perhaps up to 90% of it according to Xero. The only way to survive as a viable business model in the era of fully automated bookkeeping will be to charge based on value, not on time spent. New technology means new roles If the tech works as advertised, then certainly, you can kiss much of your traditional bookkeeping revenues and duties goodbye. But, someone will need to manage this tech, manage the systems, ensure they’re working correctly, and essentially manage the flow of data into Xero so that it could be auto-coded. Enter bookkeeper 2.0. One that is savvy on the tech end of things and can manage systems and data flows for the data to get automatically coded and reconciled. This new breed of bookkeeper will still need to be knowledgeable in accounting and will need to have an excellent understanding with regards to the mechanics of accounting, but will

probably not need to handle any actual reconciliations eventually. They will simply need to know how to program the systems to work in-sync with one another so that data can flow between them seamlessly. Technologist roles are already sprouting up at many firms and this is largely what bookkeepers will eventually look like; people that have a background in accounting, but we are also super tech savvy and who will be able to manage the systems and processes between all connected applications. Those unwilling to adapt will unfortunately be out of work while those that are open to change will see new opportunities. How will value be created? In the era of automated compliance services, value can likely only be created in 2 ways for your customers: 1. On the tech end of things. Someone will still need to know how to implement the right tech stack and to ultimately manage it. The automation available is only as good as the technology that drives it. Specialized knowledge on the systems end of things will be critical. 2. On the advisory end of things. While machine learning and artificial intelligence is getting better, we’re still

not at the point where computers will be able to run through budgets, projections & tax planning as well as humans are able to do, especially considering that there are always intangible elements that must be considered when advising, such as qualitative factors that form part of the analysis. Should you be worried? Just like anything else, disruptive technology puts some people out of work while creating opportunities for others. The ones that are put out of work are unfortunately the ones that weren’t able to see ahead into the horizon and adapt appropriately. On the other end of the spectrum, disruptive technologies, like machine learning & AI in accounting, will spark many new opportunities that forward-thinking professionals will be able to seize on to create even more value for their customers than they currently are. The interesting thing about this is that none of what I’m saying is new. The onset of machine learning just reinforces what people have been saying now for years. More emphasis needs to be placed on technology and more focus needs to be put into advisory services, such as virtual CFO and tax planning. This certainly appears to be the direction where things are going in.

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Issue 09 / 11

One Platform • One Login • Multiple Apps EXPENSE CLAIM • EXPENSE PRE-APPROVAL • INVOICE • RECEIPT & BILL • TIME OFF • TIMESHEET • TRAVEL REQUEST

12 / Issue 09

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Apps to automate your business operations. Run a better business today. One integrated platform to streamline your Expense Claim, Expense Pre-approval, Invoice, Receipt & Bill, Time Off, Timesheet & Travel Request management and more. It's an intranet filled with valuable capabilities such as a staff directory, business dashboards, shared calendars and apps for task management, opinion polls and sharing company news. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a cloud based suite of integrated business apps which you can access anytime, anywhere. Start with the full suite of apps, or start with one and grow to more. Have you subscribed? Go to subscriptions.xumagazine.com

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Issue 09 / 13

Tutorial

Entering purchases in Xero The benefits of entering expenses as ‘Bills’ instead of ‘Spend Money’ transactions Ever wondered if there’s a better way to manage staying on top of supplier bills? Carmen Morris discusses entering expenses as Bills in Xero and the benefits this offers... Most people are very familiar with entering income as Invoices. This is the go-to method for most businesses where the customer needs a copy of the invoice before, or at the time of, payment. It’s very useful because you can track who owes you how much, when and for what. However, on the expense side, many businesses don’t enter them as Bills, which is the expense equivalent for Invoices.

Words: Carmen Morris, Founder, On The Money Bookkeeping Carmen is the founder and Director of On The Money Bookkeeping, based in Melbourne, Australia specialising in Xero.

...most people probably don’t realise that there could be a better way

Two ways to enter both income and expense in Xero

Income can be entered in the following ways: 1. Via a sales Invoice, which can be accessed from Accounts > Sales > New > Invoice. 2. Via a Receive Money transaction, which can be accessed a couple of different ways, but most people create these transactions from the Create tab when processing a 14 / Issue 09

She is passionate about technology and accounting. Her organisation offers business keeping, not just bookkeeping, covering payroll and HR issues, outsourced CFO services, add-on integration and client training in addition to Xero file review, rescue, full-service bookkeeping and client support services. @carmen161595

transaction in the bank feed reconciliation screen showing in the Received column.

In much the same way as income, expenses can be entered in the following ways: 1. Via a purchase Bill, which can be accessed from Accounts > Purchases > New > Bill. 2. Via a Spend Money transaction, which can be accessed a couple of different ways, but most people create these transactions from the Create tab when processing a transaction in the bank feed

reconciliation screen showing in the Spent column. Why then do so many people enter their sales as Invoices and their expenses as Spend Money? Simply put, it’s quicker and most people probably don’t realise that there could be a better way. So what are the benefits of entering expenses as Bills? 1.

Warnings of duplicates The disadvantage of entering Spend Money transactions is that most people rarely enter the supplier bill number, largely because this is

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Tutorial absent from the bank feed window unless you click a few more buttons. Also, if you’re paying multiple invoices at once, you can’t enter a single, unique reference number. Entering each individual supplier bill as a Bill in Xero will prevent you from entering a duplicate, as Xero will warn you if you attempt to enter the same bill number twice. Just be mindful that if you have multiple people entering bills in your business that everyone enters them the same way. For example, with or without leading zeros, as reference number 012 is unique from 12.

4. Having a history of every bill that you’ve ever received, paid or unpaid This point is closely related to the one above. If you have good records about every bill ever received from a supplier, then you can easily access information about payments made or credit notes applied. If a supplier ever tries to chase you for payment of a bill they claim hasn’t been paid, you can quickly defend yourself. You can save yourself a huge amount of time down the track by having this information easily accessible. 5.

3. Reconciling to supplier statements This leads on from the previous point. If you have entered every supplier bill exactly as per the document received, you can reconcile all of your purchases back to the statement from the supplier. This is particularly useful where you make multiple purchases from the same supplier and want to make sure that you’ve captured everything. If bills are omitted, then the profit may look deceivingly high.

Paying suppliers via batch payments One of the beautiful things about accounting software is the ability to enter the banking details against the supplier contact. This facilitates simple and accurate payment of supplier bills. One of the drawbacks of paying suppliers directly from the bank account manually is that it’s easy to make mistakes. Bills can be added up incorrectly and reference numbers for the bills being paid can be wrong, which just makes life harder for everyone. By selecting the Bills for payment in Xero, you can check the total amount being paid, export a batch file out of Xero, import it into internet banking, check that imported file and then authorise it for payment. Only one withdrawal leaves the bank account and the Bills are already marked as paid in Xero, expediting the bank reconciliation process the following day.

You can save yourself a huge amount of time down the track by having this information easily accessible

2. Cash flow forecasting One of the benefits of entering expenses as Bills is that, just like sales Invoices in Xero, you can see a list of who you owe, how much, what for and when it’s due. That way you can plan ahead for cash outflows.

6. Suppliers can be notified of payments made Once batch payments are in use, suppliers can receive remittances at the click of a button. They’ll receive something that looks like a statement showing a list of bills paid and the date that you have paid. They’ll apply payment to the right invoices in their system and everyone will be happy. More valuable reporting on your Profit & Loss Statement By entering Bills, the Profit & Loss report will show the expense on the day that it was incurred, not when it was paid. This is hugely useful for a couple of reasons. Firstly, if you are delaying payments to suppliers due to cash flow issues and entering the expenses as Spend Money transactions, then recognition of expenses is delayed causing distortion of the total monthly profit. You can be deceived into thinking that things aren’t as bad as they really are. Secondly, tax deductions can legally be claimed sooner. By having more expenses in the current financial year, the business can declare less profit and therefore needs to pay less tax. Over the long run it makes no difference to the total amount of tax paid, but it’s worth remembering that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar a year from now.

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Issue 09 / 15

How Tyrrell and Company achieved their advisory dream What do you do when your firm’s ambition is to deliver cutting-edge, insightful advice to your business clients, but you can’t find a system that lives up to that dream? If you’re Tyrrell and Company, you move your firm over to Xero and start making your dream into a reality... At Tyrrell and Company, we’ve always put sound, insightful business advise right at the heart of our client relationships. It’s in the DNA of the firm.

centre of this journey from accountancy practice to modern, online business advisers.

Richard Suswain is a partner and cloud specialist at Tyrrell & Company, one of Cambridge’s most forwardthinking business advisers and Xero Accounting Partner of the Year for the East of England. Richard has a wide range of experience across tax, payroll and advisory, with a focus on the efficiencies of cloud accounting. @RSuswain

The start of the Xero journey And we’ve always dreamed of having a software system that could deliver the quality numbers and data needed to deliver truly first-rate reporting, forecasting and guidance to our client base of ambitious business owners.

Words: Richard Suswain, Partner, Tyrrell & Company

We’ve been working with Xero for close to three years now, and it’s been a gradual shift for us to move away from desktop accounting packages and to focus on Xero as our financial platform of choice for clients.

It was very apparent at this early stage that Tyrrell and Company wanted to be delivering more value. They wanted to be giving more reporting and So you can more advice imagine how blown away we were when we first saw how Xero online accounting software could deliver on this long-held dream.

As Andrew explains, we’d started using cloud accounting with a few clients, but it was talking to Andrew that really opened our eyes to the potential of Xero.

We could see how the combination of Xero, Tyrrell and Company (and a host of connected Apps) could fuse together to help our clients get back true control of their financial destiny and business management. So, we sat down for a chat with Xero Senior Account Manager, Andrew Collings, to relive our cloud story and explain how you – our business clients – are at the 16 / Issue 09

“It was very apparent at this early stage that Tyrrell and Company wanted to be delivering more value. They wanted to be giving more reporting and more advice, and that was what they liked about Xero. But at the time, the idea of using Xero for all their customers, across the firm, wasn’t fully-formed, I don’t think.”

Pictured: Xero Se nior Ac Manager, Andrew count Collings

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Issue 09 / 17

At this time, we were still predominantly using a variety of desktop systems and Excel within the firm. But working with Andrew has shifted this dramatically, with Xero and cloud accounting now being very much at the centre of what we do.

As accountants, we loved the detail that Xero could provide us with. But we also really liked the simplicity of Xero’s approach to accounting – something we knew would resonate with our business clients. What Xero has done so effectively is demystify the technical aspects of the accounting process. We don’t see this as ‘revealing the rabbit in the magician’s hat’. In fact, we think simplicity works. Our clients get much better value when their accounting processes are clear, open and totally transparent.

specific business issues that we could help them resolve. And, working with Andrew and the Xero team, we explored the Xero App Marketplace to find the cloud tools that could solve these issues for our clients. With Xero as our foundation, we’ve then integrated:

the tools we needed to finally bring our advisory model to life. Valuable business advice, with your compliance boxes ticked For us, being an accountant is no longer just about completing the compliance tasks.

• Receipt Bank to streamline data entry and reduce time spent on paperwork. • Chaser to automate the whole credit control process and boost cash flow. • Spotlight Reporting to give a really granular view of core numbers and KPIs.

As a business owner, you’ll always need your statutory accounts and tax returns to be done and dusted. But with a system like Xero in place, there’s a whole lot more value we can bring to your business.

And, as Andrew himself admits, the Xero team were very impressed at the speed, determination and drive behind our move to this Xero-based business system.

Your business issues, your needs as a growing company and your goals and aspirations for the future are the core around which we base our services. And that’s part of a growing shift in our industry: to move away from just offering the accounting basics and to start becoming a trusted adviser to ambitious businesses.

The Tyrrell Trifecta and the power of Xero Apps As a financial platform, we really liked what Xero had to offer. But what tipped the scales for us was the Xero App Marketplace – the network of third-party software tools and FinTech solutions that integrate. And that was where Andrew’s expertise and contacts in the Xero ecosystem really helped us to crystallise our thinking, as he explains. “For a lot of firms, what they’ll do is take a desktop solution out and replace it wholesale with Xero – and that’s rather missing the point! If you’re not getting involved in the Xero Apps and trying to get more streamlined systems in place, you’re not making use of Xero’s real benefits. We’d talked about how Tyrrell and Company could create more value for clients if they spent more time advising them, rather than doing admin – and they just needed a way of doing that. So I suggested using the Receipt Bank Xero App to streamline their paperwork and data-entry issues and give them back that time to devote to client-facing advice.” And moving to Receipt Bank’s smartscanning app was the seed that helped us implement and grow our Xero Trifecta approach to business advice. We knew that our clients had some very 18 / Issue 09

“The great thing with Tyrrell and Company, that sets them apart from other firms, is that they listen and get on with it. There’s no messing around. They just decide, and Craig Tyrrell (Tyrrell partner) is a really big part of that process. He knows exactly what he wants and when he sees something that fits that vision, he just gets stuck in. Craig had a vision of an advisory model before the cloud even existed. He’s had this idea of what he’s wanted for years. So the concept of adding more value isn’t new, it’s just that they’ve never had the tools behind them to be able to deliver it.” So you can imagine how excited we were when we saw how the Xero ecosystem had

Business owners are becoming more and more savvy at using tech to streamline and manage their companies. And that’s changed the expectation of what an accountant brings to the business table – something Andrew knows is on Xero’s agenda. “A lot of what Xero does is helping accountants move their emphasis away from compliance and towards their advisory services. So we’re putting out lots of videos explaining how a small business might interact with its

XU Magazine - the independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users. Find us online at: xumagazine.com

accountant and the kind of service they might expect. It’s about telling the story of how small businesses interact with the their accountants.” Getting a detailed understanding of our clients’ expectations is an approach that we’ve embraced here at Tyrrell and Company. And it links it to our core belief that customer service, and longstanding client relationships, are the key to us making a real difference to the future success of our clients.

catalyst to achieving our dream of valuable advisory services for businesses of all sizes. And, as Andrew points out, the combination of services we offer mean we’re the go-to adviser when your business is looking for an adviser who knows the software ropes.

The idea of engaging someone who understands the technology, but also understands your business, is very, very powerful

“The idea of engaging someone who understands the technology, but also understands your business, is very, very powerful. With an old-school accountant, you wouldn’t even expect them to ask about the systems you use in your business.

The future for Tyrrell and Company We’re very proud of having made the move to cloud accounting. And even more proud of our focus on delivering the kind of cutting-edge, software-driven business advice that the new generation of business owners want from their adviser.

If you forget for a moment that Tyrrell and Company are an accountancy practice, if you’ve got a collection of businesses, all working together and using a joint resource like Xero, then the better they all use that resource – and the more value and insight they will all get out of it.”

Partnering with Xero has been an amazing

We think that’s a highly compelling

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offering for your business – and our clients agree. Having the tech has enabled these relationships to develop through better collaboration, and we can see that this is the way the wind is blowing in the business world. “The compliance work is always going to have to be done. And Tyrrell and Company has the skills and the expertise to be able to deliver that to a very high-class standard. But I think the focus is always going to be on business advice. This idea of business advisers and accountants being two separate things: I think that’s going to change in the industry. If you’re a business adviser, then you’re going to need an accountant on your team, and vice versa. So I think the shape of what the firm looks like may change for them, in terms of people having very specific skills. As the firm continues with the growth of the App community, and maybe starts to focus on specific niches and vertical sectors, Tyrrell and Company have the potential to become a multi-sector adviser with ten or so sectors that have a very finished, polished product and solution.”

Issue 09 / 19

Interview

Q&A with Chris Ridd Moula

20 / Issue 09

XU Magazine - the independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users. Find us online at: xumagazine.com

Interview

XU: CR:

Can you tell us a little bit about your story?

I’ve been in the tech industry for 26 years. I’m perhaps a rare example of an escaped corporate executive who finally took the leap into the startup world after 21 years. So the first 2 decades of my career were spent with large US-based multi-nationals, including 15 years at Microsoft. It was all valuable stuff but ultimately I needed to get out of the corporate scene and try my hand at something smaller, more innovative and certainly more fun.

XU:

How did you come to work for Xero in 2010 and what was your role at the company?

CR:

One Thursday afternoon back in August of 2010, I was sitting in a meeting in Sydney and had this overwhelming sense that my time at Microsoft was up. 3 weeks later I resigned from my Director role at the company with no job lined up but with a good network of people and a desire to move into something that was riding the cloud wave. I was contacted in October by one of my former colleagues at Microsoft who had met “some mad guy in NZ” who had started a cloud-based accounting software company and said that he was looking for someone to get Australia going. That was of course Rod Drury. Rod called me 2 weeks later. We spoke over the phone about everything from the future of the cloud software industry to great surf breaks and preferred surfboard choices. It was clear to me that Rod was someone I could enjoy working with and so I guess you could say the rest is history.

XU:

What did a typical day as Managing Director at Xero look like for you?

CR:

That depends on what year you are talking about between February 2011 and March 2016, my tenure at Xero. The role changed immeasurably during that time. In the first year, I needed to be extremely hands on. I remember one of my first tweets was musing about how I had to take the rubbish out on a Wednesday. I was actively involved in meeting accountants on a day-today basis and travelled extensively on roadshows spreading the word about Xero. As the business grew from 6 to 270 staff, I hired some amazing people and so the role become less hands on and

much more about building the culture, supporting the leadership in the business and of course managing an increasingly busy media and investor relations schedule.

XU: CR:

Who is your main role model and why?

Steve Vamos, former CEO at Microsoft and now sitting on a number of boards, including Telstra. I was fortunate to have Steve as a mentor during my formative years as a leader in the business around 2003-2004. Steve was big on people and culture, but not in a fluffy sense. If you’ve ever read the book “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lencioni, that will give you a good insight into the sort of principles that Steve brought to Microsoft at the time and which become an important model in how I approached leadership and culture during those heady growth years at Xero in Australia.

XU:

What do you consider to be your biggest achievement whilst working at Xero?

CR:

It’s a difficult question because there were a number of very important milestones along the journey. Certainly the day we announced our customer numbers and were deemed the market leader in online accounting software in Australia, having come from such a small base, was enormously satisfying. Also when we achieved the title of most innovative company in Australia in 2014 saw a few champagne corks popped at the office. But perhaps the biggest achievement was late in 2014 when we were ranked 16th best place to work in Australia for companies above 100 employees. I know how hard my leadership team had worked alongside me to build an amazing company and the fact that our staff had spoken so positively about the culture and with an engagement score around 93, it was an incredible feeling.

XU:

What are the three most important things you have learnt from being Managing Director that will always influence how you work?

CR:

1) Never get complacent about your position in the market and always make sure your people are focused on the customer. I know that’s 2 points, but they go hand in hand.

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2) Never compromise on a hire. If it is an OK hire, then it is a no hire. Aim high. 3) Learn to trust your instincts. This last point comes from quite a bit of experience and of course, from making quite a few bad calls.

XU:

What exciting adventures have you been up to since leaving Xero?

CR:

My career has taken a very different turn from where I thought it was going to be post Xero. Shortly after leaving Xero I was actually pursuing a global CEO role with a very exciting tech company only to conclude that taking on another all-consuming gig was not what I really wanted to do. After taking 5 months off after Xero I started contracting with a couple of small tech startups and was really enjoying my role as an advisor and working across different teams, products and challenges. So that’s what I decided to do. I’m involved with 4-5 startups and see my role very much like a Michael Gudinski of the tech space. I look for promising acts that I can invest in, coach and guide with the aim of one day turning them into rockstars.

XU:

What for you was the inspiration and motivation behind starting a new business?

CR:

I guess it was the ability to have a lot of variety in what I do and continue to pursue my passion for great technology that has a positive impact on business. In my time at Xero I came across a lot of smart, driven and interesting people who were in the startup space and so I’m loving the opportunity to spread my efforts across multiple tech businesses and for me personally to make a contribution to their success. Also, all of my technology startup interests are Melbourne-based and so that pinpoints a particular motivation of mine in seeing the tech industry in Melbourne really expand, thrive and become a beacon for the rest of the industry.

XU:

Can you tell us more about Moula? How does it link in

with Xero?

CR:

I came across Moula back in late 2014. Throughout the first half of 2015 I got to know Aris Allegos (CEO and Co-founder) and the team at Moula and we ended up establishing a strategic

Issue 09 / 21

Interview partnership in the lead up to Xerocon that same year. A big issue for small businesses is access to finance, and Moula’s ability to utilise accounting data as a primary source of their decisioning in assessing and approving unsecured loans was a worldfirst. In fact, none of the AU players in this space have actually invested in a proprietary technology platform like they have, so they were an obvious choice to partner with when I was at Xero and to demonstrate how the use of accounting APIs in supporting this emerging financial web was becoming a reality.

