What are the advantages of XERO?

Online – or cloud accounting solutions – sometimes called “Software as a Service” (SaaS) are where you aren’t buying a software program to install on your computer – you are renting an online service.

This means that everything to do with your cash flow is connected in real time and you can look at it any time you like. From anywhere.

Let me say that again – from anywhere. You can do it on your mobile while your on a job. The bookkeeper can do it while coming in on the train in the morning. Your accountant can do it from their office. Anywhere, anytime. Everyone is looking at and working on and sharing, the same data.

It hugely lessens the amount of time you have to spend on book keeping because it is designed to be streamlined and intuitive and collobrative. If you have ever tried to do your own book keeping you will know how much time it takes up and how hair pulling it can be.

When you are trying to do ten things at once (i.e. you’re a small business owner) you tend to just shovel things into your book keeping and hope you can work it out at tax time. As they say “garbage in, garbage out”. If it wasn’t understandable when you put it in – then it’s going to be ten times less understandable six months later when you (or your poor accountant) are trying to work it out. That can damage your business in all sorts of ways.

Online accounting solutions like XERO have been purposed designed to be easy to use and idiot proof.

You can set it up yourself but it might be a good idea to let your accountant do it for you. Why?

Expertise and advice for sure – but most of our clients would pick “it saves me time” as the main reason. At the end of the day “Time IS Money!

So here it is (in our order of preference) is why you should use XERO.

• It’s easy to use. That is a big reason why XERO is the biggest accounting software provider in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. It’s not just easy to use but designed to stop you from making errors.
• Everything is online. So it’s safe. If your office burns down you haven’t lost anything.
• Can’t be hacked. Everything is stored and protected by XERO. Like anything to do with the financial and accounting industry – everything is encrypted to the highest standard and physically protected. No small (and most large) businesses can not possibly achieve the “best practice” levels of protection used by XERO.
• A lot of data entry is automatic. There is not much you will need to manually enter.
• It’s very easy to customise reports to suit your business and circumstances, so you can see what you want know. Also, everything is real time. So you can see the state of your finances minute by minute.
• Sharing and collaboration is easy and secure.
• Updates are done at XERO’s end. So you don’t need to worry about security patches and new features are added all the time.
• You can upgrade as your business grows. XERO has a range of packages to suit every level of business. So you only need to pay for what you need right now. So you might just use it for the GST on your Business Activity Statement to begin with but you can use for Single Touch Payroll when you start employing people.
• Apps!!!!! There is a marketplace stuffed full of add ons to provide solutions to a whole range of problems. These are third party apps that integrate with XERO to provide extra services. Things that can save you money, make you money or solve all kinds of problems. I can’t even begin to tell you the range of incredibly useful add ons there are. Instead, check out the market place HERE.

Call: 1300 268 800

(Yes, many of these points apply to other could accounting solutions. But in our opinion XERO does it best. That’s why we are a Bronze Xero Partner. Call us if you would like help setting up XERO).