XU Magazine - Issue 03 - Digital Edition - Preview by XU Magazine

The independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users

ISSUE

COVER STORY:

Strength in numbers One year on: XU Magazine continues to grow as the Xero user community goes from strength to strength Page

37 FOR ALL

XERO USERS

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WELCOME TO ISSUE 03 What an exciting time it has been here at XU Magazine since the last issue! So much has happened.

magazine The independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users

Issue 03 Co-Founders: David Hassall, Wesley Cornell Editor: Wesley Cornell Deputy Editor: Jo Hardman Global Communications Manager: Heather Smith Subscriptions: Joel Barnett Advertising Manager: Marco Hipwell Contributing Writers: Jon Leighton, Peter M. Vessenes, Sarah Ley-Hamilton, Johnny Moore, Adrian Pearson, Guy Pearson, Daniel Balakrishnan, Adam Feber, Steven Renwick, Gayle Buchanan, Karen Reyburn, Grant Johnson, Charlie Wilson, Heather Smith, Heather Townsend, Jon Jenkins, Jared Armstrong, David Watson, Mark Woodbridge, Jordan MacAvoy, Kevin Springer, Bruce Campbell, Francesca Nicasio, Kristin Harris, LC Clarke, CM Sabin Ambassadors: Heather Smith (AU / USA), Gayle Buchanan (NZ), Jonathan Gaunt (UK), Carol-Ann Brouwer (CA), Rory Finegan (IE) Editorial/News Submissions: In the first instance, please send editorial, news stories, requests and enquiries via your country’s ambassador (email addresses overleaf). For general submissions, please email: editorial@xumagazine.com

Issue 02 was launched at Xerocon London, at Battersea Evolution. It was great to have the chance to meet up with so many Xero users again. The atmosphere there was full of energy, and it was a great opportunity to learn from both industry leaders and from fellow Xero users. The experience certainly had a big impact on me. So many people have shown an interest in the magazine, and it seems everybody wants to be involved. I am so glad to be part of this great community. As I speak, Xerocon Auckland has just finished. I wasn’t able to be there myself, but our ambassador Heather Smith very ably looked after our stand. I have been hearing great reports back from the event. XU Magazine was close to the main entrance to the keynote auditorium, and next to the water station. This was a great position for us, as people flocked to

hear the keynote speakers, and needed water! What more could we ask for? As you are reading this we will have launched Issue 03 at Accountex National accountancy exhibition and conference in London. This is the UK’s largest National Exhibition for Accountants and Finance Directors working in practice, business and the public sector. Another great magazine launch! I am very excited to see that there are now 475,000 Xero subscribers worldwide. The number just keeps growing! It looks like we are going to be very busy here for some time to come – but that’s the way I like it!

Wesley Cornell Editor

Advertising: advertising@xumagazine.com T: +44 (0)116 298 60 80 E: hello@xumagazine.com W: www.xumagazine.com ‘Xero’ is a trademark of Xero Limited (New Zealand). XU Magazine is collaboratively produced by an independent group of Xero users and is not affiliated in any way with Xero. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. © XU Magazine Ltd 2014-2015. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. XU Magazine is published by XU Magazine Ltd (08811842), registered in England and Wales. Registered office: 198 Welford Road, Leicester, LE2 6BD. All information contained in this magazine is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. XU Magazine cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. If you submit unsolicited material to us, you automatically grant XU Magazine a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in all/any editions of the magazine, including in any physical or digital format, throughout the world. Any material you submit is sent at your risk and, although every care is taken, neither XU Magazine nor its employees, agents or subcontractors shall be liable for loss or damage. The views expressed in XU Magazine are not necessarily the views of XU Magazine Ltd, its editors or its contributors.

NEW!

Starting soon on Twitter:

#XeroUserHour

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To cope with the immense number of submissions that are sent in from fellow Xero users (and to get around the time zone differences!), we have five country Ambassadors. Please send in any editorial, news stories, enquiries and requests via your country’s Ambassador.