XU: CR:

What kinds of businesses can use Moula?

SMEs from all industries can use Moula. In fact many small businesses owners are not able to access finance because the sub-$100k lending market is generally not well-served by the Big 4 banks and other established lenders in the Australian market. Of the AU$14.3B of unsecured lending that was undertaken by small businesses last year, most is funded by credit cards or loans from family and friends. This is huge issue for small business and presents a unique opportunity to expand a new category of unsecured lending that is made possible through the use of real-time accounting data at the core.

XU:

Can you describe in one word what customers are saying about Moula?

CR:

I’ll give you three… Innovative, Ethical and Experienced. I’ve already covered the innovative part of the Moula story, but I think what is equally important is one of ethics which talks to their price transparency and no hidden fees. As any new product category emerges, in this case unsecured lending, you typically get many new players entering the market looking at securing a slice of the action. I’ve seen some pretty concerning price gouging taking place in this space, and from players that are

“

not making the necessary investments in robust decisioning IP and technology like Moula have. The result is that they are unable to competitively price risk and end up charging an arm and a leg for their loans. Moula have tremendous repeat borrowing from their customers which proves that they are delivering value and a great service.

XU: CR:

In what way does Moula stand out from other lenders?

As I mentioned earlier, Moula have made the right sort of investments in a proprietary technology platform that uses accounting data as the primary source of decisioning. That is unique in the market and hence a key differentiator. They have also established a great reputation for responsible lending and transparent pricing, so have in a short space of time established a reputation and leadership position in the market. That is validated by the fact that they have pioneered some substantial strategic partnerships in the market including Xero and Liberty Financial and have a couple of exciting exciting ones in the works at the moment.

XU:

What has been the biggest challenge for you in the past

year?

CR:

I think making the call and getting comfortable with my decision to not step back into the limelight as a CEO. I think perhaps I had too greater expectation on myself about what I was going to do after Xero and that my initial thinking was that it needed to be huge. Having taken some time out and really reflected on what’s important to me I really don’t need the all consuming gig and high profile. I’m really happy working in the background and helping others achieve great things. I’m also loving the variety of being able to choose the right people and technology to get involved with. I guess the lesson there is not to rush into the next thing and to take time to work out what is right for you.

XU:

What’s the most exciting thing coming up for you in the near

future?

CR:

If you are talking from a work front, I’d say helping Moula with their growth plans as we map out a big year ahead in 2017. They are bringing on some great people, expanding their offerings to the market and are getting ready to announce some exciting partnerships. There are a number of other exciting developments underway which is really going to put Moula on the map in small business lending so I’m looking forward to supporting all those efforts. If you are speaking from a personal point of view, I’m excited about taking some time off down the coast this summer and hanging out at our beach house at Wye River which was off limits for most of this year due to the 2015 Christmas Day fires.

XU:

If we’re here in a year celebrating your past year, what did you achieve?

CR:

I lost 5Kg and saw the Richmond Tigers reach the AFL finals. Only kidding. I want to see all of my interests, including Moula, achieve great things. As I said, I’m really passionate about Melbourne-based tech companies doing well and so I’m keen to help these exciting tech start-ups achieve their goals and be well on their way to becoming meaningful and high-profile technology companies, just like Xero did.

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Issue 09 / 23

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Magazinein - the magazine for Xero users, by Xerobeing users. Find us online Currently only XU available theindependent United Kingdom. Other countries added soon.at: xumagazine.com

What can you do in 0.05 seconds? Create your first impression! 50 milliseconds, 1/20th of a second, faster than the blink of an eye - that is how long it takes for someone to decide they like or don’t like your website... Researchers at Carleton University (Canada) asked volunteers to rate the visual appeal of websites after being given split-second glimpses of them and found that an impression could be formed within 0.05 seconds. Words: Grant Johnson, RocketSpark Grant is a co-founder of Rocketspark, a beautifully simple website builder that enables non-technical business owners to make their own website. Prior to founding Rocketspark Grant worked in marketing roles but his first job was as an accountant. @Rocketspark

What was particularly interesting in Carleton’s study is that the first impressions didn’t change very much when given more time. The researchers found that the initial evaluations made in a split second remained remarkably stable even after being given more time exploring the websites. The halo effect Research into a concept named as the halo effect has shown that an overall impression of attractiveness can create a positive disposition to wider aspects of a

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product or service. If it looks good we are more likely to assume it is good. Check out ‘Halo effect’ in Wikipedia to see some of the studies. The halo effect has been shown to apply to brands. The lesson in a web context is to make a good first impression and visitors to your site are likely to be favourable towards your business. You might be wondering: what does the look of my website have to do with the quality of my service? Well, not much. You might have a sub-par website and still provide outstanding service. But your potential customers don’t know that. They don’t get to see your business from “the inside” like you do—all they get to see initially is your shop window. But my business comes from

Issue 09 / 25

word of mouth referral...

I recently had the pleasure of presenting a seminar at the ICB Bookkeepers Summit in London. At the start of my seminar I undertook a quick show of hands survey to understand where new business for bookkeepers came from. As you would expect, personal referral was the single biggest source of new business by a country mile. However, the reality is that before a client makes a connection with you they will check you out online to see if you have the expertise and experience to help them. If you visit your website traffic reporting in Google Analytics or Google Search Console there will be a high likelihood that over 95% of your website traffic from new visitors to your site will be from people who have come to your site by typing your website address directly into their web browser (shown as direct traffic in Google Analytics) or by searching for your business name. The people that are visiting your site already know of you and now they want to know more about you. A picture tells a thousand words in 0.05 seconds Running a DIY Website builder platform we get to see a lot of websites. Some sites are great, some are good, some not so good.

Having high quality photos is the simplest way to make a great first impression. We generally recommend having a large photo instead of lots of small photos. Having

is important even if you’re a sole trader because putting a face to the name really helps give you a credibility-boost, no matter what your size.

pictures of real people is also a really good way to make a first impression and there is also some interesting science which shows the value of using real people on a home page which you can see in our blog about the importance of a good about us page on your website.

Reduce clutter and use subtle details for interest

Doing business on the internet is very much reliant on trust. Users will be evaluating your page asking: Is this a business I can trust to deliver? One excellent way to build trust with potential customers is by including photos of the team. A photo of a real person

If you only have 0.05 seconds to create an impression it’s important to make the page free of unnecessary details and focus on the message you want to get across. Simple design details can also make quite a difference to someone’s first impression. These subtle details might include adding a background colour to a section of the page to highlight that content or it might be just making a testimonial picture in a circle rather than a square. The fastest audit you’ll ever do Now it’s time to conduct the fastest audit your ever do. Look at your own website for a split second and see what impression you’ll leave. Even better, test out the 0.05 second test on someone new and see what they think. Learn more at www.rocketspark.com/blog

26 / Issue 09

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CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT

Issue 09 / 27

Apps Compared

Compared: Time Tracking Apps

WorkflowMax

TSheets

Minute Dock

Deputy

Ebillity

Timesheet approval

Document Management

Desktop timer

Quoting

Invoicing

Enter purchases against a job

Built job templates

Scheduling

Company Dashboard

Job Costing

Invoice Summary

Individual staff reporting

Customisable reports

Customer report builder

Export to PDF

Export to Excel

Android app

iPhone app

Webiste mobile-optimised

Core Functionality

Expense tracking

Timescale alerts

Reporting

Mobile

This information was true and correct at the time of publishing. Releases happen all the time. Please contact the App for the latest release information.

28 / Issue 09

XU Magazine - the independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users. Find us online at: xumagazine.com

Apps Compared

For more information, please visit: WorkflowMax - workflowmax.com TSheets - tsheets.com Minute Dock - minutedock.com Deputy - deputy.com Ebillity - ebillity.com

WorkflowMax

TSheets

Minute Dock

Deputy

Ebillity

Xero integration: Sync contacts

Xero integration: Send invoices to Xero

Xero integration: Link your tracking categories, items and accounts to your contacts, projects and tasks

Intergrates with Xero payroll

GPS Tracking/Geo Location

SMS text messaging

2-factor login security

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Employee based pricing

• One-Click Xero and QuickBooks integration • Who’s working window • Employee scheduling • Mobile time clock • Overtime alerts

• Retainer management using budgets and goals (with live linked reports) • Speedy time tracking designed for professional services • Zapier API integration • Advanced hourly rate system • Restrict access to old time entries to prevent incorrect billing

• Time and attendance capture via smartphone, kiosk, browser • Shift offers/claim • Workplace communication • Employee tasking • Open API

Integrations

Other Features

Billing / Support

Other notable features • • • • •

30+ integrations Job management Lead management Recurring jobs Custom fields

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Issue 09 / 29

How to protect your business from fraud For many small business owners hiring someone to manage their finances is a great move. However, unprepared business owners could be opening themselves up to fraud... When a business owner starts out it’s often just them handling every aspect of the business. As the business grows they gradually build a team of both internal staff and contractors and usually this will include a bookkeeper. In a recent Association of Certified Fraud Examiners report Survey participants estimated that the typical organization loses 5% of revenues each year to fraud. According to the ACFE’s 2016 Report to the Nations, the estimated median loss from fraud was $150,000. It takes time and effort to recover the money stolen by perpetrators, and many organizations are never able to fully do so. What exactly is fraud? According to Queensland Police’s Your guide to stopping Employee fraud: “Fraud is behaviour that is deceptive, dishonest, corrupt or unethical. For fraud to exist there needs to be an offender, a victim and an absence of control or safeguards.” Fraud can occur in the most unlikely places and by the most unlikely individuals. Colleen Margaret Gray, a 66 year old Principal of Mayfield Primary School in Auckland, defrauded the school of more than $30,000. Mrs Gray raised false invoices in the names of fictitious teachers and the payment was made to companies owned by her husband, Bruce Kenneth Gray. (source: Deloitte Forensic Focus) In another case reported in 2011, a contractor bookkeeper working for a group of direct sales companies siphoned $891,000 into her possession. She used the money on luxury goods and to pay 30 / Issue 09

back her mother’s gambling debts (source: Smartcompany). Why does fraud happen? I like to believe that people are inherently good. For fraud to occur there needs to be both opportunity and motivation for the offender. Business owners might not be able to control the motivations of the offender, for example gambling debts, but they can limit the opportunity. Being aware of the risks and setting in place controls and safeguards will help to prevent fraud. The risks dramatically increase when responsibility for the entire bookkeeping / finance function is handled by only one person (be it internally or externally). Especially where the staff member or outsourced bookkeeper has full access to the bank account and accounting software without another staff member or authoriser involved. What’s the potential impact of fraud? In simple terms, if someone (other than you) has full access to your bank account, they could take everything in that bank account. Some other common scenarios are: • somebody in charge of purchasing pays themselves by creating fraudulent or duplicated invoices for commonly purchased items. • the person in charge of payroll creates fake employees and pays themselves • somebody in charge of invoicing, changes the invoice bank account details to their own and then credits the invoice Any of these scenarios could cause enough of a cashflow problem to force you out of business.

Words: Meryl Johnston, C0Founder, Bean Ninjas Meryl is a Chartered Accountant who specialises in all things Xero. She has been working in the accounting industry for more than 10 years, including roles at international accounting firm BDO and as an accounting lecturer at Central Queensland University. She is the founder of Bean Ninjas, a fixed fee, Xero only, bookkeeping service which helps online business, freelancers, digital agencies and e-commerce stores keep their books up to date. Bean Ninjas has grown to a team of 13 in just over a year and can help clients based in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, USA and United Kingdom. @beanninjas

XU Magazine - the independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users. Find us online at: xumagazine.com

Red flags that you might be at risk of fraud

received, the invoice should be ‘approved’ to indicate it can be paid.

• Your bookkeeper requests or has full access to your bank accounts and can make payments without a 2nd signatory • You (or another manager) are not involved in approving invoices for payment before they are paid • There is one bookkeeper (internal or external) doing the whole accounting function. (As an added layer of protection, you want to have a separation between the person entering bills in Xero and creating invoices, and the person who is reconciling bank transactions.) • Unexpected spikes in expenses or asset purchases

The process in Xero looks like this: 1. Bills are entered in Xero and sit in ‘Awaiting Approval’ 2. Once the bill has been approved it moves to ‘Awaiting Payment’ 3. Batch payments are created from invoices in the Awaiting Payment area 4. The batch payment file is uploaded to online banking 5. The payment file is approved in online banking

6 steps to protect yourself from fraud (using Xero) Step 1 – Restrict access to authorise payments in bank accounts Example: A bookkeeper was given access to the business bank accounts. He transferred regular amounts to his own bank account. To prevent this make sure to restrict access to authorising payments from within your bank account to a few key people and require a 2nd signatory to authorise payments. You can still have your bookkeeper setup the payment in the bank, but it is worth thinking about whether they should have the ability to approve payments. Step 2 – Invoices are approved by the purchaser before they are paid A lack of approval process in place for invoices can spell trouble for your business. Example: Jimmy Ming Miu, an IT Manager defrauded his employer, McKay Shipping, of more than $1 million over a 6 year period. Mr Miu raised false invoices for IT equipment from Avanti Systems and Avanti Systems Integration, companies that he had control of. The IT goods were never supplied, not required or hugely overpriced. (source: Deloitte Forensic Focus) How does your bookkeeper know whether the goods and services were received to the required standard, for each invoice? Often they won’t, especially as the business grows and there are more people making purchases. To avoid paying for goods / services that haven’t been

Click the green ‘approve’ button to approve the purchase ready for payment. In some small businesses the business owner will be approving purchases for payment in Xero and also authorising payment in internet banking. As a small business grows the approving of purchases is often delegated to project managers or team leaders. A business owner will usually retain control of authorising payments from within internet banking. Step 3 – Restrict access to changing bank account details in Xero If you are using the batch payment function in Xero, then changes to bank account details in Xero can expose you to the risk of fraud. Example: Vicky Lee Kyle abused her position as an accounts payable clerk in Hastings by creating and submitting false invoices for payment into her bank account. Ms Kyle had access to her employer’s accounting software, whereby she changed the payment details to her own, once the false invoices had been approved for payment. Ms Kyle defrauded her employer of $660,000 over a 6 year period. (source: Deloitte Forensic Focus) Luckily, Xero provides a way for you to restrict access to changing bank account details. Be mindful of who has access to change supplier and employee bank account details in Xero. Also make sure to review changes made to bank account details regularly (explained in more detail in Step 6 the Assurance Dashboard). How to implement this in Xero: Step 4 – Segregation of duties The term ‘segregation of duties’ means that rather than having one person responsible for every aspect of a role, split the responsibilities among multiple people.

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According to an article published by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, “Small business fraud and the trusted employee: protecting against unique vulnerabilities“: Small businesses are particularly vulnerable to fraud because they lack the resources to implement complete systems of internal controls and properly segregate accounting duties among their limited employees. Therefore, accounting personnel may be tasked with completely inappropriate job functions that provide easy opportunities for committing financial frauds. Furthermore, the business cultures of small businesses are developed around a concept of a “trusted family” of employees. Consequently, placing trusted employees in positions without proper internal controls doesn’t appear to be an unreasonable decision to managers of a “family” business. In order to prevent against this we recommend that business owners separate the roles of the person completing bank reconciliations and the person raising invoices or paying bills. You could do this by having an internal admin staff member raise invoices and bills in Xero and then use a separate person / business like Bean Ninjas to complete the reconciliations. Trust but verify Most employees are generally trustworthy! But it does not hurt to conduct some data matching to make sure they are. Here is a simple approach to cross-check your vendor and employee files to see if perhaps an employee has set up a fictitious vendor. Try comparing your supplier details with your employee file across the following variables: - Address - Phone Number - Bank Account Number If there are multiple suppliers with the same details as your employees you might need to do some further investigation! Step 5 – Regularly review your Profit and Loss statement and Balance Sheet

Issue 09 / 31

In the examples of Vicky Lee Kyle and Jimmy Ming Miu above, they both submitted false invoices for payment. These false invoices would have resulted in an increase in expenses or assets in the accounts. A monthly review of the Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet should help to identify unexpected purchases. Before reviewing the monthly reports make sure to set your own expectations about what you are expecting to see in the reports. If you purchased new computers for the team then you would expect to see that reflected in the accounts. If you see an unexpected increase in assets this month then look into this account to understand why.

Step 6 – Ask your accountant to review the ‘Assurance Dashboard’ in Xero The assurance dashboard in Xero is a great place for your accountant to help review usual activity within your Xero. You could review the ‘contacts whose bank accounts have been edited’ section to see where bank account details have been changed. Summary Preventing fraud is a case of maintaining some level of control with your business finances and implementing the following safeguards: 1. Restrict access to authorising payments from within your bank account to a few key people and require dual signatories to authorise payments 2. Ensure that invoices are approved by the purchaser before they are paid. 3. Restrict access to changing bank account details in Xero. 4. Create a segregation of duties between the role of the person completing bank reconciliations and the person raising invoices or paying bills. 5. Regularly review your Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet and make sure the figures are inline with your expectations 6. Ask your accountant to review the ‘Assurance Dashboard’ in Xero

How to stop the domino effect of late payers ruining your buiness Have you ever had a client who just seems to come up with all the reasons under the sun as to why they cannot pay their invoices? Frustrating isn’t it? and often times business owners don’t know where to turn to get help... Words: Tracy Baker, Coffee Not Inc Tracy is a qualified and experienced bookkeeper of some 10 years + with 6 years experience of working online. Tracy works closely with high achieving creative entrepreneurs so they can regain control of their cashflow, free them from managing their financials and enable them to dedicate their attention and resources into forming incredible, profitable businesses. @CoffeeNotInc

Are you set up in Xero to protect yourself against fraud? Make sure to follow our steps above. Want help putting this advice into action or looking for a bookkeeper that has your best interest in mind?

32 / Issue 09

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Fear not! It is a common problem I have helped my own clients with, especially those more creative, entrepreneurial clients who understandably do not like chasing the money and fear ruining their own client relationships. So today I thought I would guide you through the cashflow maze... Come on, grab your coffee and let’s get started... One of THE most common causes of cashflow problems in businesses is late payment! If a number or even one big customer falls behind there can be far reaching, destructive domino effects right down the supply chain. The detrimental effect can impact on growth and may even cause redundancies or the closure of your business. Cashflow problems are the number ONE cause of business failure.

suppliers late because they have a cash flow problem due to being one of those dominoes hit by another bad payer However, worries about their reputation and credit references often stop them being completely honest about their difficulties and they may run through a myriad of excuses such as admin problems, staff absences/holidays, IT issues and the old chestnut “payment has been sent - hasn’t it arrived?” Besides, you wouldn’t want your own business to get a reputation as being a walk over when it comes to obtaining payment would you? So be professional.

When Court seems the only option Get A System! Xero is a fantastic tool not only for day to day bookkeeping and reconciliation but also to enable you to control your cashflow and stay informed of late payers.

Cashflow problems are the number ONE cause of business failure.

So how can you go about making sure that your business doesn’t succumb to the domino effect? Firstly it is vital that you are aware of how to prevent or tackle the various different reasons for late payment or a disputed debt. Some clients may well have an “unofficial policy” whereby they pay in their own time and if you don’t like it then to them it’s tough, they’ll move on .. that’s harsh but I’ve seen it happen. If you don’t want to fall prey to stubborn financial directors, the gate-keepers or the “ahhh they are alright they won’t mind” mindset then the following tips will help you stay firmly in control and keep your cash flowing and your business buoyant: Research Rigorously check the name and legal status of each new customer, conduct credit checks and demand references from their existing suppliers before deciding whether they are a good fit for your business. Other businesses could be paying

deciding factor. Professionals will talk to the debtor, emphasise that they would rather find a discreet solution outside of the courts. Once faced with their involvement and their stated objective, rather than hounding, the customer often opens up - discussing frankly and confidentially issues that they may have been reluctant to provide previously. Often times a mutually beneficial arrangement is found. This may be that the debtor is given more time to pay or establishing a payment plan that suits both parties.

When entering sales invoices you are able to put in an expected payment date, add notes, send email reminders at appropriate times such as 3 days overdue, 7,

Once you have got this far and can see no other way of recouping your debt you need to decide if it maybe better business to write off the debt. It boils down to whether the recovery costs justify the amount owed. Whilst proceedings are a last resort, be prepared! You will need to have access to evidence created by scrupulous record keeping. Put every agreement and amendment in writing and know where you stored them. Written records can vindicate a claim, whereas your memory will not.

