Coaching Our Clients on Xero Basics
With so many of our clients now transferring to Xero, we want to ensure everyone is getting the most out of their subscription and is able to manage their accounts confidently on this fantastic cloud-based software.
While we do provide one-on-one coaching, some people prefer to learn in a group or workshop setting. Unfortunately we were unable to offer any workshops during the recent lockdown period which is where the webinar became our next best option.
Accountant and Xero Trainer here at Rural Accountants, Angelina Barratt, leads our training programme and facilitated our Xero Basics webinar.
“Everyone who attended our webinar was there to learn how to use Xero properly. Storing and managing documents electronically also seemed to be of particular interest.”
Accessing Your Accounts Online
Angelina walked our participants step-by-step through using Xero via the website at www.xero.com which is how you access and manage all your accounts on this cloud-based platform.
Xero also has an app for accessing your accounts and processing transactions from your smart phone. This is also a great tool for taking pictures of receipts and sending them directly to Xero for matching to bank transactions, effectively doing away with the need for paper receipts once these are stored and recorded in your accounts.
Coding Accounts in Xero
“We then covered some basics around coding your accounts including some tips around how to make coding quicker and easier within Xero,” continues Angelina. “I always recommend using the transfer option on the coding screen for making transfers between bank accounts which are shown on Xero, to ensure that these transfers are not effecting reports or incorrectly being included in GST or Tax calculations.”
Quick Reconciliations
Once you start using Xero, the first thing you will notice is how incredibly quick and easy it is to reconcile your accounts. If you can log in daily or weekly to match and approve transactions for reconciliation, you will become very familiar with a wide range of tools available to you in Xero in a relatively short time.
Another helpful tip that our participants became more familiar with in this webinar was how to use the Find & Match function to:
- Reconcile payments received or made to invoices
- Apply a payment to multiple invoices
- Split invoices when a partial payment is made
We also showed participants how to use the Create Rule function to help minimise data entry for recurring transactions. With a Create Rule you can automatically set the Xero codes to speed up your reconciliation time and also ensure more accuracy and consistency.
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If you would like to book one-on-one training to learn how to use Xero better or would like an introduction to Xero, please call or email your Rural Accountants client manager. Future group events or webinars are posted to our Facebook page and we send eInvites to all our clients by email.