Jonathan Gaunt is the XU Magazine Ambassador for the UK. After working in ‘big’ businesses, Jonathan now works with small businesses, primarily in the creative and technology sector. He is the founder of FD Works, based in Bristol, UK, and an enthusiastic fan of Xero and its Add-ons. Contact Jonathan at uk@xumagazine.com

Heather Smith (covering Australia and US) is the author of the Xero for Dummies series, host of the Cloud-Stories.com Podcast, a Xero Advisor and Chartered Certified Accountant. She provides remote Xero Set-Up, Support and Training, and loves any opportunity she has to write. You can get in touch with Heather by email at au@xumagazine.com or us@xumagazine.com

Gayle Buchanan is well-known amongst Xero users through her activity in the Xero Community Forums. She is the founder of Number Nurses, cloud integrators who specialise in helping business owners and accountants to master applications like Xero, Xero Add-ons and the Google-Suite. For those of you in New Zealand, get in touch with Gayle at nz@xumagazine.com

Carol-Ann Brouwer is our Canadian Ambassador. Carol-Ann is a global certified Xero trainer, professional speaker and successful entrepreneur. Inspired by Xero, she founded Accounting AnyWhere, committed to moving businesses over to the Cloud. You can message Carol-Ann by emailing ca@xumagazine.com

Rory Finegan is our Irish Ambassador. Rory is a Chartered Accountant in Ireland and he runs a busy Xero practice in the centre of Dublin city. He is a very enthusiastic user and supporter of Xero. You can contact Rory via email at ie@xumagazine.com

Founding Supporters: XU Magazine’s Patrons

Funded on:

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In this issue... 08 / Meet: Timely

30 / I predict a Riut! Small business services in the cloud

52 / Five ways to improve profitability when value pricing

32 / Why would a website builder be at an accounting conference?

53 / What to consider when choosing an Add-on for Xero

34 / 3 ways retailers can make the most out of cloud-based software

54 / The best practice tools for advisory businesses

37 / Strength in numbers. XU Magazine: 1 year on

56 / Building an Add-on: Lessons learned

09 / So much data, so little time! 10 / It all starts with reporting 11 / Custom payment types with Timely 12 / Farmflo: The Xero front end for farmers

58 / New! #XeroUserHour

14 / The No. 1 challenge for small business?

40 / While you were sleeping

16 / Making Xero clients even more profitable for accountants

41 / Partnering with Xero as a Cloud Integrator

18 / Meet: Guy Pearson

42 / Interview: Matt Bullock - eWay

21 / Implementing Xero: Stern’s systematic approach

44 / Journey from mum’s desktop to Xero’s Add-on Marketplace

23 / Chargify + Xero: Easily manage recurring revenue

46 / 5 essential ingredients needed to successfully transition to Certified Xero Partner Status

60 / Transforming the way we hear with Xero and Fundbox 62 / Proposal writing is a necessary evil 64 / Staying ahead of the curve

24 / Clever credit control

66 / 5 reasons to ditch Excel as your rostering tool 69 / Blueprint for a case study 72 / A great excuse to doodle...

26 / Spunky solutions to traditional tasks

48 / Moving the medical world to the cloud

28 / Book review: Adding a Xero to Your Practice

50 / A new app to take the guesswork out of client management

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76 / An alternative use of Xero

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Meet: Timely How much would you expect to pay someone to make your appointments for you, manage your calendar, remind customers when appointments are coming up, and follow up on those customers with promotional emails. With Timely, that’ll cost just $19/ month. Timely is a New Zealand-based cloud software company that, like Xero and Vend, is making software sexy. Its mission is simple but ambitious: to give business owners more from their day. The main way Timely does this is with its booking software that manages service-based businesses in the background, freeing up the hard-working business owner to do more of what they love, whatever that may be. Most service-based businesses, such as hair salons, beauty clinics, massage therapists, and personal trainers, sell time as their core product. The better they manage their time, the more profitable they are, but if gaps start to creep in between bookings, their bottom line suffers. Timely’s cloud software works by automating many of the mundane processes you’d otherwise have to do. Instead of using a notebook or clunky software to manage bookings, Timely gives businesses a range of tools that take care of these tasks for them. For online booking, there are website widgets, a Facebook app, booking buttons, and 8 / Issue 03

Words: Staff Writer

even a free website with every Timely account to help streamline booking processes. Timely checks the calendar to make sure no other bookings or breaks are scheduled, then adds the appointment and sends the business owner a notification. A few hours before the booking, Timely automatically contacts the customer via email and SMS to let them know they have a booking coming up. And in the background, Timely is syncing customer information to services like Xero, MYOB, and MailChimp so that you don’t have to. The integration with Xero is particularly useful, as it syncs your booking management system and POS with your accounting software. Invoices only need to be raised once, and they will be synced across the two platforms. When customers make a payment to the invoice, you’ll be able to track and reconcile the transaction. And those customers who aren’t so good with paying on time will show up in your Xero account, so that you can chase them up for payment. Using the two services together frees you up from having to transfer a lot of information manually, and provides you with an in-depth snapshot of your business at any time. It’s all part of the seamless Timely experience that our customers have come to expect, which starts with a no credit card required 30 day free trial. The signup process is simple and easy, and takes less than 60 seconds to complete. If customers