14 etc Link this with Float (an app for automated forecasting and budgeting) and you have a complete dashboard view of when your money is due in and how this impacts on your business. Keep Calm It’s important from the off to remain calm, avoid rushing to sour what could continue to be a profitable relationship for many years to come with immediately threatening to leap to litigation. Court action is the most expensive route to recovering outstanding payments and is also a very public exercise, which might prompt dispute and counter claim. That aside, it is often unnecessary.

Finally the best chance you have of preventing/recovering late payments can be summarised in 3 simple steps: • Know your customers • Keep a written record of all your dealings • Secure the right support when problems occur I genuinely hope that the above has helped you to see that panic need not set in, courts are not always necessary and that you can grow and nurture your client relationships without fear of “being taken for a ride”.

Communicate Much of the time, the difference between resolution and resentment is effective communication - engaging someone to create a process and implement it to recover the debt for you can be the

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Converting traditional accounting firms over to Xero Practice Manager After setting up and going through a conversion from APS to Xero Practice Manager, Scotty Jenkin from Now Online decided to then look at further ways to get more efficiencies and cull out some old legacies to get the best simple, easy to manage database. It made sense to share his experience and thoughts to help other accounting firms make the switch to Xero Practice Manager. This idea just happened to fall into place and it worked out that Xero wanted someone to also offer these services in the South Island... down the Xero path.

At the beginning After moving to Xero Practice Manager from APS in 2014 our firm experienced a change in mind-set with the old way of doing, with the new way of thinking. Not really understanding how to deal with moving our job centric tradition model and complex invoicing process into the Xero environment was a pick up and run situation for us.

There were aspects of change we were super excited to leave behind e.g. system hot fixes and end of month rolls, server costs and maintenance. Getting our teeth into it

We were finding that with each piece of work that we were Letting go of the working on, there was a job being When it came to historical traditional created and invoicing, in the model will give you and time was going past there were your team a new lease of across several 40 options to life. It will keep your fee jobs all relating choose from, to the same to present on base at a higher level and thing. Things the invoice. It did you will retain clients. were getting out of not really matter hand due to us not where time was put fully understanding the and when any write impact that within two to offs were to happen then three months we would have a this would affect individual team job buffet to put time to. members. Our team was fully on-board with the move and just to make it interesting we decided at the time to move our emails and documents onto Google Apps plus convert all of our BankLink clients over to Xero not to mention move into new premises all in a two to three month period from first making the decision to go

34 / Issue 09

Things were progressing with our firm but Invoicing was now becoming a headache to try and make it work with the level of jobs we had open and on the go. We needed to stop and rethink some internal system procedures.

Words: Scotty Jenkin, Director, New Online Ltd Scotty is a Xero Practice Studio Partner and Cloud Integrator specialising in Accounting and Legal profession. Scotty also works at Noone Plus as an online add-on consultant. Noone Plus is a 100% Xero Gold partner firm of which has won since 2014 the Emerging Partner of the year and recently the Canterbury Accounting Partner of the Year and 100% Xero Award for 2016. Scotty is busy outside of work with his young family whilst renovating/ landscaping their home in Timaru. @scottyjenkin

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maintaining. We simplified our timesheet entry as all time on the job goes directly into the Annual Accounts task rather than to each part of the annual job as previously done. Making Headway Stripping out our jobs and renaming our tasks to simply say exactly what we wanted to present on the invoice, improved our end of month procedure by three days. By doing this we saved 8-10 minutes per invoice to get out the door. It is such a simple process now to do our invoicing. We now have three jobs in total. One is set for recurring GSTs. One for Disbursements (we add this job number to our Xero Organisations as the We found in year client code, so we can two that time saved import the charges directly into Xero was 20-30% on each Practice Manager compliance job and on a monthly basis) come year three up to and a Main Job Stop and re-evaluate Template which has 50% time saved. the areas of work we We had to take a step do in the working that we back and re-evaluate what use on our invoice. Wording we wanted to achieve and what such as â&#x20AC;&#x153;Annual Accounts 2016â&#x20AC;? was actually important in our business. is where all the time spent preparing the We found that having 20+ custom fields 2016 annuals would go here. was not efficient to maintain and update when there was another way to service Tasks notes are utilised to track where that data. the team are up to, on the Annual task as Having multiple jobs open with tasks galore under each job was great for a workflow point of view but nightmarish when it came to invoicing and

a checklist and if anyone else needed to pick up the work then we know at what stage the job is at with what still needs to be completed.

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Workflow management is now achieved at a task level by the number of hours entered into the task as budgeted hours vs actual hours put to each task. For most firms this works well For fixed fees we can track this by using the budget on the job and produce a recurring invoice in Xero which bring in negative work in progress back into Xero Practice Manager. You will find that in year one converting clients across to Xero and learning report packs and report codes that you will most likely expect the odd write off. Time written off can be done in two ways, against the task at a timesheet level or as a discount by way of negative cost so the staff member is not punished if their recovery is measured by remunerations. Winning We found in year two that time saved was 20-30% on each compliance job and come year three up to 50% time saved. This freaks some accountants out by potentially losing half their fees. By looking at smarter ways of helping your clients grow and looking at not only the accounting package but their entire system will keep your fee levels high plus make life more interesting for all involved. Not going fully into fixed pricing or bundle packages but a hybrid has worked for us and there are many successful firms that operate on these price models. My way of thinking is to give some choice and if you scope correctly then you should be able to offer a great package that you and your client can get a lot out of.

Issue 09 / 35

Working over the holidays? Ten ways to stay productive Pudding, roasts, shopping and plenty of present unwrapping...holidays are awesome, but not so much if you still have a whole heap of work to get through...

Words: Mallika Goel, Marketing Copywriter, WorkflowMax Mallika is a Marketing Copywriter at WorkflowMax fresh from the agency world, bringing with her four years of experience working with some of New Zealand’s largest brands as well as more boutique ones. She believes life’s too short to do one thing so keeps herself busy pursuing her many interests: an obsessive love of writing/blogging, fitness, travelling and design. @WorkflowMax

36 / Issue 09

How do you stay on track with everything you planned to do over the break when you’ve got your nephew swinging from one leg, five cousins gossiping in the background and old friends or acquaintances constantly turning up on your doorstep? Step 1: Have a plan “Getting things done is a process: it’s a way of thinking that involves planning, execution, iteration, and reflection.” Lyndi Thompson, Demand Marketing at Tableau You wouldn’t rock up to a client pitch without a strategy – in the same way, don’t start your holidays without a gameplan. Focus on 1-2 key projects that you can comfortably achieve instead of trying to do a little bit of everything and ending up not really finishing anything! Then take those projects and divide them into smaller, achievable tasks. There are some great apps that can make your project planning a little easier, like

TeuxDeux, Trello or To Round (because task lists don’t have to be boring right?). Step 2: Make your intentions public There’s something about announcing your intentions publicly that just kicks your butt into gear. So make sure you tell everyone you’re planning to get a bit of work done during these holidays instead of shutting yourself away like a hermit! Step 3: Find an accountability buddy Whether it’s your partner, a work colleague, or even your mum, having someone to keep you on track can be enormously helpful. You’ll want to make sure your buddy is comfortable calling you out or taking a “tough love” approach if you’re not adhering to plan. Don’t forget to determine what the consequences will be of not meeting your self-imposed deadlines. Tip: Make the experience more

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Issue 09 / 37

fun: Snapchat them progress reports on the regular, or set up virtual coffee dates where you can share what you’ve achieved and how you’re tracking. We love using Skype here in the WorkflowMax marketing team and Google Hangouts Xero-wide!

Step 4: Don’t be afraid to say no “Focus is about saying no” – Steve Jobs With invites streaming in from friends, family and acquaintances, staying focused on your work can be supremely hard. But sometimes you have to bite the bullet; so how do you say no without offending anyone? Firstly, thank whoever has extended the invitation. Politely decline and offer to catch up with them some other time. You can even suggest an activity that takes up less time. Don’t feel like you need to over-explain your declined RSVP! Turning off email and social media notifications can be another way to avoid invites. Remember to set your out of office too! Tip: Prioritising your goals over distractions can be good practice both professionally and personally.

I know what you’re thinking. They barely understand what you do (I know my parents certainly don’t!) so how on earth are they supposed to help generate ideas for that pitch or creative project you’re working on? But this can be a great way to liberate your creativity and get some fresh input from an entirely different perspective! Besides it’s a great way to bond with your friends and family and make them feel involved. Give everyone a quick 5 minute brief to bring them on the same page. What’s the problem you’re trying to solve? What challenges are you facing? Then have fun with it...Try to get all the bad ideas out first – this exercise can be a great way of freeing up that elusive creative genius. You might decide to set a time limit to force out bad ideas too. Visualise your ideas with post-it notes or doodles. If something sounds promising, build on it!

“The first thing you should do is figure out what you absolutely have to do, and what others can handle.” – TheBalance When you automate repetitive tasks, you free up more headspace to work on your projects. At WorkflowMax we use Hubspot to automate our marketing, for example by scheduling in our upcoming blog posts, email campaigns or social posts. Managing multiple social accounts? Hootsuite or Buffer are also good options to check out. And if you’ve got a business Facebook page, make use of Facebook’s auto-reply feature which will help keep your business response rate looking good, even if you can’t actually reply til you get back from holiday. Step 9. Learn a new skill

Let’s face it, Christmas Carols aren’t exactly the most conducive to productivity. And if the 100th radio rendition of Jingle Bells is about to send you running for cover, it’s time to find some better music to get you in the zone. So, where should you look for great music? Spotify is my personal favourite and the undeniable behemoth in the online music space. Check out their handy “Discover” playlist which generates a new playlist every week based on your listening habits. You can also browse by genres or moods (from “Coffee + Chill” and “Sprawled on the Beach” to “Like a Baws” and “Creativity Boost”...there’s something for all occasions!).

Step 6: Brainstorm with your family and friends

SoundCloud; If you’re more of a music purist and think Spotify has become a tad too mainstream, this one is for you.

“Draw on the floor, on each other, on table tops.” - Sunni Brown

Zenmix, Noisli or Coffitivity are music generators which let you vibe to more

“

Step 8: Automate Your Business!

Step 7: Listen to some tunes

Step 5: Get inspired by your surroundings Whether you’ve gone back home to visit your folks, or you’re in a completely new town for the holidays, working somewhere that’s just elsewhere from the office can be an awesome way to kickstart your productivity. And while it might not be practical working at the base of the Eiffel Tower, apps like Google Trips, Lonely Planet Guides or even the Wallpaper City Guide (for the more design orientated) will direct you to have local gems where you’ll be able to work remotely or find creative inspiration.

ambient sounds.

Losing motivation to stay on track with your projects? Being productive in an entirely new endeavour can help bring some of that motivation back. For example, learning a new language with Duolingo (I’ve been learning Spanish after binge-watching Narcos!) or a skill via Skillshare, or The Open University. Step 10: Be realistic with yourself As much as working to a tight schedule is important, structured downtime and self-pampering are equally critical to productivity – so make sure to plan regular breaks into your work schedule (that way you won’t be tempted to overrun or just have a break whenever you feel like it), check in with yourself on the regular, let yourself indulge in that second dollop of pudding, and yeah...even spend some time gossiping with those cousins.

Make your lost cashmoney ﬂow with Satago, your all-in-one I recently when a customer went into cashﬂow soluuon. Spend less me chasing customers administraaon. It dawned on me that I'd never really with our automated invoice reminder system. known who I was doing business with. Try invoice reminders at satago.com Then I found credit reports from

38 / Issue 09

“

Complete Cashﬂow Conﬁdence

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Digital marketing for the Xero accountant For years, accountants led a very comfortable life when it came to marketing. You lived in a trusted bubble where your word was law, your clients were all local, and you had a continual drip feed of new business via personal referral... Times change Now, your buyer is more educated. More particular. And you’ve got to work harder for each prospect – before you even know they are looking. Business owners are doing exploratory work before they ever speak to an accountant. When it comes to Xero, they’re doing a trial or signing up themselves, exploring the integrated apps, attending webinars, reading articles, talking to other business owners in similar industries. As a result, they know exactly what they want, and it’s often specific. Not merely an accountant, but (for example) one who can provide Xero training for an online retail business including specific app integrations for their industry. They’re not so bothered about geography, many of them, other than perhaps the country they’re in. As a result, accountants are still getting referrals, but it’s harder and harder to win them. For some, the client base that got you here is not the one you want to move forward with, and you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. This is why the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal are content

marketing and social media marketing, combined. Words: Karen Reyburn, The Profitable Firm

Content Marketing Incredibly, within the past 6 months the term ‘content marketing for accountants’ has received (literally) worldwide acclaim. Lest it become a buzzword, here are a few principles we’ve been proclaiming for years: • Content marketing means that there are no magic formulas anymore for you to copy. It’s time for all your brilliant expertise to come out of your head and be shared with the world (or at least your corner of the world). • Technology – including Xero - is merely a tool in your expert, non-boring hands to help you deliver incredible, lifechanging stories in a more efficient and modern way. • The content marketer accountant doesn’t primarily look to other accountants, even other Xero accountants, for ideas. Look to other amazing business owners. Having Xero isn’t enough. Stand out by saying what only you can say.

Karen is a creativeminded individual who specialises in online marketing for accountancy firms. A former accountant (and a Certified Public Accountant in the States), Karen set up The Profitable Firm to work exclusively with modern, digitallyminded accountants who want to use online marketing to their best advantage. She and her team use remote and virtual working to help accountancy firms all over the globe. @ProfitableFirm

Social Marketing If content marketing is what you have to say, social is your voice

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Issue 09 / 39

– it’s how you share it with the right audience.

• If you can’t be modern and up to date with something like social media, how can they trust you to be up to date with accounting, tax, legislation, Xero, and everything else critical to their business? • Xero is everywhere on social media, but you’re not merely piggy-backing on their success. You’re the next step once the business owner has chosen Xero. Make sure you’re visible when they’re ready to get help! Here are 6 ways you can use Xero in your marketing, bearing in mind these principles of content plus social.

these days. What issues and problems have your clients faced that you can solve with great tech? Example firm: www.woods-squared.co.uk Specialises in raising finance and has a 100% track record of doing so

3. Use good quality branding and design

1. Apply Xero to your niche Competition is rife amongst accountants – and Xero is merely the price of entry. When you specialise, your buyer can find what they want faster. One way to choose a niche (if you don’t have one) is to look at your current clients or the work you do in one or more of the following 3 categories: • You deliver great results • It’s extremely profitable to you • You really enjoy it Remember, it doesn’t have to be an industry. You could be specialists in converting to Xero, or in implementing a particular Xero app.

Many accountants have gotten lazy when it comes to good design – or simply never considered it a major issue. Young and hungry business owners consider things like a high quality logo, a modern website, and constant use of social media as standard – again, merely the price of entry. When you join up your expert advice with good design, you get great marketing. Your original content is a message your prospects want to hear: and good design helps them appreciate it. Example firm: www.squaremileaccounting.co.uk/ breweries Developed branding & design for breweries 4. Produce your own content

Example firm: www.myaccountancyplace.co.uk Works exclusively with digital creative agencies in Manchester, UK.

There’s nothing more powerful than what you have to say – about Xero, about profits, about your niche, or anything else. When it comes to content for your accountancy firm marketing, generic doesn’t work. Your buyers need to feel as though they’re familiar with you before they’ve ever made contact. And beyond merely the words, it’s the genuine personality and authenticity that makes it yours and yours alone.

2. Show how you use the tech to solve problems You must remember who you are without the technology. In your marketing, show how you use tech alongside your expert advice to solve the problems weighing on your clients’ minds. Go beyond the basics of setting up Xero or other cloud accounting tech that you and your clients have access to. That’s just the standard 40 / Issue 09

Example firm: www.freshfinancials.com Redesigned website pages to reflect her “Bookkeeping, Reinvented” concept 5. Use social to share your content to your audience

world to see it. But because you want quality leads, it’s not necessarily the entire world who needs to find you. Just those few who are pre-sold before they come to you. With that audience, once they get in touch it’s only a few short steps to signing the proposal and starting work. Social media allows for this self-selection process. Rather than pushing your wares and trying to drive sales, you’re sharing helpful, relevant, focused content and letting them come to you when they’re ready. That’s the dream of marketing: and it works. Example firm: www.bite2017.com Used social to drive registrations for Xerofocused event

6. Keep the circle going with good follow up (don’t give up) The area that results in accountants losing more business than any other is that of follow up. More accurately, the lack of follow up continuing beyond one or two contact points. This is rooted in an old marketing mindset that if you don’t get instant results, that particular marketing effort was a fail. That is absolutely not true. With the self-selecting, “I’ll buy when I’m ready” prospect doing most of the research, it’s merely a matter of pressing on, being visible, and not giving up. Having a follow up system (either manual or automated) will make the difference between you and 90% of the other accountants. Example firm: www.tyrrellandcompany.co.uk Integrates website with social, webinars, email, & more For the full guide and case study details of example firms, Download the full “Digital Marketing for the Xero Accountant” guide at www.theprofitablefirm.com/xeromarketer

When you have good tech, good content, and great design, all of it directed towards a niche or focus area, it’s time for the

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TRUSTED SINCE

2003

QUALITY

ADVANCE TRACK ISO27001 ISO9001 THINK OUTSOURCING THINK ADVANCETRACK

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USA Focus

Words: Ryan O’Donnell, Director of Marketing, Avalara As a Director of Marketing at Avalara, Ryan satisfies his penchant for solving complex problems by working with small business owners to solve sales tax challenges. @avalara

So, you’re ready to collect sales tax... Registration tips for small businesses Congratulations, you’re in business! You’re selling products and people are buying them. That’s great. But those transactions aren’t just between you and the customer; most states (and some cities) tax sales to get their piece of the pie. And they require you to help them do it. But before you can do your sales tax duty, the state needs a record of you. You need to register with the right tax jurisdiction in order to receive a sales tax ID number or permit and get set up for collecting and remitting sales tax. In some places, it’s even against the law to collect sales tax without registering first, so it’s an important step. As with anything related to sales tax, though, it’s not always as simple as it may seem. Here are some things you should be aware of when you’re ready to register for sales tax collection.

42 / Issue 09

Know your nexus

well.

Knowing where you have nexus — or a relationship with a state that obligates you to collect sales tax — is key to getting sales tax registration right. Failing to register in a state where you have nexus can cause trouble for your business in the form of audits, fees or penalties. On the other hand, unnecessarily registering in states where you don’t need to can create extra hassles as well.

The rules on nexus vary from state to state, so it’s crucial to be aware of common nexus-creating activities and do your research if you suspect you might have nexus. This is especially important for small businesses, which often don’t have the resources to deal with the possible consequences of getting nexus wrong. Research registration requirements

You’ll have nexus in the state where you are based and do business, but beyond that, nexus rules are not necessarily straightforward. For example, you can establish nexus in a state by having branches there, employing people, regularly attending trade shows, using a drop shipper or a distributor based there, storing goods, having online affiliates or even exceeding a certain threshold of sales in a state. And in the few home rule states, you can have nexus not only with the state, but with a local jurisdiction as

The biggest challenge for small businesses when it comes to sales tax is the fact that every single state has different rules and compliance requirements. Sales tax registration is no different, and it’s incumbent on you to find out what triggers registration requirements and what the registration procedures are in the states where you have nexus. While some states require just one

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USA Focus registration form to collect tax in the entire state, some local jurisdictions in home rule states, such as Colorado, have their own individual registration requirements. Check with the relevant state revenue department for information. SST registration You can use one form for any of the 24 states participating in the Streamlined Sales Tax (SST) project, which can save you significant time and money if you have nexus in SST states or are expanding into SST states. Once you register in one SST state, you will be licensed and required to collect any applicable sales tax in all of the SST states, which include Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Registration with Tennessee is optional. During the SST registration process, you can indicate that you don’t have any sales in an SST state, and while you will be licensed, you will not be required to file returns until you have applicable sales. However, registration with states where you have no nexus could increase the possibility of compliance maintenance in those states.

