Xero Accounting

[davdee]

Hi.
Went to a seminar in Sydney for Xero Accounting software. All actions done thru a browser, so nothing to install on a workstation.

Looks good, and will study it some more.

Interested to see what accountants and bookkeepers think of this method.

Best regards

[ray_223]

Hi Dave,

Xero has been mentioned a few times on the forums recently (and I think on the wider flyingsolo website as well). Do a quick search for "xero accounting" up on the right hand side and you'll see lots of feedback.

[FletcherTax]

Dave

Have a chat (or email) with Darren (Dardee). He's currently conducting a trial run of Xero with one of his clients and becoming an accredited Xero partner.

[Dardee]

Thats right. I'm currently doing a parallel run of MYOB and Xero and have a client on it. Initial impressions are positive and very excited by its possibilities.

[akagrp]

hi Dave

We are also testing with a few clients aswell as our own accounts so far very impressed as one of the few bank auto feeds that still allow you to run on an accrual basis.

I was actually speaking to our accounts manager earlier in the week and he advised by June over 500 financial institutions/ products will be avaliable for auto feeds.

it is also expanding it's alliance partners for related products such as payroll.

Not suitable but for business with inventory, for that we are currently trialing with a client Saaus

We have also offered to setup another FS member who we hope will post regular updates on his use so keep an eye out we ate due to start next week

[Dardee]

Xero will be releasing a basic inventory system this year and have a number of inventory partners coming on board as well.

[akagrp]

Darren yes but from what I have been advised inventory will be very basic and more likely towards second half of year

They are adding addon partners but one issue I have with this is cost starts to rise for clients and makes it difficult for clients to move as other software may not be as compatible and transfers/import become an expensive option

Would love to chat more on your experiences we must catch up at next flying solo drinks next month as we only said goodbye last Wed have a great weekend

[Dardee]

Initially I agreed with you about the cost. At face value it does seem rather expensive but when you take into consideration the time savings from having your bank statements automatically downloaded and the reconciliation almost done for you by the program, it works out cheaper than any other system. If you have a bookkeeper spend 1 hr per week for a month doing bank recs at say $50/hr thats $200. Doing bank recs in Xero will take considerably less time so say 1/2 that time = $100. The program has just paid for itself and given you change.

The total cost needs to be taken into consideration, not just the monthly fee. Getting clients to think this way is the key.

[Vanguard]

Have been using Xero for a month now and love it.
One client is large volume transaction web business.
With Xero, I can upload a thousand transactions at a time.
Xero make superfast allocation of these lines to accounts and reconcilliation a easy.

[TimFairweather]

Originally Posted by Dardee

The total cost needs to be taken into consideration, not just the monthly fee. Getting clients to think this way is the key.

Great point Dardee.

I've switch a few clients over to Xero - I initially thought that once the client got familiar with using it I wouldn't here from them much anymore. However, I get more phone calls and meetings now because they want to learn about margins, this report vs that report, how the balance sheet works... it's funny watching people's relationship to numbers change.

Have you found similar?