want to migrate their data from an existing booking management system to Timely, or if they need help getting set up, all they need to do is send an email to hello@ gettimely.com and a dedicated onboarding team will reply within minutes. After customers are set up and running with their Timely account, the support team is on hand to answer any of the niggly questions they have through email, live chat, or phone. The turnaround time on tickets is something the support team prides itself on. Whereas at most SaaS companies the wait time for support emails can range from two hours to two days, Timely’s wait times are usually less than an hour, and many support emails get replied to within minutes. Customers tell us that the software, resources available, and level of support that Timely provides them with helps them stress less. They say that Timely helps them run more efficient businesses and get more out of their day, because they’re not spending their time doing administrative tasks or worrying about their appointments. Making a difference to the lives of small business owners is a goal that Ryan Baker, co-founder and CEO of Timely, and Andrew Schofield, co-founder and CTO at Timely, have had since day one. The two business partners previously built a booking platform for tourism companies

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or may not know the difference, but how does it play into liquidity, forecasting, growth, reserves, or business planning? The usual responses are “If there is money in the checkbook…” or “if we do that I probably have to cut back what I take home…” Your business clients might not understand that if, for tax reasons, the company ‘loans’ them their wages until you reconcile it at the end of the fiscal year. The amount of the money they paid themselves shows up as an Asset on the balance sheet. Many do not understand that the interest on a loan payment appears as an expense on the P&L, but the principle portion only shows up in the Balance Sheet as a reduction in the company’s liability. Lending institutions require Balance Sheet Forecast, or Triple Cash Flow Forecast Reports. Do your business clients even know what that is? They certainly are not going to build one.

Words: Sarah Ley-Hamilton is the Community Support Star at Timely.

Custom payment types with Timely

Nowadays there are so many different ways in which your customers can pay for the services you provide... We’re used to traditional payment methods such as cash and cheque but with the advent of increasingly advanced technologies, the opportunities are growing rapidly. Maybe you accept payments via specific credit, eftpos and debit cards, internet banking, online payment gateways or even Bitcoin! Or, perhaps you receive payments from a third party such as an insurance or health care provider and need a way to track those transactions.

The key is not to attempt to provide comprehensive CFO/ FD-level services right out of the starting blocks. It takes time to educate your clients on what our voluminous vocabulary really means. They need to talk to you. Start with the reports.

In Timely, we’ve loaded some default payment types (On Account, Credit Card and Cash) but you may want to add your own payments types too. Here’s how you set it all up:

As your clients become comfortable with a bit of gracious, educational conversation (or perhaps you become comfortable with a bit of gracious, educational conversation), creating advances services gets easier. Gradually adding advanced forecasting tools, creating budgets that can truly ‘benchmark’ performance, tracking the company’s valuation quarterly (“Look! As we do these things the valuation is going up!”), and running the cash flow projections for the strategic business plan become a ‘natural’ extension of what you do.

1. Head to to Setup > Invoices and tax 2. Scroll down to the Payment types section 3. Click the green [+] button to add a new payment type 4. Write your new payment type in the field provided 5. Click Save to create and update

To add custom payment types:

Then when you raise invoices in Timely, you can select the payment type which best suits the invoice and your customer!

Don’t get buried by the competition, and don’t get left behind by the changes in accountancy. It all starts with Reporting… myprofitsee.com/StartsWithReporting

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Issue 03 / 11

Words: Johnny Moore from farmflo.com

Farmflo: The Xero front end for farmers Fed up of getting that bin bag full of receipts, invoices and inspection paperwork from your farm clients at the end of the year? Want to be able to add value to your relationship by giving real time advice? Farmflo is an award winning cloudbased recording system that makes compliance and inspection recording easy for farmers. It has been designed to seamlessly integrate into their everyday running of their farm by allowing information to be recorded in the field, barn or tractor as the events happen.

synced on return. This enables real time recording and increased accuracy. Farmflo’s cloud based system ensured data can be accessed from any device for multi user recording. The farmer is reassured that their data is secure as data backups, support and updates are all included with Farmflo.

This saves the farmer significant time each and every week on paper work and gives them peace of mind knowing compliance and information provision requirements are up to date and accurately recorded.

Farmflo is optimised for small or large farms and for multi discipline or specialist farmers with 5 core modules covering; crops, horticulture, dairy, herd and suckler.