Fees Most states don’t make it expensive to register for a sales tax permit; registration is free in the majority of states. Others charge fees ranging from around $5 to around $100, including Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Know your NAICS code When you register for sales tax, you will be required to categorize your industry with a North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code. You can search for your code on the NAICS website. The sixdigit codes are updated every five years to reflect new and changing industries; another set of revisions is expected in 2017. For example, one commonly used NAICS code is for “internet retail sales.” All internet retailers, regardless of the specific products they sell, register using the same code. NAICS codes are used by state revenue departments to compile statistical data about taxation, as well as keeping you in the loop with any relevant information about new laws, exemptions or regulations that could affect you. It’s

important to identify the right code so that the information you receive is relevant to your business and you don’t miss out on anything crucial. Registration cancellation Your business circumstances may change and you may find that you no longer need to be registered to collect sales tax in a particular state. Just keep in mind that getting out may not be a easy as getting in. Some states may consider you to have nexus for six months or longer after you request to cancel your registration. Check your individual state for cancellation procedures and know that your sales tax obligation in that state may not be over until the state says it is. Next steps Once you’re registered to collect sales tax, the real work begins with collecting, filing and remitting the collected sales tax. For a small business, the amount of work that comes from filing and remittance can be overwhelming and distract you from the fundamentals of your business. Sales tax automation software, such as Avalara’s TrustFile, can help. TrustFile integrates seamlessly into your ecommerce and Xero accounting system and is priced affordably so that you can get on with your day and let us do the hard part.

“Integrated amazingly well...”

“One of our dream apps...” “Great user experience...” www.AppsForOps.com/Xero

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Issue 09 / 43

Cover Story

Q&A with SourceCode on how they run a better, beautiful business using AppsForOps and Xero

Words: Shaun Leisegang, CEO and Co-founder, AppsForOps Shaun is highly experienced in the discipline of business process automation and has a passion for finding better ways to get things done in small and medium size organisations. @AppsForOps

Automating the flow of information from team members to their approvers and then on to the accounting team, allows us to scale while keeping costs down. Visibility of an interaction between people and process has changed our business significantly! About SourceCode SourceCode is a fast growing business in the software industry. SourceCode is based in Sydney, NSW Australia and has 25 employees. The team at SourceCode consists of multiple departments and its staff members range from being office bound, to a sales team who are predominantly operating on the road, to consultants who are onsite at various clients across the country. SourceCode uses a combination of AppsForOps and Xero to run their business. AppsForOps is a feature rich intranet with a number of powerful workflow enabled apps that can be configured to adapt to the way that each business likes to run its daily operations. This is all seamlessly integrated into Xero.

44 / Issue 09

The base of the AppsForOps platform includes valuable capabilities like a staff directory, business dashboards, shared calendars and apps for task management, opinion polls and sharing company news. SourceCode chose to use AppsForOps apps for Expense Claim, Expense Preapproval, Invoice, Receipt & Bill, Time Off and Timesheet as well. The use of these AppsForOps add-on applications allows SourceCode to run a significantly more efficient business which allows them to focus on what they do best: their core business.

MEET RUDI DIRECTOR OF SALES AND MARKETING EXPENSE CLAIM

MY CALENDAR

NEWSFEED

Tell me a bit about what you do on a day to day basis

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Cover Story I lead the sales and marketing team. I also carry a sales quota and as a result I am on the ground interacting with channel partners and customers.

operational processes on the go using the AppsForOps Mobile App. I can approve expense claims, marketing expenses or time-off requests on the run.

Tell me a bit about why you decided to use AppsForOps

I love the company Newsfeed app. It really brings my team together as one through sharing of information and ideas, participating in informal discussions and visibility of what’s happening in each other’s world even though they are not in the same office. It’s almost like our own “Office Facebook”.

It’s cost effective, easy to use and my team can configure and personalise it as necessary, so naturally everyone likes using it. It’s easy for me to setup, configure and maintain the system myself hence there is no need to involve expensive consulting companies to change and configure the AppsForOps platform for our needs. Initially we just started using AppsForOps’ Expense Claim and Time Off apps. As we progressed, we started using more and more of the apps that AppsForOps offers and we now use AppsForOps for everything from Timesheets, to Expense Claims and on to Invoicing. All of these apps are seamlessly integrated which means no more challenges with data across multiple systems or users having to go login to multiple places to get their work done. AppsForOps is also seamlessly integrated into our financial system, Xero. This means that all of the approvals around any of the day to day processes can happen outside of Xero and once the data has been approved, this is seamlessly pushed across to Xero for the accounting team’s consumption. This also means that there are now no more days spent with our accountant cleaning up financials or chasing supportive documentation. The invoices come out quickly, accurately with all associated expenses reflecting first time round. Tell me a bit about what apps you use, what you love about them and how they save you time AppsForOps allow me to get visibility of everything that my team is doing. It gives me a consolidated view of my team’s calendars, customers they are meeting, where they are traveling to and which events are happening where and when.

MEET TONY BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER NEWSFEED

EXPENSE CLAIM

TIME OFF

Tell me a bit about what you do on a day to day basis I am a Business Development Manager which means I am often on the road, flying interstate or working wherever I can. My day is full of meeting different clients, having conversations, doing product demonstrations and drinking lots of coffee!

MEET IGOR TECHNICAL SPECIALIST EXPENSE CLAIM

My job as a Technical Specialist is fast moving and incorporates lots of travel. Tell me a bit about what apps you use, what you love about them and how they save you time The one area where I have always struggled to get on top of has been expense claims. Using the AppsForOps Expense Claim app and having it easily accessible on my iPhone has given me the ability to capture expenses as they happen. The app includes the ability to save expense templates that make this experience even more seamless. Here is an example: rushing between meetings catching taxis I am able to open the Expense Claim app, click the taxi Quick Action and all I need to do is photograph the receipt and enter the value and done, I am ready to claim!

MEET EMMA

My top 3 apps are:

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NEWSFEED

Tell me a bit about what you do on a day to day basis

Tell me a bit about what apps you use, what you love about them and how they save you time

• The Newsfeed app. This keeps me in touch with what’s happening at the office wherever I am. I can view the company newsfeed and get notified with alerts and important messages, all on my phone. • The Expense Claim app. This allows me to capture expense claim info in real time as I am making purchases. I can even attach the photos of the receipts, directly from my phone. This saves me heaps of time at the end of the month. I no longer have to sit for hours capturing it all into a spreadsheet. An added benefit is I get paid much quicker as the approval process is all automated. This also keeps my credit card company happy! • The Time Off app. I love the ability to review the leave days requested vs. the leave that I actually took as I often land up working for periods during a planned leave break.

MY CALENDAR

MARKETING LEAD MY CALENDAR

RECEIPT & BILL

NEWSFEED

Tell me a bit about what you do on a day to day basis I head up the Marketing team within Australia whilst assisting the New Zealand team with their marketing activities from time to time. My job involves many things including Events Management, Campaign Management, Partner Enablement and Digital Marketing. A lot of this is about people, process and getting stuff done on time. Tell me a bit about what apps you use, what you love about them and how they save you time A lot of my time is spent managing people and time to ensure all marketing initiatives are achieved internally and with Channel Partners. The My

Issue 09 / 45

Cover Story Calendar app is very useful when trying to book events, notify the SourceCode team of upcoming initiatives as well as book webinars and events around peoples planned leave whilst avoiding events around federal and state public holidays.

drown in your own admin!

A large part of my role is to organise large scale expo’s. This involves receiving a lot of invoices from all of the suppliers. Having access to the AppsForOps Mobile App and the Receipts & Bill app is a huge thing for me as I constantly need to pay invoices to secure positions and this requires prompt and trackable payments to vendors on the go. The Receipt & Bill app allows me to send an invoice to finance and get remittance advise to send to the suppliers to secure the required assets for these events in a timely manner.

Project We need to make sure we’re on top of the work that needs to be done for our customers. We’re not a big consulting team, and a lot of the time our resources are divided amongst projects – it becomes difficult to track what projects we have for which customers, and to ensure that the right work is done by the right people. Project is a great aid in this – it gives us the ability to track and manage all work which is required for our customers.

Using AppsForOps has substantially reduced the number of emails I need to send in order to organise a simple payment, whilst having a repository of paid invoice data for budgeting purposes.

MEET LOUIS PRINCIPAL CONSULTANT PROJECT

TIMESHEET

MY DASHBOARD

Tell me a bit about what you do on a day to day basis I am the Principal Consultant at SourceCode, and apart from assisting my team with technical queries and doing project estimation and scope, I am also responsible for the Consulting Services and Support Team and their schedules. I need to create new projects against which we could assign resources, log time and most importantly generate invoices that we then send out to customers.

Tell me a bit about what apps you use, what you love about them and how they save you time Here are some of the apps that I use:

Timesheet No one likes to do admin – believe me, I know! With the AppsForOps Timesheet app, a task which is traditionally the last thing on our mind now becomes a quick and painless exercise. But because life happens, a timesheet is sometimes neglected. To save the day, the AppsForOps Timesheet app has an automated email reminder; this makes quick work of catching up on outstanding work. The Timesheet app helps to give me full visibility into what our resources are doing on which projects on a weekly basis – and as an organisation we now have a much better understanding of actual workload that goes into the different projects. We can gauge what is happening on the projects (because of the ability to add detailed comments to captured time), along with the billed hours vs the actual hours the team spent. We always knew our team worked very hard – and now I have a digital record of this too!

On top of this, I am responsible for the scheduling of resources and I need to make sure we have the right people available at the right time. As such, I have to ensure the correct skills are on the right projects, manage leave requests and ensure timesheets are approved and accurate.

My Dashboard There is nothing worse than having to dig through a system to find the right information. Using My Dashboard in AppsForOps, I have the ability to quickly access any report I need, be that for Customers, Projects, Tasks or most important for me – resourcing. All the relevant information is available at the tip of my fingers – no more guessing where to find things I need!

Previously, this was managed in different systems, emails and spreadsheets – and you can imagine how quickly you can

Mobile App AppsForOps offers a neat and easy to use mobile app. I would be completely

46 / Issue 09

lost without it! All of the functionality you could want is available on the app. And it’s designed for work on the go. I can perform all approvals quickly and at any time using the mobile app. In fact, I do this a lot while in the back of a cab or travelling on the train. Our consultants no longer need to carry around all sorts of receipts for their expense claims – a quick 2 step process (picture of the receipt, and capture some detail) allows them to add a line item to an expense claim before they’ve even taken the first sip of a cup of coffee! My Calendar We have all sorts of calendars on all sorts of different systems – and bringing these together without incurring a large cost is very difficult. The My Calendar app which AppsForOps provides gets rid of this problem like a hot knife through butter! It’s a central view where I can see everything I want when it comes to my company. In one view, I can see all of the Time Off in the organisation, all public holidays, when each important event is and also have important dates listed which I need to be aware of. It is also a great help when it comes to the approval process of Time Off requests and resource planning. I can easily see which consultants are available before committing time on a project or approve a Time Off request – previously this was done using a combination of spreadsheets, emails and a lot of trying to remember what I was doing – now, it’s a simple glance at a single view on AppsForOps.

MEET LOUISE CUSTOMER CARE LEAD INVOICE

NEWSFEED

MY POLL

Tell me a bit about what you do on a day to day basis As I have multiple roles covering Customer Care, Invoicing and Staff Coordination, I have a busy email inbox. Customer Care takes priority so I need to keep interoffice emails to a minimum. Tell me a bit about what apps you use, what you love about them and how they save you time I love the way the Timesheet, Expense

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Cover Story Claim and Invoice apps work together. End of month invoicing for consulting services used to take me 3 days with a lot of painful reconciliation. It now takes a morning. As I can run the reports for any time period, I now schedule customer appointments and holidays at the end of the month.

When there is a team birthday, a new account won or change in the company, I post it on the Newsfeed. As the consulting team are working onsite at customers, it keeps them informed on what is happening in the office. The benefit for me is that everyone can comment on the post and my inbox is not full of “Reply to All” comments.

As most of the team work remotely, it is difficult to coordinate team events. I now create a Poll. I can get the information I need and see who to chase up with trying to deal with in my busy inbox.

About AppsForOps The Problem Small to Medium Businesses (SMB’s) spend a huge amount of time on manual execution of tasks and business processes through the use of paper, spreadsheets, e-mail and standalone application driven interaction between team members. Modern day end users know better and employees value automation efforts and having access to mobile apps to get their work done. SMB’s generally do not have the time, budget or IT resources to solve some of these day to day problems in-house. While several vendors offer solutions in this space, most of the available offerings out there are quite narrowly focused and do not lend themselves to offering a well-integrated experience. Things get lost, visibility is low, data exists in silo’s. Huge amounts of time

is wasted at significant cost to the business. Time and money are two of any business’ most valuable resources.

mobile app. Customers have described AppsForOps as follows:

The Solution AppsForOps aims to increase efficiencies for small and medium businesses by providing a suite of integrated business apps which end users can could access anytime, from anywhere. AppsForOps customers can start with the full suite of apps, or start with one and grow to more. Examples of applications are Expense Claim, Expense Pre-approval, Invoice, Receipt & Bill, Time Off, Timesheet and Travel Request management and more. It’s an intranet filled with valuable capabilities such as a staff directory, business dashboards, shared calendars and apps for task management, opinion polls and sharing company news. Customers access the applications using a cloud based portal or via a

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• “It’s a digital workplace: social, mobile and always on.” • “Apps that are smart alone, or brilliant together.” • “Apps that can be configured to fit your company, roles and users.” • “It allows you to get things done on any device you choose, anywhere you choose.” • “It’s enterprise level software at affordable costs.” • “It’s a single platform: all apps and all data in one place.” • “It allows you to focus on what you do best: your core business.” Free 30-day Trial and More Information You can Sign Up for a free 30-day trial at www.AppsForOps.com/SignUp or for more information: www.AppsForOps.com.

Issue 09 / 47

How your clients keep the the sales pipeline full and how you can help Understanding your clients sales process and offering advice to improve their process... Examining the flow and hurdles in the sales process, we see that the sales team manages people and their needs in a way that helps customers proceed from earliest contact to a happily-paying devotee of the brand. Accountants are the key to strategy and maximum profit.

consultant and offering additional guidance using Xero data as the rubric to drive change begins with a clear understanding of the ‘pipeline’ everyone keeps referring to, and some of the obstacles therein.

The Sales Pipeline Whether your clients sell automobiles, three-year service contracts or advertising First - what is the sales pipeline space, insight into the hurdles that small exactly? Regardless of what your businesses face in the sales pipeline is clients sell, the sales pipeline is a way critical to accountants who want to visualize hidden business to grow and develop their processes and make them own practice by consulting transparent, measurable The ultimate and directing their clients and accountable for a at times other than business’ benefit. Just goal in sales is annual tax time. like the tap in your to keep people kitchen, the water that ‘flowing’ down pours out the end comes Often a sales team will the pipeline... from somewhere; when have a different approach you don’t turn the handle, to the acquisition and management of revenue unsurprisingly, nothing comes out of the tap. The first - a solid understanding of the goal in sales is to keep the faucet open sales process opens doors to further revenue both for your client and for you. so the water continues to flow - or using sales terms, to keep the pipeline full of Understanding the calculations, risks potential deals. and hurdles involved in each clients’ sales pipeline is critical for accountants to strategize and build processes that The ultimate goal in sales is to keep support growth and profit - while ensuring people ‘flowing’ down the pipeline to that tax data is buttoned up nicely. the end-point where they become happy Best supporting your clients’ growth, repeat customers. Though exact stages positioning yourself as a strategic do vary from business to business, here 48 / Issue 09

Words: Barb Easter, Content Director, Dryrun Barb Easter is the Content Director for Dryrun - a Xero-connected app that imports your data and helps you flexibly display and compare cash flow, budgets and sales scenarios. Dryrun loves helping small businesses and their accountants easily make strong operational decisions for growth and profit based on your data. @mydryrun

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are the basic stages of a sales pipeline: • Contact - The earliest stage of potential buyers • Lead - A contact who shows interest in a product or service. Leads spend time identifying the problem that they have and are looking generally for more information and potential solutions. • Qualified Lead - A lead who has decided to become educated about the product or service and has willingly chosen to have sales provide more information. • Customer - A qualified lead who has successfully moved through meetings, negotiations and into a deal. It’s during the customer (or final) stage that we often see first evidence of the sales pipeline reflected in Xero as invoices and often accounts payable for project-related expenses. Common problems that affect your small business clients: • Sales and CRM tools do not target highvalue, ‘perfect’ customers • Qualifying leads in the early part of the pipeline lacks insight by sales • Leads’ needs and decision-making criteria is misunderstood by sales • Sales proposes solutions too early while leads are still thinking about their problem, similarly • Sales fails to identify where the customer is in the pipeline • Sales makes inaccurate assumptions about the customer • Sales tries to shortcut the selling process • CRM tools need updating/fine-tuning to

provide more contacts and early leads We can attribute most of these obstacles to the time that sales spends in the various stages of the pipeline. Start asking key questions about the unique pipeline that your clients use: • What is the average deal worth and how many closed deals are ‘enough’ deals to meet various revenue benchmarks and how can this be best reflected in Xero? • What is the average length of time that a potential customer spends at each stage in the pipeline? • How does each business and each salesperson decide that an individual is ready or willing to move to the next stage? • What is the probability at any stage that a deal could close? Perhaps 10% chance of a lead closing, 40% chance of a qualified lead closing, and 85% chance of a customer in negotiation closing - each industry is different and data-based percentages based on sales history and industry benchmarks inform your clients as to how many contacts should be funneled into the pipeline to generate enough sales. Instead of having 3 prospects in her late-stage pipeline, sales can reframe to say that she has 3 opportunities at 85% or greater likelihood of closing with a value of $50,000. • Using Xero, you can tease out the effect that commission can have on revenue and profit, begging the question - how do each of your clients’ commission structures work, and where is that structure articulated? (An example here is if commission is calculated on the

“

gross revenue rather than the net profit, the sales person is more likely to offer deep discounts to close a deal - which can destroy profit.) • Consider all the ways in which a salesperson may incentivize a customer to close a specific deal, and the short and long-term effects of these incentives on revenue, profit, and future sales. With a paid deal as the final event in the pipeline but often the first transaction that shows in Xero, the accountant can chart backward in time to the earliest point that a client contacts a potential list of leads - carefully examining each step will show the accountant key places to offer advice that can positively affect cash flow and therefore change the time spent per lead per stage: • Are deals taking longer to close than the business expects so they need more leads in the pipeline earlier? • Are closed deals invoiced at appropriate milestones? • Are closed deals paid on time? • Are delinquent payments assertively pursued? A strategic partnership between accountants and their small business clients will result in less obstacles in the pipeline, improving sales and bolstering cash flow - the result of which is a reliance on your consulting influence outside of tax time using Xero’s data as a tool, and a sales team that has more time to spend on nurturing potential leads down the pipeline, resulting in business growth.

Make your cash Satago, all-in-one Accessing shortflow termwith finance to your bridge cashflow gaps cashflow soluuon. Spend less me chasing customers can be difficult as a small business. I needed a way to with our automated invoice reminder system. access the money locked up in my unpaid invoices. Try invoice reminders satago.com Then I found invoiceat finance from

“

Complete Cashﬂow Conﬁdence

Make your cash with Satago, your all-in-one I struggled withﬂow late-paying customers. All my cashﬂow soluuon. Spend less me chasing customers business needed was an add-on to help me get with automated invoice reminder system. paidour faster. Try invoice reminders satago.com Then I found debtor at chasing from

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“

Complete Cashﬂow Conﬁdence

Issue 09 / 49

Help owners of home businesses to claim more

Words: Bradley Beer, CEO, BMT Tax Depreciation @BMT_Tax_Dep

It is estimated that close to one million businesses in Australia are home based and this sector is considered to be one of the fastest growing business sectors. For those who choose to operate a business from home there are many benefits including a better work-life balance where you can adjust your hours to suit the needs of family or your busy lifestyle and the ability to avoid any costs involved in renting a space for your business. One of the biggest benefits that often goes unrealised by those who work at home, is the opportunity to claim deductions for any of the depreciable assets used for the purpose of operating the business. Many of the companies who operate at home are small business owners who use Xero Accounting software in their day to day operations or who approach their Accountants asking for information about depreciation. It is therefore important for them to understand what they are eligible to claim. Legislation stipulates that depreciation deductions can be claimed for the structure of a building and any of the plant and equipment assets in an income producing property. When you operate a business from home, so long as the area you use and the items within it are used strictly for the purpose of producing an income, the same rule applies. For this reason, if you operate a small business from home it is important to seek advice from a specialist Quantity 50 / Issue 09

Surveyor to obtain a comprehensive tax depreciation schedule outlining the deductions available.

of some of the items which can be claimed as a depreciation deduction in a typical home office.

Often home business operators are unaware of depreciation and this is an area their Accountant can help to make them aware of by encouraging them to obtain a comprehensive tax depreciation schedule from a specialist Quantity Surveyor.

