A great accounting system should help you streamline your accounting processes, speed receivables, and help you identify opportunities to increase your profits. In order to maximize these benefits, you’ll want to make sure you take advantage of the system’s features that enable these benefits. There are many features to benefit from, and here are just five for you to check out.
Approving Draft Invoices
Being able to create a draft invoice before it’s approved allows a business owner to delegate invoice creation yet still keep an eye on what’s going out before it goes out.
One creative use of this feature is to create the invoice at the time of sale, far before any work has been done. Since any promises made to customers are fresh on the mind of the seller, it just makes sense to create an invoice draft with great notes so that everyone knows what was promised and agreed to. This is different than the estimate process, which is not yet a sale.
On a weekly basis, it’s a great idea to review any draft invoices to see if they can be approved and sent to the customer. Having a separate tab to view all drafts makes the review and approval process clean and fast.
Emailing Invoices
Xero loves making it easy for clients to pay fast by providing the emailing feature on invoices. You can customize the email to include clear and concise instructions on all the ways they can pay you. Here is the wording we suggest you use as a template and then modify based on the payment methods you accept:
Hi [Customer Name],
Here’s invoice [Invoice number] for XXXX.00 USD. The amount outstanding of XXXX.00 USD is due upon receipt. Please note we’ve switched to a cool new accounting system. You can pay using 4 options:
1 – Pay your bill online: – [shopping cart link]
2- Pay using PayPal – email [PayPal email address]
3 – If you prefer to pay by check please note our new address:
[Mailing address]4- Give us a ring on xxx-xxx-xxxx and we’ll take your payment information over the phone.
View your bill online: [Online Invoice Link] From your online bill you can print a PDF, export a CSV, or create a free login and view your outstanding bills.
We appreciate your business.
Thanks,
[Our Company]Also, Xero just came out with Payment Services which helps to get you paid even faster by linking several global payment options to your invoices. Please be sure to ask us about this new feature if you’re interested.
Importing and Exporting
In Xero, you can export just about anything: transactions, contacts, reports, inventory items, chart of accounts, and more. And you can import even more than you can export. This significantly reduces the need for data entry, and you can manipulate the data in Excel or third-party add-ons quite easily.
Tracking
With tracking, you can add a new dimension to your financial data that further breaks out your data into categories of your choosing. Common uses for tracking include locations, service or product lines, divisions, or departments. For example, if you want to track income and expenses separately for your three store locations, you would set up a tracking category of location and add each store name or city as a value within the category. When you code your transactions, you will choose the tracking value from a drop down menu.
You can have up to two tracking categories in Xero.
Dashboard
Xero’s dashboard has great information that allows a small business owner to get in and out of the accounting software quickly. Customizing it allows you to see exactly what you care about as a glance so you can get on to more important things in your business.
You can select which bank accounts display as well as what order they display in. You can also choose exactly what accounts you’d like to add to your watch list.
Other sections in the dashboard include money coming in and going out so you can manage your cash flow at a glance.
Saving Time and Money
Xero helps you save time and money with these five functionalities. Try them for yourself, and please reach out if we can assist.