No two businesses are the same and so why should you just rely on the standard chart of accounts and reports that are there for you already in Xero?
Yes Xero is a tool which is essential for ensuring you are compliant with HMRC requirements but, for most businesses, they want much more than that and to be able to use the financial information it provides to help them run their business.
This blog is relevant for those of you who do your own bookkeeping as it is for us providing these services to our clients. We wanted to highlight 10 different ways that we work with businesses to help enhance the information they get out of Xero.
- Tailoring the chart of accounts so you get relevant information in your reports that will help you run your business.
Think about what types of income and expenditure you have in reality in your business. Do the headings in the chart of accounts make sense for you? If not, you can amend the headings or add new ones. You do need to take care to do this in the best way and to use the correct categorization or you will have items coming out in the wrong places in your Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet reports.
- Exploring other available reports that could help you more in your business
We often tend to stick with the standard reports – The Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Aged Payables and Agreed Receivables Report.
What else do you want to know that this doesn’t tell you?
Have a look through the reports menu and run some of the other reports – you may find some really useful insights for your business.
- Using the tracking categories so you can drill down further into particular areas of the business, projects, locations or jobs
When you are doing your bookkeeping, this will mean allocating your sales invoices and your purchase information to a tracking category. This will then enable to you to run reports (e.g. the profit & loss report) by that tracking category. This can help you assess in more detail the profitability of particular areas of your business or projects or jobs for example.
- Using Xero Projects for job costing which provides a live dashboard and also allows you to factor in the time spent by yourself and staff members on particular projects
Xero Projects goes another step further beyond what you can gain from using the tracking categories. There are 3 benefits we would highlight:
- More detailed reporting options per project
- Staff time can be allocated over several projects and reflected in the costs giving you a more accurate picture of what the project is really costin gyou
- Project dashboard enabling you to track where you are against project estimates on a real time basis
- Helping you build a budget in Xero so you can compare your actuals against your planned budget for the year (by month)
Do you already have a budget for your business outside of Xero that you compare your Xero data with?
Do you not have a budget and would like some help building one that you can put into Xero?
Having your budget in Xero is a great way to be able to be much more planned and proactive about your coming financial year and to then be able to assess how you are doing each month.
- Supporting you with cashflow forecasting
We all know how important cashflow is to a business and there a few different ways we work with clients on this.
It can be a case of a regularly updated cashflow forecasting spreadsheet or
It can be integrating Xero with a 3rd party software that pulls through information on what it already knows from Xero and anticipates going forward.
Whichever option you go with, it still requires the human intervention to sense check it and to build in what plans you have which the software couldn’t possibly know.
- Providing you with full management accounts with commentary
It can vary how far our clients want us to go with their management information. We can absolutely provide full management accounts with commentary if that is what you are looking for.
- Providing short Loom videos
If looking through lots of data yourself is something you struggle to find time for or just avoid, we can provide you with a short Loom video where we talk you through your financial reports and highlight any key points for you. It’s a lot more visual and it doesn’t take a lot of your time to view this.
- Meeting with you regularly to discuss your financial reports
Having a regular structured meeting with your Bookkeeper or Client Manager to review your key reports and with standard agenda items for review is a great way of ensuring a disciplined approach to managing your business finances and ensuring that follow up agreed actions have been taken.
- Supporting you with integrations to other financial reporting softwares which will present your information differently and more visually
Maybe you want more than Xero’s standard reports can provide. Perhaps you prefer something more visual for you or your team.
We are happy to work with you on that to provide the solution that gives you want you want. There are plenty of options out there.
As you can see there are many different ways that you can enhance the financial information you obtain from Xero and use it to benefit your business.
If these are things you would benefit from in your business and you would like to talk to us about providing a full bookkeeping service for you or if you would just like some adhoc Xero support to help you put these things in place, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Email: lynne@thebookkeepingdepartment.co.uk
www.thebookkeepingdepartment.co.uk
Tel: 01462 455455