For those who operate a business that requires the use of multiple areas of a home, a Quantity Surveyor can tailor the depreciation schedule for their individual situation.

Quantity Surveyors are qualified under tax ruling 97/25 as one of a few select professionals with knowledge necessary to estimate construction costs for depreciation purposes. To prepare a depreciation schedule, an expert will visit the property to take measurements to calculate the construction costs of business areas and photograph the assets contained within these areas. The Quantity Surveyor will then use various methods to calculate depreciation to accurately calculate and maximise the deductions the owner can claim with the help of their Accountant.

For example, if an Accountant has a client who owns a bed and breakfast, a site inspection will be conducted on the entire property to include all of the structures and plant and equipment assets. The Accountant can then use the information outlined in the depreciation schedule to apportion their clientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s depreciation deductions accordingly. Any of the depreciation deductions outlined in the depreciation schedule can also be input manually into Xero Accounting Software, which helps an Accountant to ensure accuracy of their clientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s claims and to be efficient in meeting their needs.

What items could be claimed in your home office? The following graphic provides an example XU Magazine - the independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users. Find us online at: xumagazine.com

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Issue 09 / 51

Interview

Go to Learn. /xu Dandapani.org 5-week to get a FREE line trial of his on mind course on the n. and meditatio

Q&A with Dandapani

Hindu priest, entrepreneur, speaker and former monk of 10 years 52 / Issue 09

XU Magazine - the independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users. Find us online at: xumagazine.com

Interview

XU:

You were chosen by Xero to be their global keynote speaker for Xerocon in 2016 and you gave keynotes at both Xerocons in San Francisco and Brisbane. Your keynote was titled “Conscious Accounting”. Could you give our readers some insight into your keynote?

Yes, for sure. The whole premise of the keynote was based on the concept that life is a manifestation of where you direct your energy. A simple way to look at energy is to look at it the same way we look at water. If I took a watering can and watered a garden bed, would the weeds or flowers grow? Both, right? Water has no ability to discriminate between the weeds and flowers. Whatever is watered will grow. Energy works the same way as well. When you put energy into something positive it becomes more positive. If you put energy into something negative it becomes more negative. So, the goal therefore is to become conscious of where we are investing our energy and hence we can control what is manifesting in our life.

XU: D:

XU:

don’t have it anymore. Exactly! If you took 10% of your energy and you gave it to someone then it is 10% less you could have given to the people and things that matter most to you. Therefore it is important for you to evaluate if that person or thing is deserving of your energy. Hence the title of “Conscious Accounting” for my keynotes at Xerocon. You also spoke about the mind and the importance of understanding it. Can you tell us a bit more about this?

I always tell people that the mind is the most powerful tool in the world. The mind invented computers, smart phones, put a rover on Mars and more. And yet there is no manual for the mind. We all have one but we are never taught and trained on how to use it. Because of this, most of us struggle with dealing with our mind and emotions.

XU:

You also talked about creating a budget for your energy. Can you share your thoughts on this?

Since we are on the topic of the mind, what are some misconceptions surrounding mindfulness? It is such a buzzword these days and I feel not everyone is entirely clear about it.

XU:

This is part of Conscious Accounting. Most of us have a budget for our money and we have a budget for our money because we don’t have infinite amounts of money. Energy is like money. It’s what I always tell people. It’s a finite resource that needs to be wisely managed, reallocated and invested. So if you create a budget for your money you should also create a budget for your energy.

XU: D:

How should we go about doing this?

Well, before you spend your money you may contemplate if what you are about to invest your money in is worth investing in. For example, if you were invited to invest in a company then you may ask questions such as “what’s the return on my investment?”, “what are the company’s plans for growth and development?” and such. So, before you invest your energy in someone or something why don’t you ask similar questions.

XU:

We should start by defining the word ‘mindfulness.’ I define it as a state of being fully aware of what one is engaged in at any particular moment. The biggest misconception is that you can practice mindfulness. Mindfulness is a state of being. It is not something you practice, but rather something you are as a result of practicing concentration. To be good at concentration, we must first learn it and then practice it. Most people are told to concentrate but are not taught how to. One simple way to integrate the practice of concentration into your daily life is to practice doing one thing at a time. Give what and with whom you are engaged your undivided attention.

XU: D:

Why do you think people are so distracted?

People are so distracted because that is what they practice all day. You become good at whatever it is you practice. If you practice being distracted 12 hours a day 7 days a week then you can count on being very good at being distracted after 6 months of doing this.

Because it is a finite resource and once you spend it you

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And this applies to children as well?

Of course. Parents don’t teach children to concentrate. They just simply tell them to do so. If you don’t learn something and don’t practice it, how will you be good at it? Children are good at distraction because that is what they are allowed to practice all day. Can you tell me what is the most important lesson you learned while living as a monk?

The biggest lesson I learnt and the most valuable one by far is surrounding the topic of understanding how the mind works. This I realised is crucial to begin the process of controlling and directing the mind. This alone has been the most pivotal learning in my life.

XU:

Can you apply any lessons from the monastery to modern life? How?

One of the things I was taught in the monastery is to learn how to concentrate. I use this throughout my entire day in my personal and entrepreneurial life. It helps me to be efficient in what I do, to be observant and it helps me create deep relationships with the people I love and those that I interact with. The first step in creating a deeper relationship with someone is to begin by giving that person your undivided attention.

XU:

Entrepreneurs often invest more in their businesses than themselves. What should entrepreneurs know about harnessing that energy for personal growth?

When I speak to people, I ask them to look at their mind and personal life as a piece of software; the better you understand it, the more you can do with it. Your mind works the same way. However, it is staggering how people hardly invest time into understanding and developing this. You are at the center of everything you do in life. So, if you worked to be a better version of you, everything that you are involved in will naturally be uplifted. Monks have understood this for a long time. They’ve realized the greatest way to have an impact in the world is to start by working on yourself. That’s an important step toward mindfulness, both in business and life.

Issue 09 / 53

Interview

XU:

Can you tell us what the differences are between the way you and business motivational speakers address personal and business growth?

People often ask me if I am a motivational speaker and I always answer no. My goal is not to motivate the audience I speak to. Rather my goal is to teach people simple step-by-step processes that they can follow which will allow them to bring the tools and teachings into their everyday lives. The ultimate goal is to empower them with these tools and teachings so that they can be self-reliant and create a sustainable change. If I motivate them then they will be dependent on me and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not truly helping them.

emotions, and learn to focus so they can manifest the life they want.

XU:

What are some meditation practices an entrepreneur can bake into their busy day?

You have an online course on the mind and meditation. What was the main philosophy behind starting this course?

Another big misconception is the concept that meditation can be practiced throughout the day, in between tasks or while doing something else. This is not the case. Meditation is having a meeting with your energy. Energy is always flowing out of us toward people and things. The art and science of harnessing, withdrawing and concentrating energy toward a single, pointed goal is called meditation. This is not achieved while you are engaged in other tasks. Meditation is best performed sitting down, with your eyes closed and spine straight, in a space set aside for the practice. The best time to meditate is after waking up, before you have engaged with the world in any way.

XU:

One of the first things I was trained in when I was in the monastery was understanding how my mind works and how to concentrate. When I saw the positive impact that this teaching had on me I wished I had been taught this as a child. My hope with this online course is that people can learn about their mind, learn to control and direct it and their

Can you describe in one or two words the impact the course has on its participants?

XU:

What does the near future look like for you? What exciting or challenging things do you have coming up?

My wife and I are in the process of building a retreat center in Costa Rica. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a project that we are really passionate about. We are creating a 16.5 acre spiritual sanctuary that will include a botanical garden and a retreat center that will host retreats on wellness and self-development. The process of creating it is exciting and challenging at the same time. We hope to have it up and running in about 3 years.

Go to Learn. Dandapani.org/xu to get a FREE 5-w eek trial of his online course on the min d and meditation.

Sustainable change.

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Retail loves cloud Words: Robert Moore, MSI Taylor Rob began his accounting career in public practice in 1991 and has gained a broad range of business and taxation skills throughout that time. He has a passion for cloud technologies and how they can be implemented to improve business efficiency and profitability. This enthusiasm for technology and using it to enhance business productivity drives him to continue to grow the services offered to business clients in a variety of industries. @Moore_cloud

As the busy owner of a retail business with both physical stores and an ecommerce site, Molten Store’s Jessy Cameron needed an accounting platform that was both flexible and adaptable. Using Xero was an instrumental step not only in wrangling the financial direction of the business, but also in enabling her to focus on the aspects of the business that she can best contribute to. “I was only a few months into the Molten Store journey when I started to feel exposed by the gaps in my knowledge. I was faced with two choices: become an expert in, for example, the field of accounting, or find a kindred spirit who could dedicate the kind of cleverness and attention required.” Collaboration is key Because it is based in the cloud, Xero allows Jessy to easily collaborate with her accountant and bookkeeper. Bank reconciliations are a breeze because she can see what the bank has and compare it to what has been entered into the software. If there are any transactions she’s not sure how to treat, she can simply leave a message in the “discuss” tab and, next time she logs on, the transaction has been processed.

share a key with another business that uses Xero. This allows her to send and receive invoices without having to rekey data, saving time and reducing the chance of error. Taking care of business Having both an online and two physical stores means that Jessy needs to know how the business is going on a daily basis. Xero not only lists her various bank account balances, she can choose to ‘watchlist’ certain accounts she wants to track regularly and see these balances at a glance. Keeping on top of cash flow is vital for small business owners so Jessy uses Xero’s performance dashboard to see at a glance her key performance indicators to ensure her business is on track. She can also see her creditors and make sure she is able to pay them based on the cash flow. Being in retail, it is essential that any sales, whether in store or online, are processed smoothly and that they feed straight into her accounts. Xero makes this process simple meaning she can stay on top of how her business is going on a daily basis.

Business on the move Jessy has a number of casual staff who work for her and so there are always petty cash expenses being incurred throughout the day. Using Xero and its Apps means that her staff are able to take a photo of a receipt on their mobile phone and upload it for approval and reimbursement. Jessy also spends a lot of time travelling to source new products and suppliers for the store. Xero gives her the ability to run her business from anywhere (even overseas) that has internet access. This flexibility means that she can focus on growing the business rather than working in the business. The sky’s the limit Jessy currently has grand plans for expansion, and intends to open more Molten Stores beyond Brisbane in the new year. For now, her challenge is to carve out a roadmap that will see her business expand in size without losing its ‘smallness’; it’s the authentic, boutique elements of the business that have seen Molten Store grow as quickly as it has. To help her business grow, she will be taking advantage of the 500+ Apps which have been built specifically to work seamlessly with Xero.

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Tutorial

How to set up Approvals for Purchase Orders and Bills Finance managers strive to have Purchase Orders and Bills approved before processing. Key is having proper document routing in place to ensure the approval by managers with the appropriate level of authority. Here is how ApprovalMax enables that... Be that a Purchase Order, a Bill, a Sales Invoice or any other accounting document – they will most likely require to be approved or validated before processing. Approvals vary depending on the business type, the company’s size and organisational structure as well as the country’s specifics for compliance and legal regulations. What all cases have in common is the need of having the accounting document approved timely and by someone strictly in line with the defined authorization level.

Common issues with approvals are finance managers having to chase Approvers with emails or print-outs, unclear approval flows – especially in the case of multi-step approvals, and insufficient background information requiring Approvers to get back to whoever initiated the accounting document for clarification. All this makes the approval process lengthy and messy, causing a headache for the finance manager and a loss of money for the company.

Words: Konstantin Bredyuk, CEO & Cofounder, ApprovalMax As an experienced BPM expert, Konstantin has a strong focus on design and development of Business Applications which support Human Workflows. He is Co-founder and CEO at ApprovalMax, known for simple and easy to configure approval workflows in finance. @ApprovalMax

ApprovalMax integrates with Xero and takes care of the approval process by enabling easy approval workflows set up by non-technical users. As soon as the flow is configured, access to approval requests and all the related information is provided to the appropriate managers in their preferred way – by email, on mobile devices and in a web app.

Setting up a Multi-step Approval Workflow There are three main multi-step approval cases: parallel approvals, sequential approvals and conditional approvals. ApprovalMax allows setting up such approval workflows with just a few mouse clicks – and this is how it works: Add Approver

Parallel Approval Certain cases require several approvals which can go to all Approvers of the same authorization level simultaneously. This is best supported by the Parallel Approval flow. To set up the Parallel Approval flow: • Add the required Approvers to the approval step from the drop-down menu or by entering their emails; • Assign a name to this approval step, e.g. «Departmental approval» (renaming the default «approval step» name).

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Tutorial Sequential Approval In case there is a predefined sequence of approvals by people of different authorization levels, a Sequential Approval flow should be used. To set up the Sequential Approval flow: • Add a new workflow step using the «+» button; • Assign a name to this step, e.g. «CFO approval»; • Add Approvers to this step from the drop-down menu or by entering their emails.

Open Approval Matrix

Conditional Approval To minimize the number of approval requests sent to executives, and in case of approval requests needing to be differentiated within the same authorization level, an Approval Matrix is the best option. To set up the Approval Matrix: • Open the Approval Matrix by clicking the «Table» icon;

Inverse logic is available as an alternative rule

• Set conditional approval parameters such as amount, tracking category, etc; • Click «Done» and «Activate workflow».

Key benefits of using ApprovalMax with Xero: • Multi-step approvals provided for Purchase Orders, Bills, and Sales Invoices; • No need to log into Xero, approvals are taken out of the accounting system; • Approval requests are available on the go with full data for decision-making; • Higher compliance and audit readiness. Better control over financial flows.

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There’s a new look to Xero Education

Xero launches updated Xero Education site for Small Business and Xero Partners... At Xero, offering great education to our small business customers and Partners is key to our thinking, at all levels of the business. We fully believe that the more knowledgeable you are about Xero, the more you gain from Xero’s tangible benefits and efficiencies, the more advocacy we achieve. Everyone’s happier. “Don’t know what we don’t know” is more and more prevalent these days with the ever changing shifts in technology. Xero’s certainly no different! With three week release cycles we know it’s tricky to keep up to date. It’s even trickier to understand the relevance of all of these feature enhancements to the workings of a small business or Accounting / Bookkeeping Partner. So we also take the stance to make sure our education is free and readily available. And there is lots of it. From the education that’s served, from the short videos embedded in the software, to the online help (help.xero.com) and community (community.xero.com/business). Through to the education sites Xero TV (www.xero.com/tv) and Xero U (www.xero.com/training). I’m often asked: “What’s the difference between Xero TV and Xero U”. In essence: • Xero TV has short sharp video content, normally a couple of minutes to make sure the topic has a solid introduction. Sometime’s that enough. After all, we pride ourselves on Xero’s usability and 58 / Issue 09

design. • Xero U has more in-depth content, sometimes even to the level of a course. For instance, a course on setting up Xero. And Xero U includes webinar, video and eLearning delivery. Xero U has just had a re-launch for both small business and Xero Partners. We asked for lots of feedback from customers about the redesign - and it’s really promising! They found it a cleaner experience, easier to navigate, easier to search, and it works like a dream on a mobile or tablet. So why not give it a try. H ere are a few examples of what you’ll find: • How to setup Xero • Day-to-day running of Xero • Running Reports • Xero Payroll • Xero Mobile • Xero Practice Tools to name just a few. Be assured, as Xero software develops, Xero U keeps up with it. True, those three week release cycles keep us on our toes, but Xero Help, Xero Community, Xero TV and Xero U are all there to keep you up-to-date with the Xero solution. You keep telling us that having access to Xero Education is vitally important, so we’re determined to give you best-in-class content, that meets your needs. If you haven’t used the new Xero U yet, grab a coffee in your busy schedule and take a look.

Words: Mike Day, Education Director, Xero UK Mike is Education Director for Xero UK and has been with Xero for 3 years. Mike previously ran his own Sole Trader company specialising in finance training for small business owners. Prior to that Mike has been in both the private and public sectors in a range of roles including Managing Director, Operations Director and IT Director and a career that spans 35 years. @mikemday

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+more

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Number Nurses handle the dirty work There comes a time in the lifecycle of any business when the people driving the enterprise realise they are not really doing what they want to be doing... Staying on top of industry compliance requirements, employment relations and administrative anarchy is enough to give the most determined business owner a health scare.

What’s more, if you are a permanently stressed boss with a seriously furrowed brow you’re unlikely to attract the great staff needed to take your business to the next level.

If there is barely any time between gasping breaths and rising blood pressure, it is undoubtedly time for you to do a complete business health check to diagnose the disorders.

Prevention is better than cure

Sometimes, it just takes a little tender care to have an immediate impact and that’s when a Number Nurse scrubs up, slaps on the rubber gloves and offers real help to sort out your bookkeeping tasks.

However, if you are getting a bit anxious because you’re not sure if you are doing everything correctly, a little bit of learning is important to keep the reconciling as tidy as a hospital corner.

SMEs frequently operate with a well-intentioned DIY approach, which is often essential when starting out and budgets are tight but this method may not make financial sense when your sales ramp up. Number Nurses recommends you consider outsourcing bookkeeping responsibilities because it benefits your business in several tangible ways. 1. One less job on your overwhelming to-do list 2. Improved accuracy of coding 3. Your Xero reports are up-to-date and useful 4. You can focus on what you do best 5. You can do what you love the most 6. There is a little more time in your day

With remote access, training sessions can be virtually anywhere in the world, whether you work from a home-based office, a metropolitan high-rise or a construction site. Within an hour or two, you can have the skills to manage that daily Xero routine and be well on your way to developing healthy business habits. It’s a bit like exercise – doing a little bit every day is a sustainable lifestyle change that pays big dividends in the long term.

It’s all about allowing you to make the most of your strengths and finding solutions that you’re your business fit and healthy.

60 / Issue 09

Just like getting a wee jab to prevent illness, Number Nurses believe it is well worth investing sometime with a Xero guru to correctly set up your account, right from the start. And, when you love pinging off those items in the Xero reconciliation, you know you’re on the right track.

Words: Jackie Russell, Chatterbox PR Jackie is the big cheese at Chatterbox PR. She works with number crunching companies who are transforming their business model in response to the evolution of techie business tools. As a remote worker advocate, Jackie is eagerly anticipating the day she can meet clients’ deadlines from an office at the beach, a yacht in New Zealand’s Hauraki Gulf or any other spectacular settings. @numbernurses

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More Services, More Revenue, Less Work

Every business, accounting and bookkeeping firms included, dream of this. Growing our company, increasing revenue, and getting it done more efficiently! Words: Peter M. Vessenes, CEO and Founder, ProfitSee With over 30 years experience in the financial industry, Peter is the CEO and founder of ProfitSee, a financial software service for financial professionals, CPAs, and ProAdvisors. ProfitSee is an all-inone financial analysis and budgeting software from seasoned financial experts. ProfitSee helps business owners and financial advisors alike gain powerful insights to manage cash flow, grow profitability and increase valuation. @ProfitSee

More Services, More Revenue, Less WorkTM. Business trademark owned by ProfitSee and Peter M. Vessenes, 2016

Technology has been working towards this over the past century. Starting with adding machines, cash registers, assembly line machine systems, mainframe, mini, and microcomputers, and now, through cloud based systems, the march towards creating efficiency in business has been relentless. Although cloud-driven accounting systems have been around on microcomputers since the early 2000s, the ways and means of delivering it are new, but the objectives are still the same.

with less work. The same forces that are improving technology are bringing about a major shift in what bookkeepers and accountants must do keep their companies healthy and growing. What is this incredible global technology ecosystem bringing about? Certainly, a major shift in what bookkeepers and accountants must evolve into, but more importantly, a focus towards helping small to midsized companies get better at fiscal management, specifically:

• Improved financial stability • Capital formation Xero changed the industry. They did it • Increased profitability through “beautiful accounting” combined • Higher valuation with simplifying how bookkeepers and • Mergers and acquisitions accountants can provide services to their • Succession planning business clients. Think not? Take a look at NetSuite. Granted, it is a ERP system Why is this so important beyond just the based in accounting, and it is focused impact on bookkeepers, accountants, towards mid-to-larger companies, but… How long can I look at numbers structured and their business clients? Modest improvements in those business clients like spreadsheets with little efficiency can add up to a global economic built into the product? It is no recovery from the economic wonder that there are so malaise the world has many needed third party been suffering under developers that make Accountants since 2008. a living helping those and bookkeepers business make must continue to find Let’s look at what NetSuite work ways to upgrade the each of us need to effectively. do to help make this value propositions happen. Certainly Today, Xero is the they offer to their Xero must (and will) fastest growing business clients. continue with their accounting software product development and in the world. Their services focus. commitment to continuously upgrading the features and Accountants and bookkeepers must interface of the software, and the open continue to find ways to upgrade the architecture to build a developers’ value propositions they offer to their “ecosystem” are the reason for the business clients. Developers must steady growth in many locations on the enhance their applications, and find planet. We’ve seen a growing focus from more and better ways to create bookkeepers and accountants trying to benefits. Business owners? provide more services, increase revenue,

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Issue 09 / 61

Those that take advantage of the incredible shifts that are available will flourish; the rest will fade away, to be replaced by new, more innovative entrepreneurs.

Who are the catalysts to this inevitable change in the global economy? Bookkeepers and Accountants The reason? Bookkeepers and accountants are the only people business owners trust to talk to about their money! If the path to this transition is More Services, More Revenue, Less Work, how can we bring this about?

More Services Services are the key to every bookkeeping or accounting practice. Traditionally, these services have been posting transactions, report generation, tax strategies/advice, compliance, and audit. Technology’s relentless progress has been putting downward pressure on the income made from these services, in many cases, commoditizing their value. This is good for the business owner, bad for the bookkeeping or accounting firm.

implemented. 3. Tools, specifically suites of tools that create higher levels of service. Although tools are software applications, there are specific, and very important differences. Where an application has very specific features and benefits (e.g., Receipt Bank allows scanned receipts to be directly posted into Xero as transactions - no typing required!), tools have three very specific attributes: a) They are “white-labeled”, and not sold to directly to companies. It is your brand, your I.D. and your logo that is associated with application. b) Although they have specific “features” for the benefit of the business the bookkeeping and accounting firm’s clients, these features require knowledge and expertise to create higher value. For example, in ProfitSee, although we do true cash based three-way forecasting through our AI driven code, it requires the bookkeeper or accountant to interpret the implications of the forecast and assist the business owner in making safe and solid strategies for the future of the company. c) The software’s features are customizable and controlled by you, the bookkeeping or accounting firm, to match the needs and understanding levels of your clients.

Today, these services fall into three categories. 1. Service work provided by the bookkeeping and accounting firms teams; these include the traditional services discussed above and other elements that the firm chooses to offer. 2. Software applications. Business clients look to their bookkeeping and accounting firms to tell them what is “best and safe to use.” The challenge with providing applications? They are labeled by their company’s name, and most of these applications will gladly sell directly to the business owner. Software applications have limited long-term value to the bookkeeping or accounting firm; your client may leave you, but keep the applications you 62 / Issue 09

More Revenue If we are effectively offering more services, we (hopefully) are generating more money. Myself, I think this is the wrong focus. Great technology through Xero and the developers’ ecosystem is designed to create “more money” for our business clients! Keeping the focus on more money for our clients is the key to generating more income for ourselves. When your clients are successful, you are successful.

Less Work Getting more done with less effort and time is the definition of efficiency. This is technology’s primary goal; to take things that required lots of labor, effort, and expertise, and make them easier. It was not too long ago that most bookkeeping was done in pencil on paper journals! The changes happening today are profound. We are not just talking about reducing data entry through applications like Receipt Bank or Expensify. The ability to provide world class services of a Financial Director or Chief Financial Officer of a multinational corporation are now within reach of most bookkeeping and accounting firms that are willing to pursue them. This premise was the foundation of ProfitSee, and most applications and tools in the Xero ecosystem have a similar or identical focus at one level or another. The key to “less work” is in finding the tools and applications that provide these services to your clients in a way that is not only more efficient for you, but also has a high value to them. If you are currently billing by the hour, it is time to leave that model. Sometimes it is best to bill by the project if there is a clearly defined objective with a definite “stop and completion date”, but most services are on going. These need to be provided on a monthly retainer; your clients hate surprises in their billing. The better the tools, the higher the actual value, and the less work required to provide them. The model is a simple one; hiring a Financial Director costs at least a fivefigure amount each month. Hiring you to provide FD services will cost them much less, maybe a four-figure amount each month. And on your side, the right suite of tools should not only be low-cost, but also save you time and energy each month. This is the premise any good application developer follows, and certainly the focus of ProfitSee since its foundation. The future is simple to understand: More Services, More Revenue, Less Work.

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and

The #1 online customer relationship management (CRM) tool + Beautiful accounting software =

A complete picture of your business from prospect to payment

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Price discrimination: How to grow your profits by 50%, without raising your fees The cloud offers more flexibility than ever for accountants and bookkeepers to change how they work and become more profitable. But one simple technique is often overlooked. And that is offering clients a choice... Of all the pricing techniques I teach accounting professionals, price discrimination – charging different customers different prices – is perhaps the most important. Words: Mark Wickersham FCA Mark Wickersham is a Chartered Accountant, public speaker and bestselling author. A sought after profit improvement expert in the accounting community, he is also a widely published author on practice issues. In May 2011 his book, “Effective Pricing for Accountants”, was a number 1 Amazon bestseller. His other books include, “A Practical Approach to Value Pricing” and “How to Build a Successful Bookkeeping Business”. @wickersonabike

Here is a fundamental thing about value pricing. Each of your clients values things differently to everyone else. It’s one of the reasons why value pricing has always been seen as being something that is difficult to implement This idea that different customers value things differently really is at the heart of value pricing. It means we have to figure out a price discrimination strategy. There are many different ways we can do this. We come across all sorts of different price discrimination techniques in the marketplace. For example, if you are in the UK and want to get a train ticket to take you to London to arrive for 8.30am so you can be at your 9am business meeting, you will pay a higher price than if you catch a different train that will arrive at, let’s say, 9.30am. In this instance the rail companies use time as one of the ways to discriminate to charge different customers different prices. We can use that same technique, and many more, in the accounting profession.

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Menu pricing and the Magic of Three What I want to focus on in this article is the one which is both the easiest to understand and also the most powerful for the accounting and bookkeeping professions; menu pricing. This is about giving people a choice of different bundles, options or packages. The Magic of Three simply means that when you create your packages you should always, unless you can prove otherwise through testing, create three options. Sometimes these are described as Bronze, Silver, Gold, for example, or 3-star, 4-star, 5-star. Let’s not worry about the labels for just a moment. There is some science and psychology behind the Magic of Three because what tends to happen is most people will choose the middle option since it is seen as being the safest option. That creates a big opportunity for you and your pricing therefore. For example, if you decide that you are sceptical about the idea of putting your prices up, then why not create three options and present them to your client. You can make the entry-level option or the bronze level the same package and price as you charged last year (perhaps plus an inflationary increase). Then create another option, a middle level, with some extra value and then create a premium higher priced option, and test the three.

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What you will find is that some of your clients will choose to pay you more money because they see greater value in the middle option, or even the premium, most expensive option. We see this in the world around us. All the most successful and profitable companies on the planet use menu pricing and use the Magic of Three. Take Starbucks. When you go in for your coffee fix you will see, on the menu behind the counter, three choices of sizes. Starbucks describe them as Tall (which is the small one strangely enough), Grande, and Venti. They are using the Magic of Three and recognise different customers value things differently. Some people who perhaps are less thirsty or a little more price sensitive may choose the Tall. Then there are other people at the other end of the spectrum who see more value in the extra offered by the Grande or even the Venti. They will voluntarily – and eagerly - choose to take more money out of their pocket and pass it across the counter to Starbucks for that size option. Starbucks’ profit just went up considerably. For Starbucks that means millions added to bottom line profits – something that would be thrown away if all Starbucks ever offered its customers was just a Tall latte. Menu pricing is the first step towards value pricing because by creating three different packages although the value is subjective, the customer – i.e. your client

- will choose the package that, for them, best represents the most value. So by giving them those three choices they will self-select and choose the package that has components in there they value at a price that they can afford.

services (and I recommend you include the cost of the software as a disbursement since you’ll be marking this up). Perhaps your premium service includes a subscription to Receipt Bank, setting it up for the client, training them in how to use it and creating some simple systems.

I have seen firms implement this one idea and they have reported back to me that just by giving people the choice they have increased their average prices across their entire firm by 20% or more. That price increase goes straight to bottom line profits, which for a typical accounting or bookkeeping firm, could equate to a 50% increase in profit.

This will add value to the client. It will make their data processing much easier and save them huge amounts of time. Those clients who see this value will gladly pay your premium service to get this benefit.

If you could increase your income by 50% over the next year, how would that make you feel? What could you do with that additional income?

Example 2: If you are pricing bookkeeping work and your price is too high you could offer a discount to the client if in return they agree to use Receipt Bank to process their invoices. That way the client gets the price they want; they’re happy. You get the sale (because before you were too expensive); so you’re happy. And you’re even happier because when they submit their data through Receipt Bank there’s no data entry, no chasing, and the information automatically gets sent to software such as Xero.

Why Receipt Bank and cloud software (like Xero) should be part of your strategy Soon all clients will move to cloud accounting systems. Receipt Bank should be part of your strategy. It dramatically increases what you can do with your time, removing time spent on data entry and categorisation, and gives you the tools to manage your practice more efficiently. And it can be used to drive your menu pricing and price discrimination. Let me give you a couple of examples.

And of course, when they use Receipt Bank, it makes your a lot life easier too.

The first step to value pricing… This article is based on one of the chapters in my latest book, “A Practical Approach to Value Pricing.”

Example 1: You could include Receipt Bank as part of one of your premium

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Issue 09 / 65

Tutorial

66 / Issue 09

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Tutorial

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Issue 09 / 67

Managing the spending of a fast-growing and distributed business using approval workflows

Words: Abeeda Khan, Accounting Manager, Careem Born in UAE, raised in Pakistan and CPA with a post qualification from Australia. With her diverse background and 6 years spent in Accounting and Finance start-ups, Abeeda is well aware of the growth in the marketplace.Â A strong sense of business need, and hunger for excellence, motivates Abeeda to be looking for new challenges both within the organisation and externally. @careemuae

68 / Issue 09

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In the four years since our launch in 2012, our online cab hailing service Careem has grown into a multinational transportation network, serving 10 countries and 25 cities across the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.

transparency into the management of spending, while our accounting processes were often stalled as bills were not being flagged to the relevant managers for approval. And then came the knock-on effects of the rapid growth experienced by the company over these past four years. With operations distributed across a number of different locations, it became even more challenging to support and manage processes. Our approach to approvals was unwieldy and prone to error; providing unmitigated access to Xero had become something of a security concern; and when something required the approval of several individuals spread across different geographic locations, it became difficult to track. We had to find a better solution.

It is our mission to connect people and cities via a simple technology-enabled, real-time driving platform. We have brought passengers and drivers together, resulting in a safer and more accessible transport option in the region. It’s fair to say that since its inception, Careem has truly blossomed. But as any fast-growing company will attest, there are a number of challenges that inevitably crop up as business operations are scaled. Growing Pains with Company Spending Authorization For Careem, the issue that caused its fair share of frustration throughout the growth period - and beyond - was related to the authorization of company spending. Xero users from very early on, it became apparent that there existed a gap in our financial workflow; multi-step and rolebased approvals, and the ability to place limitations on bill amounts approved, were all very sorely missed. As the company grew, so too did the complexity of our spending. Cash outflow increased thanks to new marketing endeavours and investment in infrastructure. And because the Xero platform allowed any user - without discrimination - to click ‘Approve’ for any bill, we faced a challenge of how best to manage the approval process. We also had concerns over a lack of

Building an Expense Approval Workflow that Works We knew we had a gap to plug, and needed something that brought our various processes together into a neatly configured financial approval workflow. And so, we turned to ApprovalMax. Built to interface with Xero, ApprovalMax is a cloud-based approval workflow platform. It has been designed to rescue quickly growing businesses from the chaos of scaling processes. For Careem, it represented the ideal solution to our spending management. A four-level expense approval workflow was created in ApprovalMax, setting approval limits for managers and defining approval conditions for bills. Careem’s Expense Management Workflow Our workflow was built to include the following steps: 1. First, the accounting department checks to make sure the bill contains the necessary information (i.e. account and geo code / tracking category, and any other specific accounting data that should be present). 2. The bill is then sent to the relevant head of department (who oversees the budget) for review and approval.

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3. Following this, it is then routed to the city’s General Manager for approval. 4. And finally, if required, it is sent to senior management to make sure the bill is in line with the overall company budget. Plugging the Gap with ApprovalMax The required approval workflow, powered by ApprovalMax, was up and running in no time at all. This is because ApprovalMax suits non-technical users. With a few simple clicks of a mouse the workflow was ready to bring order to our muddled expense management process. And with it came quite a few benefits: • Bills can now be reviewed and approved outside of Xero, meaning those individuals who do not require access to the accounting software (i.e. nonaccountants) are not granted it. This ensures sensitive financial information is kept safe and secure. • Approval requests are now sent with all the necessary background information, bringing clarity to the decision making process. And thanks to the ability to comment within the approval requests, the days of endless email chains are a thing of the past. • Bills can now be reviewed and approved by the relevant individuals across a number of different devices. Whether they are at their desks, or on the go, decisions can be made via the smartphone app, desktop platform, or from directly within the email, keeping everything ticking along nicely. Onwards and Upwards for Careem By choosing to use ApprovalMax with Xero, Careem has improved both transparency and accuracy, and gained a tighter control over company expenses. The four-step approval workflow, in addition to the various approval conditions such as authorization level and bill amount limits, was ultimately a crucial intervention with regards to scaling those important financial and accounting processes. Careem is now better equipped to handle the drive towards even greater success thanks to this robust, transparent, and accurate expense management workflow.

Issue 09 / 69

Why every nonprofit needs a CRM

Words: Marta Bright, Content Manager, Insightly

Nonprofits do some pretty amazing work, for what is often very little personal reward. They are the helpers, the rescuers, the change makers and the community leaders... Nonprofits are vital, and usually staffed with people who carry strong convictions and a desire to help those around them. Of course they have different needs than a corporation or a business. Often they’re reliant on grants, private donations and support from the community to keep afloat. Nonprofits have different concerns and infrastructures as well. They’re usually trying to maximize their productivity and get as much done on a shoestring budget. Boards govern most nonprofits, working to make sure the organization is well managed and the goals are always aligned with their mission to serve. When it comes to data, then, it’s logical to think nonprofits probably have very different needs. After all, a CRM is concerned about customer data and making sales, right? Would software for “customers” really serve organizations where customers aren’t part of the equation? The answer comes from the “R” in CRM: Relationships. When it comes to nonprofits, relationships are vital. It’s all about the population you serve and the donors you connect with. You’re acting as the intermediary—soliciting donor money to serve the needs of clients, keeping up 70 / Issue 09

Marta is Insightly’s Content Manager. She’s been writing about the ‘business of technology’ in the Silicon Valley for more than two decades. @Insightly

connections with foundations, managing your board’s needs and the goals of your employees, distributing donations. Then there are the volunteers—managing volunteer and community outreach and engagement is what keeps many organizations up and running.

searches through your email archives and shuffling paperwork to find out if an acknowledgement letter went out, or if a donor received an invite to, or attended your last event. You won’t have to wonder if a donation reminder went out, or when a donor’s last gift was made.

The real question isn’t does a nonprofit need a CRM, but can they even survive without one?! There are many reasons why every nonprofit needs a CRM but here are eight reasons to start:

In many ways, donors need more cultivation and care than customers— after all, they give without expecting anything in return. Accolades, contact, and acknowledgement is all they ask, and managing those touches with your supporters is absolutely vital to your organization.

1. You must keep your donors happy Donor management is a big deal for nonprofit organizations. It’s not just a big deal, it’s what keeps the lights on, the doors open and staff able to get out there and do their great work! Without donors, nonprofits can’t exist. Donors need to be cultivated and stewarded. They need outreach. Your donors need to be regularly reminded of just how important their dollars are to your mission, and you need to share inspiring stories with them to keep their checkbooks open. A CRM can help you manage donors with ease. No longer will you be wading through spreadsheets, doing frantic

2. Never miss a deadline Between LOI’s, grant applications, filing of your 1099s and maintaining your 501(c)3 status you have a lot of deadlines to juggle. Missing even one item can be a fatal mistake. In addition to your deadlines, chances are high you also have fundraising events to manage throughout the year, donor anniversaries to remember, an annual campaign, participation in #givingtuesday, and a list of “to dos” as long as your arm. It’s enough to keep everyone up at night worrying something might get overlooked.

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You need a CRM that syncs with your Google Calendar and keeps all of these pieces in one easy to manage spot. With an efficient system in place, your Operations Manager and Program Director just might be able to get some muchneeded sleep!

To say most nonprofits run lean is a bit of an understatement. Many organizations are governed by volunteer boards, run by a shoestring staff and served by volunteers. People don’t usually go into nonprofit work to get rich—they work to serve and make the world a better place.

3. Plan events with less stress

This means you might be doing fundraising calls one day and designing an ad the next day. One week you might be setting up tables and handing out nametags at an event, and the next week you might be giving out lunches to kids. Your work is rich and varied. You don’t have time to worry about complicated programming with your CRM. You need something that works easily and efficiently.

Anyone who’s worked at a nonprofit knows the stress of planning an event. Whether it’s a golf outing, a silent auction, an annual dinner or community walk, an event can take up half the time and nearly every resource in your organization. If you’re a small nonprofit you have even more to lose, and less to work with, and staying organized is the only way to save your sanity. Can you imagine easily accessing your planning tools from your phone? From the moment a donor’s information goes in the pipeline, to their invitation, to their attendance and follow up after—you can access the data and history you need throughout the entire event process. While a CRM can’t cater your event or give a presentation when someone backs out at the last minute, your CRM can give you all of the resources at your disposal so you can quickly find a replacement, call on some volunteers to help out, and manage any event-planning crisis that comes your way. 4. You have limited resources Most nonprofits have a very limited pool of resources. You might be getting by with just a laptop and your phone. You can’t afford expensive software, and the latest and greatest toys and tech. It’s important your CRM works with the tools you already have—from Outlook to MailChimp to Xero accounting software. Cloud-based CRM is accessible from anywhere and lets you make the most of the resources you do have. Similarly, your CRM should be affordable and easy to use. You don’t have time to spend on extensive training and programming. You need a user-friendly interface that works for everyone in your office. You need something to fit your budget and maximize your abilities. 5. You wear a lot of hats

Chances are your current and former Board members are also some of your key donors. Foundation contacts might volunteer and also read your applications. You’re dealing with people who, like you, wear different hats within your organization and have different ties to your population. You need to manage those contacts and keep complicated relationships straight. 6. Repeat donors are your bread & butter Donor cultivation is tough work. Once someone is invested in your organization, you want to keep him or her connected and engaged. A small monthly donor might turn into a mid-level donor in a few years. A former constituent or alumni might eventually include you in a Legacy gift for your endowment. Most donors need to be reminded to give regularly. It’s not because they don’t care, or they forget you exist, it’s because they don’t receive a classic “invoice” every month or annually (it might be a little offputting after all). It’s up to you to remind donors when they last gave, and keep them in the know about what’s happening in your organization. Donors who see results return to give again. If donors feel thanked and appreciated they will continue their support. It’s up to you to steward your donors and keep those repeat gifts coming!

or through social media. Of course you want to keep them investing their time and efforts in your organization. You also want to make them feel appreciated and you have to know when they’re available to help out. Managing volunteers is no small task. You might be managing 20-30 different helpers in a single day or event (maybe even more)—that’s a lot of moving pieces and people to keep track of! A CRM helps you keep a handle on your volunteers. You can create different tags and identify connections, strengths and their areas of expertise. You can do follow up surveys and polls, and contact them regularly so they hear about new opportunities as they come down the pipeline. 8. Serving your constituents Everything you do, is to serve your population or cause—whether it’s children, the elderly, environmental, human or animal rights, you have a purpose, a goal and a cause that desperately needs your help and support. To serve people you need to keep your relationships strong. You need to have as much information at your fingertips as you can. Sometimes you might be bound by privacy or legal restrictions on your population data. Sometimes the data might be hard to quantify, but you have to follow your results and relationships to measure the efficacy of your organization. You need to find outcomes and demographics, and a CRM can help. Foundations and supporters may require you give specific and measured results for your organization’s outcomes. Rather than scrambling to compile data after the fact, keep track as you go along. There are many other ways a CRM can serve a nonprofit—tracking your endowment, keeping a handle on your monthly gifts, managing corporate sponsors and in-kind donations. If you have a Legacy giving program, chances are you need to maintain lifelong contact with these key supporters, and give them constant reminders of the importance of your work.

7. Managing volunteers You probably have a pool of volunteers— maybe you reach them with a newsletter,

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Let a CRM help you do the amazing work you do. You can change the world, you just need to manage your relationships!

Issue 09 / 71

Going beyond customer service

Beyond Accounting actually started out as Finegan Accountants. I founded the company a few years ago, under my own name, but when we decided to expand the business last year, it quickly became apparent that a rebrand would put us on the best footing for future success... Accountants to Beyond Accounting. It’s This rebranding happened in late something we haven’t stopped doing 2015. Far more than just a new logo, since. the rebrand was part of a programme of development that went from marketing to systems updates and involved expanding During the restructuring of the company, Jenny Thornton, a fellow Director, took on the teams rapidly with qualified the role of Marketing Director. accountants, part-qualified Backed by an external accountants and trainees. content creation agency When building the and a graphic design Beyond brand, we I knew from my company, she set decided that it would years in practice about implementing only work if we a comprehensive really engaged with that clients really strategy that our clients. I knew appreciated the encompassed brand from my years in identity, brand voice practice that clients personal touch. and - most importantly really appreciated the - customer service. personal touch. They valued the fact that I would take the time to explain accounting issues in a plain-English way, or when I showed them an online solution I had seen that would benefit their business. It was these learnings that led to us placing customer partnerships at the heart of everything we did during the transition from Finegan 72 / Issue 09

Customer service starts from the first contact we have with a new client. To ensure we really understood the customer journey, we mapped every step from the moment the potential client started looking for an accountant to the point they were up and running as a client. Along this timeline we identified touch

Words: Rory Finegan, CA and Founding Partner, Beyond Accounting Rory is a Chartered Accountant and founding partner of Beyond Accounting, the leading Xero partner in Ireland. Rory is an avid user of technology and in just a few years has built a practice that’s renowned for its expertise in cloud solutions. Beyond Accounting believes in offering a customer-centred service, helping clients grow their business the smart way. @beyond_ie

points – the moments there were likely to be some kind of interaction with the company. These interactions could be anything from filling out a form on our website, to a face to face meeting at our offices. Through collaborative workshops, we established how we would handle each of these interactions to ensure the best possible customer experience. We thought a lot about the service we delivered at each step along the way, and whether it would be a memorable experience that would make the customer feel valued. We came up with a concept called Basic to Beyond. This is an approach that identifies what elements of a service could

XU Magazine - the independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users. Find us online at: xumagazine.com

be considered essential (the Basics) and what additional elements could be offered to really make the customer experience shine (the Beyonds). By going beyond expectations, we can demonstrate our commitment to our clients and strengthen the relationship. Some examples of this would be responding to an initial query within an hour and not just sometime that same day. When getting ready to meet with a new client to take them through a Xero demo, we customise it with their company name and logo first. Meeting all the basics

opportunity to share insights with other team members and brainstorm new ideas. Another customer service initiative that we instigated early on, and which we will continue to evolve, was a satisfaction survey. While we could have simply sent out an online questionnaire, we decided to really invest in this valuable source of feedback by conducting a select number of one-to-one interviews with clients. As a young company, we recognised that collecting and acting upon insights like these could have a huge impact on our ability to scale successfully.

of concern for clients. One issue we were able to identify was that clients felt unsure about the various deadlines that are important to their business – VAT returns, Income Tax filing, Corporation Tax deadlines, etc. In response to this, we created a customised calendar for each client that can be imported into Google Calendar or Outlook. This live calendar shows the dates by which we would complete tasks such as Annual Returns, allowing clients to plan ahead with confidence. Where possible, we would schedule these actions well ahead of the statutory deadline, for added peace of mind. We also identified that many clients are a little at sea when it comes to accounting terms and practices. In order to demystify this for them, we have created a series of easy to understand guides to make their life easier. We have covered topics such as Income Tax, getting started with Xero, the ins and outs of VAT, PAYE, and everyday accounting terms.

for each thing still represents great customer service, but by having the Beyonds we can continually aspire to do better. As we’ve found, the little things really do matter!

...being friendly and open and doing what we said we will all gave clients a feeling of confidence and control.

When any initiative like this is brought in, we back it up with staff training, to ensure everyone is on the same page and working to the same standard. These workshops are also an

Jenny has carried out these surveys through the year, with questions ranging from why the client needed to switch accountants in the first place, to how they feel about our website. The results have been very interesting - highlighting problems that we had never considered, and at the same time reassuring us about things that we anticipated were an issue but in fact aren’t

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These customer interviews also demonstrated that we are delivering many positive experiences that contribute to an overall very high satisfaction rating. Simple things like being responsive to emails and phone calls, making life simple with good online tools and systems, being friendly and open and doing what we said we will all gave clients a feeling of confidence and control. Our customer service programme is still in its infancy, and will continue to mature. But we’ve seen it deliver so much already that we have no hesitation in recommending such an approach to other accountancy practices. By retaining our clients, and turning them into ambassadors for our brand, we are securing a bright future for Beyond.

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“

Complete Cashﬂow Conﬁdence

Issue 09 / 73

Tutorial

Dryrun: Create a sales forecast alongside your cash flow This tutorial covers the creation of a sales forecast alongside a cash flow forecast with information imported from Xero... In order to experience maximum growth and profit in your business, it’s important to set progressive goals. One highly effective method of goal setting is to chart the sales pipeline (we like to call it “accounts hopeful”) alongside cash flow (accounts payable and accounts

receivable) in order to have a solid forecast of what monies might be coming in to the business. At the same time, charting this information in a different scenario than AP and AR means that it’s easy to see how different deals and timelines could impact cash flow.

Words: Blaine Bertsch, Co-Founder, Dryrun Blaine is the co-founder of Dryrun, a Xero-connected app that helps small businesses forecast their cash flow, budget and sales pipeline so that they can visually compare data points between hypothetical scenarios instead of using intuition to chart a strategic course. @mydryrun

Creating Your Cash Flow Scenario Overview: We’re going to create a scenario that lets you scan and track your recurring budget, your bills (AP) and your invoices (AR). We’ll keep this scenario separate from your sales pipeline scenario, which we’ll build later in this tutorial. 1. Connect to Xero Select the ‘Integrations’ from the left side navigation in your account area. Look for the Xero icon to connect Dryrun to Xero under the ‘Connect your Dryrun account to your favorite tools’. ‘Connect’ or ‘Disconnect’ status will be displayed. Click ‘Connect’ and walk through the easy steps for integrations. Later in the tutorial we will be importing invoices and bills into different scenarios. 2. Create a New Forecast Still in your account screen, click ‘New Forecast’. The forecast starts out with a single scenario. 3. Build Your Repeating Budget in Recurring In this new scenario, create your recurring budget - doing so at this point isolates your regular, repeating expenses from your variable expenses and income so that you’ll be able to quickly scan through the irregular payments. Starting in this manner lets you focus on the variable bills and invoices that really affect cash flow. 74 / Issue 09

XU Magazine - the independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users. Find us online at: xumagazine.com

Tutorial Use Dryrun’s inherent flexibility to build in as much or as little detail as you need - you can always update with more detail whenever you need to. (Note that recurring budget items repeat forever unless you choose end dates for each item.) You can always edit items at any point in time if there are changes to your business budget. 4. Import your invoices and bills Time to import! Hover over the Scenario Title (in this case it’s entitled ‘Cash Flow’, then click on the Settings ‘gear’ icon. Click on the Xero logo and adjust the import settings. Let’s import bills and invoices from the first day of current fiscal year (Jan 1) by checking the applicable check-boxes and selecting the correct radial option for dates. Your data is now in Dryrun and reflected on the graph. 5. How bills and invoices work in Dryrun To understand how data is pulled into Dryrun, it’s worth noting that bills and invoices are pulled by their due date. Both bills and invoices are categorized by company and named by the invoice. Be aware that an invoice’s ‘Expected Date’ and a bill’s ‘Planned Date’ override their Xero ‘Due Date’ for a more realistic look at cash flow. Dryrun also flags due and overdue bills and invoices so you can see them at a glance, and similarly tracks partial payments. Any changes you make in Dryrun will not change your Xero data, but changes in Xero data (i.e. when you accept a payment) will be updated in Dryrun the next time you click ‘Refresh’. 6. Here’s your cashflow forecast With cash flow isolated, it becomes a simple matter to review your budget and quickly note where invoices and bills are due. You can also easily move data around to test key assumptions and strategic moves. With cash flow isolated, it’s time to build a sales scenario that can be overlaid onto Have you subscribed? Go to subscriptions.xumagazine.com

Issue 09 / 75

Tutorial your other scenarios - perfect for goal setting and to visualize strategic nextsteps for your business. Building Your Sales Scenario Overview: We are going to duplicate the cash flow scenario and substitute potential deals for invoices in order to create a sales pipeline that will sit alongside the cash flow scenario. This will keep realistic budget and bill data at our disposal but allow us to use the receivables area to test out different successes and strategies. 7. Duplicate your Cash Flow Scenario Open the scenario settings by hovering over the scenario title and click on the ‘gear icon’ - then click on ‘Duplicate’. Open the settings in the new scenario and change the name to ‘Sales Pipeline’, then click ‘Save’ which will refresh the most current information. 8. Disconnect the Receivables Open the scenario settings again for your renamed scenario (now titled ‘Sales Pipeline’), and click on the Xero logo. Deselect the ‘Invoices to Receivables’ option by removing the check mark. Ensure that you’ve left the ‘Remove all imported invoices’ toggle in the ‘on’ (green) position. Click on ‘Save and Refresh’. Now all budget and payables data is present and there are blanks to work with for receivables (soon to be Account Hopefuls/sales pipeline data). 9. Enter your Potential Deals ‘Receivables’ in your new ‘Sales Pipeline’ scenario is now a place to enter all the potential deals that are in various stages of your pipeline. It’s easy to enter deals by the date you are expecting them to close and the total value of the deal. If possible, adding more detail such as the date you actually expect cash to move to your account, indicate dates of partial payments or deliverable payments if that’s a likely occurrence, or even add the percentage of likelihood you’ll land the job in the deal name or category (also called a weighted sales pipeline) will inform the accuracy of your 76 / Issue 09

XU Magazine - the independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users. Find us online at: xumagazine.com

Tutorial cash flow. Similar to Xero data, if potential deals are imported from Pipedrive through Dryrun’s integration feature, you can still manipulate them to your satisfaction in Dryrun but they will only update when you make a change in Pipedrive. Remember to remove lost deals as applicable. You can duplicate your new ‘Sales Pipeline’ scenario to test assumptions and track key data, i.e. one for each salesperson or store location. Wrap up: Viewing your sales pipeline alongside cash flow offers critical info for each business decision you make. Viewing sales, budget and invoices along a timeline in Dryrun allows you to see critical dips in your cash flow and plan accordingly to close deals and to manage job capacity before a project gets started.

off cash crunches, and also navigate potential capacity issues by managing project start dates.

Looking further out to the next week, month or quarter, you can identify potential pinch points of slow sales, head

Now you can use additional scenarios to test out all sort of ‘what if’ situations that every business faces. Identify slow

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Issue 09 / 77

Xero multi-currency takes accounting global Whether we like it or not, globalization is here to stay.... For many industries, such as manufacturing, it’s already a done deal. As Thomas Friedman pointed out more than ten years ago, The World is Flat — and these trends are only accelerating.

currency defaults to simplify invoicing and billing further.

Xero also supports foreign currency bank accounts. Bank feeds are at the heart of the efficiency ...a single granted by the To survive, businesses organization in financial web, must be ready to where a network trade in a global Xero can deal in of organizations marketplace. That’s multiple foreign share financial data why a modern currencies. seamlessly. That’s accounting system why Xero allows you needs to have built-in to connect to a foreign features such as real-time currency bank account and exchange rates, which enables display it in Xero alongside bank business owners to understand accounts in the local currency. This is currency exposure risks and make quick, how Xero paints the truest picture of a yet informed business decisions. business’ financial health. Xero’s cloud accounting engine was built with multi-currency at the core of the general ledger. This means everything works in harmony, without the need to compromise.

Words: Blake Oliver, Accountant & Consultant This year, CPA Practice Advisor named him an accounting industry 40 Under 40 honoree for 2016. He’s a Xero Ambassador for the U.S. West Coast. So he spends about 50% of his time working with Xero to help accountants and bookkeepers succeed. One way he does that is by curating Cloud Accounting Weekly, an industry newsletter for accountants and bookkeepers. Another way is by speaking at events and teaching workshops. @BlakeTOliver

One Organization, Unlimited Possibilities Xero natively supports the currencies of more than 160 countries for accounts payable and receivable. Businesses can pay invoices and bills to organizations they trade with globally, with the payment converted to the local currency in realtime and vice versa. There’s no need to establish multiple organizations for each region a client trades in — a single organization in Xero can deal in multiple foreign currencies. You can also set 78 / Issue 09

Multi-Currency Reporting Xero automatically calculates and displays real-time gains and losses on foreign currencies, with exchange rates updated hourly. This can be done in both the Profit

XU Magazine - the independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users. Find us online at: xumagazine.com

& Loss and Balance Sheet — functionality often lacking in even large-scale ERP software. The Balance Sheet automatically revalues Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable in real-time to provide you with a complete and accurate financial position. The Foreign Currency Summary report shows an overview of foreign currency exposure, along with realized gains and losses and account revaluations. Reports are automatically revalued in the local currency and the relevant exchange rates are added as a footnote. If you’re a global business, aspire to be one, or work with businesses that trade globally, you need an accounting platform that has multi-currency capabilities built into the core. Adding the feature

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as an afterthought is not a sign of a comprehensive platform.

global businesses. The tools are available, so don’t be afraid to take the leap and start crossing borders.

These days, all small businesses can be

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Issue 09 / 79

Changing the game in outsourcing

Outsourcing has in the past always been seen as wage arbitrage. In many ways, some outsourcers have always seen it that way. Some offshore delivery centres always try to sell full time employees. This always means that any growth the firm experiences, means additional headcount... Continuous Improvement in processes

This neither benefited your client or the firm in the long term. Why do we believe that? This leads to a lack of innovation or efficiency within the process, because you are wholly linked to growing staff head count and their availability to do the work. Wage arbitrage also then means that outsourcers need to move around the world to the next cheap location to stay “cheap”. Whilst in principle, that is possible, most businesses cannot uproot an entire business from one location to another overnight without having an impact on service levels. 80 / Issue 09

Some businesses culturally find it difficult to improve their business. Professionally run outsourcing businesses consider Quality and Security to be at the centre of their business. If you consider the reasons why you would or wouldn’t outsource, these are the two areas that will keep you from taking the decision to outsource or not. An outsourcing provider that uses external audit of their processes will help you become more comfortable in taking that decision to outsource or not. AdvanceTrack, for example, use BSI to review their Quality and Security protocols to provide customers with an

Words: Vipul Sheth, Founder/Managing Director, AdvanceTrack Vipul is a UK based ICAEW Chartered Accountant and Chartered Tax Advisor. Vipul trained with a regional UK firm before moving to Ernst & Young and KPMG. Vipul is Founder and Managing Director of AdvanceTrack Outsourcing, a UK Headquartered Accountancy Outsourcing Company, with operational centres in India, delivering services to firms around the world. AdvanceTrack are an ICAEW Member Firm audited by BSI in the UK for ISO9001:2015 (Quality Management) and ISO27001:2013 (Information Security Management). AdvanceTrack are currently the only major accountancy outsourcer certified for the latest International Quality and Security Standards. @AdvanceTrack

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external oversight. It is important that the certification body is one that has global recognition and standing. Technology vs People

compliance services. Fully managed by our systems, our offshore teams deliver timely bookkeeping, accountancy and tax compliance services. Whether you want daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly bookkeeping, our systems will manage the work, keeping you fully up-to-date with where the work is.

We discussed above the need for innovation. Whilst people do become more efficient over Our first cloud platform time, they are never likely brought real time to improve at the pace Our first information to our that technology will cloud platform customers as far back move. Technology brought real time as 2006. Today, in will also deliver a more consistent information to our our connected world, fully trained staff will approach. This could customers as far look after the basics, equally mean that but fully managed by they consistently get it back as 2006. our automated computer wrong too! Nonetheless, systems. we are seeing great improvements in technology to Change your views on outsourcing forever. improve the customer experience. Technology and Innovation at AdvanceTrack At AdvanceTrack, we have always believed that technology and innovation are at the heart of the process. We believe as a result, our innovation leads to more consistent delivery and we share the benefits of that with our client firms. Our approach has Quality and Security at the heart of it. The AdvanceTrack Cloud Platform We are delighted to formally announce the launch of our new cloud connected AdvanceTrack platform, allowing seamless delivery of cloud bookkeeping and

This service enables client firms across the world to benefit from the AdvanceTrack secure delivery platform and highly trained workforce. Whether you are in the UK, Australia, USA, New Zealand or elsewhere, our teams can now work with you seamlessly in the cloud.

How do we do it? We’re not going to put that in print, but bright engineers within our business have taken apart our processes and allowed you; the client firm; the ability to walk out of a client’s office and pass the work to us on your phone before you get to the car! After that, just watch as we complete the work when required. All you and your team now do is manage your clients and discuss the output with the client. With up-to-date information, Accountants deliver greater value. Cloud accounting products like Xero enables more tools to plug in to the financials to give a greater range of information by which the business can be run. Xero has around 500 add-ons. Many of these add-ons will add value to either the process or particular niche businesses.

What do AdvanceTrack services allow you to do?

All of our businesses are evolving as cloud technology moves forward almost on a daily basis. If your outsourcer isn’t moving you forward, talk to AdvanceTrack. Our work isn’t complete, so watch out for our continuing innovation in this space. Our determination to be recognised around the world as the best accountancy outsourcer is undiminished.

Deliver the value added services that your clients want.

Upgrade to a better way of outsourcing. Talk to AdvanceTrack today.

Deliver your services to more clients than you do today.

“

Make your lost cashmoney ﬂow with Satago, your all-in-one I recently when a customer went into cashﬂow soluuon. Spend less me chasing customers administraaon. It dawned on me that I'd never really with ourwho automated invoice reminder system. known I was doing business with. Try invoice reminders at satago.com Then I found credit reports from

“

Complete Cashﬂow Conﬁdence

INVOICE

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Issue 09 / 81

Making sense of ‘time tracking’ When we started MinuteDock in 2009, we were the first ‘time tracking’ app integrated with Xero. But, if you’ve been to Xerocon or visited the Xero App Marketplace recently, one of the things you’ve probably noticed is that there are now quite a number of different ‘time tracking’ products. How do you know where to start?

Words: Jared Armstrong, Founder & CEO, MinuteDock Jared is the founder and CEO of MinuteDock - the top rated time tracking software for Xero. MinuteDock is a Kiwi company like Xero, but Jared is currently working from London. You can pick up a free trial of MinuteDock and a special offer of 50% off your first 3 months at minutedock.com/ xumag @minutedock

82 / Issue 09

Time tracking software will often end up being a major part of the frontoffice workflow for a small business. This is because keeping track of what staff are doing is critical in day-to-day running of the business. That said, the things people actually do, how they do it and the reason for keeping track of it all varies wildly between industries. Although there is some overlap between industries and how their day-to-day works, there are unique aspects to each one.

primarily desk based, a great desktop or web browser experience is usually a top priority. That said, decent mobile support is expected these days as well, especially if staff are off-site from time to time. Since work is often performed for multiple clients or projects per day, a system that has fast and efficient ways to enter time entries as well as seamless switching between tasks is important - unless you want your staff to be constantly complaining!

Another important “Time tracking” as a consideration is software category is It’s critical to budgeting and reporting very broad. Different functionality. Most time products target use the right tracking software will these very different software for the have have this in one industries, and are built form or another, but of to handle the core and right industry. particular importance unique aspects for each. to professional services Some of the main industry is ongoing budgeting and segments are Professional reporting at multiple levels. You Services, Construction & Field need to be able to see progress at the Services, and Retail & Hospitality. client and job level, as well as get an It’s critical to use the right software for the idea of how much money you’re making at the company level. Keeping track of right industry. The wrong product will cost your billable & nonbillable work, and you time and money in lost productivity having a seamless way to bill clients is as a result of it not being ‘quite right’, also important. The business won’t make missing key features, or being complex any money if you’re and hard to use wasting hours or as a result of too days generating many unnecessary invoices, so ensuring features. this is a fast and seamless process is So what are the critical. points of difference between these Finally, built-in different industries project management and how do the isn’t often included various time tracking with time tracking products best focus apps and the best on them? project management software like Asana and Basecamp rarely have time & billing Professional Services functionality either. So, picking a product “Time tracking” is one of those words that that provides a way to simply integrate your project management and time most people in professional services hate tracking & billing workflows is a nice time to hear. One reason for this is that their saving feature. staff are typically on a salary - therefore tracking time is considered a chore since At MinuteDock, targeting the ‘niche’ it doesn’t directly translate into wages. of professional services allows us to Consequently, using a product that staff actually enjoy using (as much as possible) focus our user experience around the things that matter most to these types of makes a huge impact on engagement. businesses. As professional services firms are

XU Magazine - the independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users. Find us online at: xumagazine.com

and straightforward can really reduce overheads.

Construction & Field Services

Retail & Hospitality

While there is a bit of overlap between Construction & Field Services and Professional Services (for Field Services in particular, multi-client support and client billing functionality is important), there are also some quite unique requirements due to the nature of the work.

Retail & Hospitality is different again. Job & task management is not usually needed here at all as time tracking is mainly centered around rostering and payroll. Staff usually work at the same place doing the same thing each time and for the entirety of a shift.

One of the key differentiators is that Construction & Field Service workers are almost exclusively mobile. Because of this, the mobile interface is critical. GPS tracking can be highly desired in order to keep track of where staff are due to the mobile nature of the work. This is in contrast to Professional Services, where it’s rarely required.

Wall based time clocks are usually the most popular These three industries for these industries, ...remember are just the tip of often including photo to step back the iceberg - there capture too. Staff and make sure are many more are generally at one industries and site that doesn’t you understand the niches that we have a dedicated industry and business haven’t covered computer/device here. As we’ve seen, for each person. requirements there are some fairly Additionally, many clearly... unique requirements retail companies prefer across the different use to not allow employees cases even though ‘time to clock in on their personal tracking’ software is usually lumped devices to avoid the risk of time theft. under one umbrella. So while staff are tracking time, it’s often through a completely different interface Apps like MinuteDock, Tradify and Tanda than the other industries. all focus their product experience for different industries. Beware of apps that Possibly the most important functionality claim to work across all industries, as it for Retail & Hospitality is the payroll usually means they are providing a bit of integration. Most Retail & Hospitality staff everything at the sacrifice of simplicity are paid per shift or on an hourly basis. and the ‘perfect’ user experience for your This means that the payroll integration particular use case. needs to work well with local wage laws and award interpretations, break rules, When you’re comparing time tracking etc. This is often a significant part of the apps, remember to step back and make development effort. sure you understand the industry and business requirements clearly, as picking The payroll functionality usually ties in a product that focusses on just the deeply with shift management & rostering right features will mean a much better functionality. This is often one of the experience overall. main admin areas of the business - so a product that makes this seamless

Task and job assignment for staff in the field is often also needed. This is one of the reasons that apps targeting the Field Services industry are often full blown Job Management systems, as planning and scheduling is intricately linked with the time recording and billing. For Construction in particular, the ability for a manager to bulk clock-in a crew of staff is often needed. Additionally, payroll integration is usually the main reason for tracking time for staff on site, so great payroll integration is usually a must (something that generally isn’t used for Professional Services, and quite often not used for Field Services either). Tradify is a great example of an app that focuses on field services in particular. They’ve built a product that focuses precisely on the workflow of tradies in the field, without cluttering the app for other types of businesses.

Tanda is a great app that focuses on these particular use cases. For example, the only way for staff to clock in is with their wall mounted clock - they haven’t added the complexity of a clock in system on user’s phones. This is one way they keep the product focussed and the user experience clear and simple.

The must have book of

2016

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Issue 09 / 85

OVER

5AP0PS0

App/Service Directory To advertise, please email the team at: advertising@xumagazine.com

Bills & Expenses AutoEntry | @OCRexSoftware

MP Travel | @MPTravelPtyLtd mptravel.com.au

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86 / Issue 09

webexpenses.com Webrecs | @Webrecs webrecs.com.au Xpenditure | @Xpenditure xpenditure.com/en

Conversions CONVERSIONS Click 2 Convert | @C2Convert c2convert.com cloudconvert | @CloudconvertSa cloudconvert.co.za ConvertworX | @ConvertworX convertworx.com.au FITmyBooks fitmybooks.co.za JetConvert | @JetConvert jetconvert.com.au Movemybooks | @movemybooks movemybooks.co.uk

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#1 Online Customer Relationship Management for Small and Growing Businesses

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JunariCRM+ | @JunariCRMplus junaricrmplus.com Legrand CRM | @Legrand legrandcloudcrm.com/home Magnetism magnetismsolutions.com Mailchimp by OneSaas | @onesaas onesaas.com/integrate MailSync | @MailSync mailsyncapp.com Ninjodo | @Ninjodo ninjodo.com OnePage CRM | @OnePageCRM welcome.onepagecrm.com OneSaas for Salesforce | @onesaas onesaas.com OneSaas for Zoho CRM | @onesaas onesaas.com/integrate Pepperi pepperi.com PropertySuite | @PropertySuite propertysuite.co.nz QikBizCRM | @QikBizNZ qikbizcrm.com Quick Win Development | @quickwindev quickwindevelopment.com Really Simple Systems | @ReallySimpleSys reallysimplesystems.com/uk SalesSeek | @SalesSeek salesseek.net

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App/Service Directory Solve CRM | @solve360 solve360.com SugarCRM Klix Connector | @klix_media webdatadesign.com.au SyncApps by Cazoomi | @Cazoomi cazoomi.com Vision6 | @vision6 vision6.com.au WORK[etc] CRM | @WORKetc_support worketc.com Xploite | @xploiteapp xploite.com Zendesk by Cloud Elements | @CloudElements cloud-elements.com Zendesk by Zapier

Smudge | @smudgeio smudge.io southgatelabs.com logicstudio.nz trineo.co.nz Trio Technology | @Trio_Tech triotech.co.nz Web Industries webindustries.co.nz

Debtor Tracking DEBTOR TRACKING Chaser | @chaser_io chaser.io

Digital Fusion teamdf.com Dynamic Solutions Ltd dynamic-solutions.co.nz EndGame | @GoEndGame end-game.com/xero ExcluServ | @ExcluServ excluserv.co.uk Foundation Data foundationdata.co.nz Harmonic New Media harmonicnewmedia.com Hashbang | @hashbangnz hashbang.co.nz Infopower customintegration.co.nz Interlockit.com interlockit.com iSOS isos.com NetEngine | @Net_Engine netengine.com.au Numernet | @numernet numernet.com nuSoftware | @nu_Software nusoftware.com

Complete Cashﬂow Conﬁdence www.satago.com

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intellibook.co Loaded Commerce by Carry The One

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carrytheone.co.uk Magento by OneSaas | @onesaas

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Your invoices paid on time, automatically

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customd.com

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Bespoke Integration BESPOKE INTEGRATION

axisdirect.nz

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satago.com

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zapier.com/zapbook/xero/zendesk

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XO Cashflow | @xocashflow xocashflow.com

Documents DOCUMENTS

unleashedsoftware.com Magento by Zapier | @zapier zapier.com Magento Integration (Fooman) | @foomanNZ

Boxkite | @getboxkite Check Business check-business.co.uk CreditorWatch | @creditorwatch creditorwatch.com.au Debtograph | @Debtograph debtograph.com Debtor Daddy | @debtordaddy debtordaddy.com EzyCollect | @ezyCollect ezycollect.com.au Funding Gates | @fundinggates fundinggates.com InvoiceSherpa | @invoicesherpa invoicesherpa.com IODM | @IODM_Software iodm.com.au Late Fee Manager | @LateFeeManager1 latefeemanager.com LedgerLive ledgerlive.com Mentio | @mentiohq mentio.ca ONECLICK Cash Collection | @ONECLICK_Apps oneclickcashcollection.co.uk Promptly | @Paid_Promptly paidpromptly.com

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xero.fooman.co.nz Magento by Carry The One

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businessbackbone.co.uk Evernote by Zapier | @zapier

partner.mindbodyonline.com Neto | @netoecommerce

zapier.com Formitize | @Formitize

neto.com.au OneSaas for Opencart | @onesaas

formitize.com/en Google Docs by Zapier | @zapier

onesaas.com OneSaas for WooCommerce | @onesaas

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onesaas.com Opencart by Carry The One

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carrytheone.co.uk osCommerce by Carry The One

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carrytheone.co.uk PayPal by Zapier | @zapier

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eCommerce eCommerce A2X Accounting | @a2xaccounting

zapier.com Pepperi pepperi.com PrestaShop by Carry The One carrytheone.co.uk

a2xaccounting.com Airsquare | @airsquare

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airsquare.com Amazon.com by Stitch Labs | @StitchLabs stitchlabs.com Bigcommerce by Carry The One carrytheone.co.uk Bigcommerce by OneSaas | @onesaas onesaas.com Bigcommerce by Stitch Labs | @StitchLabs stitchlabs.com Carry The One carrytheone.co.uk Checkfront | @Checkfront checkfront.com

Sendle | @sendle sendle.com

CS Cart by 4Sprung | @cscart marketplace.cs-cart.com

Shopify | @Shopify shopify.com

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App/Service Directory Shopify by Carry The One carrytheone.co.uk Shopify by Pipemonk | @pipe_monk pipemonk.com Shopify By Stitch Labs | @StitchLabs stitchlabs.com Shopify By Tradevine | @TradevineTeam tradevine.com Squarespace | @squarespace squarespace.com Stitch Labs | @StitchLabs stitchlabs.com Storbie | @storbiecommerce storbie.com Synergy 8 | @SynergyEight synergy8.com TaxJar | @TaxJar taxjar.com TradeGecko | @tradegecko tradegecko.com Tradevine | @TradevineTeam tradevine.com Veeqo | @Veeqo veeqo.com Vextras - Kiwi | @vextras vextras.com Volusion by Vextras | @vextras vextras.com Web Widgets websitebuilder.nz Zeald | @zeald zeald.com Zen Cart by Carry The One carrytheone.co.uk

Financial Services FINANCIAL SERVICES

Waddle | @getwaddle waddle.com.au

commonsku.com

formitize.com FreshBooks | @freshbooks help.xero.com GeoOp | @GeoOp geoop.com Harvest | @harvest getharvest.com Houston Medical houstonmedical.net iCOS LIVE | @iCOSLIVE icoslive.com IMS Service Track i-man.com.au inForm | @getinformapp getinform.com Intellibook | @intellibookapp intellibook.co invoiceASAP | @invoiceASAP manage.invoiceasap.com iTrade itrade.net JobAdder | @jobadder jobadder.com JobPro Central jobprocentral.com JobReady | @JobReadyNSW jobready.com.au Jobsheet | @jobsheet jobsheetapp.com LEAP | @LEAP4SmallFirms leap.co.uk Manu Online Ltd | @ManuOnlineLtd manuonline.com MechanicDesk | @mechanicdesk mechanicdesk.com.au Mindbody by QSSConnect | @QuoteStockSell quotestocksell.com MinuteDock | @minutedock minutedock.com

wise-sync.com

CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT tidybuild com

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TidyStock | @TidyStock tidystock.com

coreplus.com.au CurrentRMS | @currentrms current-rms.com EMAC | @EMACsoftware emac.com.au ePrint MIS | @eprintmis eprintmis.com

getcapital.com.au

EService | @ECONZNewZealand

Kabbage | @KabbageInc

STOCK MANAGEMENT tidystock com

econz.co.nz etz Technologies | @etzTechnologies etztec.com Fergus | @FergusApp fergusapp.com

moula.com.au smartbizloans.com

axcelerate.com BookingBug | @bookingbug

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global.co-construct.com

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Fleetmatics WORK | @fleetmatics fleetmatics.com.au

88 / Issue 09

XU Magazine - the independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users. Find us online at: xumagazine.com

App/Service Directory Progressclaim.com | @progressclaim progressclaim.com Proposify | @proposify proposify.biz ProWorkflow | @ProWorkflow proworkflow.com Quotient | @QuotientApp quotientapp.com

Tradify | @tradifyhq tradifyhq.com TriggerApp | @triggerapp triggerapp.com Union Square | @unionsquareltd unionsquaresoftware.com Vinosmith | @thevinosmith vinosmith.com vinsight.net vinx2.com vworkapp.com webedi.co.uk edgehosting.co.uk Work[etc] CRM | @WORKetc_support

worketc.com workflowmax.com Workshop Software | @workshoponline workshopsoftware.com.au ZeroTime zerotime.io

Other Other A2X Accounting | @a2xaccounting

tidybuild.com TidyWork | @TidyWork tidywork.com

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ledgerbackup.com

pro.sharesight.com.au Stryke Tax | @stryketax stryke.com.au Synergy 8 | @SynergyEight

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Arlo

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arlo.co Avalara | @avalara trustfile.avalara.com

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Podio by Phases xepod.net

zapier.com Zendesk by Zapier | @zapier

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agprofit.com.au

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sharesight.com

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sendle.com Sharesight | @Sharesight

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leap.co.uk

synchroteam.com

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a2xaccounting.com

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onesaas.com

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qwilr.com

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clubhub.co.nz

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Payments

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acuityscheduling.com Authorize.Net | @AuthorizeNet reseller.authorize.net

totalsynergy.com

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IMS Payroll imspayroll.co.nz Intertec TimePro timesheets.com.au iPayroll ipayroll.co.nz KeyPay | @KeyPayApp keypay.com.au MyPAYE | @MyPAYE mypaye.co.uk Payescape payescape.com Payment Evolution | @payevo

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Business payments made simple.

90 / Issue 09

Direct Debit, ACH & Credit Card collection for Xero invoices - automatically NZ, AU, US, CA, UK, EU

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XU Magazine - the independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users. Find us online at: xumagazine.com

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Issue 09 / 91

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Why do you need an accountant with Xero? It brings payroll and human resource management together with integrated financials, and on top of all that, if you can’t find what you need you just visit the Xero marketplace and find the module that works for you. So where do accountants come into it? Well, since Xero is the modern software solution, accountants need to become the modern business partners.

Words: Asem Din, Adds Accounting I’m a CIMA qualified accountant, and I’ve been in the world of Finance 10 years. Before that I had a background in retail operations & management.

We need to be able to not simply be number crunchers, but to offer our skills as guides and strategic advisors to the businesses we work with.

I’ve worked in a range of high street names across various sectors; HMV, Somerfield, Lloyds Bank, BT, and for various private companies, including private equity and traded companies. @accountingadds

It’s a question we’ve heard a few times when discussing the benefits of Xero to our clients. At first we were a little taken aback – perhaps unprepared that our clients couldn’t see the benefits that modern software could bring them. That question was initially difficult to articulate a response to, but when you think through it the advantages are huge. Xero brings a completely new level of ease and integration to your processes. It offers invoicing and reconciliation tools that aren’t in place in a lot of large organisations. 92 / Issue 09

Xero brings a level of corporate solution to businesses, why can’t the accountants complete the solution? Our training and expertise allows us to be perfectly placed to help a business in any number of ways. The first one is obvious – be there as a system specialist. Guide your clients through how best to use Xero, how to maximise its efficiency. The next one is as their technical expertise, what should their chart of accounts look like? When is it an asset and when is it an expense? Do we use accruals or cash method? What’s the difference to the business? Obviously you will also need to complete the statutory returns, and check over the data for consistency. Most

of that is effortless with Xero – payroll and VAT returns are at the click of a button, you can drill into any line on the ledger and check out the transaction. If you’ve been using it as your electronic filing, you can probably check out the invoice as well. From anywhere in the world! You’re not limited to the confines of your office or the capacity of your filing cabinet. Suddenly the gains work both ways. Find an App that streamlines your data flow – for what it costs you make back in time. You then use that time to add more clients, or to develop the offering for your existing clients. Win win! And then the final stage is the most important. Xero provides the hub for all your information. You can use this to become the trusted advisor that will offer the business growth they weren’t aware of. Take the data and analyse it in any which way you can think of. At Adds Accounting we’ve found that when our clients understand, and engage with us, we can offer returns of almost 100%. Put another way – we have plenty of clients where for every £1 they pay us, we generate improvements to the business worth £2. And when you look at it that way, that question suddenly becomes a lot easier to answer.

XU Magazine - the independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users. Find us online at: xumagazine.com

What’s new in Xero? Compiled by: Spofforths Chartered Accountants (spofforths.co.uk)

At the same time as the new report centre, Xero also released a new layout editor which allows you to customise nearly any aspect of the new key financial reports – the Balance Sheet, Profit & Loss and Movements in Equity. Just over a year ago Xero first launched a layout editor that allowed you to group accounts, create formulas and order items exactly how you want them to show. They have now expanded this and added some more great functions. To start customising your reports: - Open the report from the Reports tab - Click on the Edit Layout button at the bottom of the screen. There are many ways in which this new layout editor can help you to streamline your reports. We are going to look at the first two icons and how they can help you.

Add text

Layout editor

Add a Column

Add Footer

Add a Schedule Add text: When the Text icon is clicked a text box will automatically appear at the bottom of the report. You can then enter your title and relevant text. On the left hand side of the screen a formatting box will be accessible. From here you can format the text, add a table or bullet points and highlight text. It is also possible to have the text box at the top of the report, which you can move into place by using the arrows at the top of the screen. Add a Schedule to a report is a good way of including a summary so you can see at a glance, for example, your total

Add a Row turnover, costs and the resulting profit. Once you have clicked the Schedule icon, a new schedule will appear at the bottom of the report; again this can be moved using the arrows. Once in place you can add individual accounts, group accounts or formulae. Remember: Make sure you save your customised reports so you can use them again and again. Once saved, to find these reports: - Under Reports click All reports - Click the Custom tab

Report Centre

The Report Centre has been completely rebuilt. It’s far more user friendly and displays all of Xero’s reports, both old and new, in one place. Customisation: Although the default reports Xero have developed are excellent, sometimes you might need to tailor them to your specific needs. After editing the layout and settings of any new report, you can save it by simply: - Clicking Save as - Click Custom - (Optional: Select Make this the default view for this report)

editor which allows you to customise nearly any aspect of a financial report. You can now add all the columns you want, insert formulae to compare any columns on the report, hide or rename total rows and much more.

find the report you need quickly and easily. Top tip: you can use the star icon to favourite any report so that it always displays at the top of that group and in the Reports menu.

There is a new search feature to help you

These reports can then be found at any time: - Under Reports click All reports - Click the Custom tab Xero have also just released a layout

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Issue 09 / 93

...and finally

Solopreneur Bookkeeping 101 Words: Jeannie Doherty, Owner and Operator, Cloud 9 Bookkeeping Jeannie is a BAS agent, cloud integrator and business all-rounder. She owns and operates Cloud 9 Bookkeeping + Strategy on the Gold Coast in Queensland and has a team of 9. She is a selfconfessed software nerd and keen futurist who loves the ever changing economic landscape. She was raised by successful Aussie entrepreneurs, is a little bit of a workaholic and also a busy mum. @a_cloud9

Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity but cash is king... The speed, simplicity & mobility of Xero means Solopreneur’s can elect to do their own bookkeeping while they still have the time. Here are my 4 rules for Solopreneurs to live by while doing their own bookkeeping:

eway is a great Xero add-on merchant & they also have card readers for your mobile phone. Make sure your trading terms are clear; don’t quote over the phone, instead use Xero to send a quote with your trading terms and then your client can digitally accept. Australians are 2nd only to Nigerians for being bad payers. Trust me, don’t run accounts!

1. Keep business and personal separate 3. Pay yourself a weekly wage I can’t stress this enough. If you’re already combining them then PLEASE begin separating them now by having one bank account for business income / expenses & keeping anything personal out of it. Be strict with this. If I use a business account for a personal expense I literally log in and transfer the money back to the business so it’s a non-event.

name a few)! Each month run your Xero profit and loss (on a cash basis) to see what extra profit is left after wages and everything else. If you make extra profit then you could take a bonus or pay rise. As business owners we love making sales, generating turnover. But consider this… Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity but cash is king. Follow these 4 rules to survive and thrive.

Yes that’s right, a real-life pay packet. The Xero standard edition comes with one payroll user so go ahead and set yourself up as an employee, issue yourself a payslip and pay tax as you go. Why? Well that leads me to point number... 4. Don’t draw money out of the business, full stop!

2. Don’t offer customers accounts! 80% of people are happy to pay either in advance or immediately and the other 20% are the people you don’t want to deal with, trust me!. Make it easy by taking credit card (the fees are worth it),

94 / Issue 09

Say whatttt? Business owners have a nasty habit of running their businesses based around the bank balance. It’s a disease that will kill your business (and possibly you too). You have obligations (the ATO, suppliers, EOY tax just to

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