Farmflo was founded in 2012, by brothers Farmflo functionality records for all farms: Jason and Gareth Devenney, • Full farm Inventory, supplier details, after farmer Gareth purchases, batches, storage was having problems conditions, disposal methods, “Farmflo brings all keeping on top of withdrawal periods, product the information for his compliance the dairy farmer together expiry. paper work. which enables farmers to • Mapped farm locations, Jason, a software maximise their returns.” field boundaries, soil sample, developer, workable areas. created a simple • Storage/Housing, managing Richard Fairman, application to help pollutants, maintenance and Farmflo Dairy Gareth collect the Expert upkeep, handling facilities. information on the farm. • Crops, planting conditions, fertilizer Gareth’s friends and neighbour application, pesticide application, saw the benefit of the application and harvesting and storage. Farmflo was born. • Contacts details, Customers, Suppliers, Farmflo recording is managed by the farmer though a user friendly free app, which works offline, then automatically

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Co-Ops, Advisors etc • Integration of Approved chemicals from PCS • Crop reporting, field reporting, IGAS

The herd modules records: • Herd profile listing all available animals on the farm • Track all movements of animals coming onto or off the farm • Record all animal treatments and set up recurring treatments and track remedies used • Create feed plans and allocate to feed groups • Weighing for individual animals or groups of animals • Calf Registrations, record details of calf birthing on the farm • Field management for fertilizer, slurry, pesticide application and soil analysis reports Farmflo have been approved by the Department of Agriculture in Ireland for Bovine Electronic Herd Registrations and calving registration. Being approved by the Department of Agriculture makes recording for compliance and inspection with Farmflo a smart move. The Farmflo integration with Xero bridges the gap between the farmer and the accountant. It allows real time visibility of farm activity and how the farm is performing which allows accountants to give advice based on accurate information in a timely manner. A real step forward for farmers!

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Issue 03 / 13

The No. 1 challenge for small business? “The No. 1 challenge for small and start-up businesses”, says Sarah Jones, “is time”. Sarah founded Moneypad Accountants in Bagshot, Surrey, in February 2014, to provide an innovative accountancy service to small businesses in the south of England. Here she explains how partnering with Xero has helped her to help her clients face their biggest challenge – and seen her practice grow dramatically in just one year. People start their own businesses, Sarah observes, because they want to do something they love doing. Be that baking cakes, building houses, creating wedding bouquets, cutting hair or whatever they feel passionate about. And then they find themselves spending a huge proportion of their time and energy on sales, marketing, management and a myriad of administrative tasks which they don’t enjoy doing, don’t feel they’re cut out for and never seem to get finished. All of which rather defeats the original objective! Enter Xero. Helping clients to work smarter Sarah set out to establish a 100% cloudbased practice and identified Xero and Receipt Bank as the means by which she would help her clients ensure that they worked ‘smarter’, had less paperwork to deal with and spent a minimum amount of time on their bookkeeping and accounting affairs. Freeing them to spend time doing what they do best and building their businesses. Enabling her to give them an instant picture of where their business is at. What they can and can’t afford to do now. Whether they’re saving enough for the next tax or VAT bill. What’s going well 14 / Issue 03

Sarah Jones is Founder of Moneypad Accountants in Bagshot, Surrey, UK. All her life, the people closest to Sarah have been running their own businesses. This has given her a real desire to support owner-managed businesses – and insights into the support that they need.

and what’s not. Clients love it. Sarah loves it. Word has spread. And Moneypad has grown. Data should only ever be entered once Running on the cost- and time-efficiency principles that any piece of data should only have to be entered once and that clients should be charged a flat fee with no extra charges for calls and support, the practice has grown – fast. Within the practice, Sarah and her team are using Practice Manager and Work Papers to maximise operational efficiency. And Moneypad is now aiming for Gold Partner status with Xero and Receipt Bank. Spotting huge potential Now, however, Sarah has spotted huge potential to help her clients further streamline time-consuming business management activities. She’s seen, for example, how introducing point-of-sale software which links to Xero can offer huge, multiple benefits to businesses such as shops, food outlets and hair & beauty salons. With their till transactions feeding directly into the monthly bookkeeping system, Sarah can give the business owners more accurate, more

detailed reports and budget forecasts. With all their data thus brought together, business owners can better understand where their businesses are going and how to drive them forward. And, on a day-to-day basis, they can offer a more efficient, professional service than their competitors, with features such as automatic text appointment reminders. “My next challenge”, says Sarah, “is to make the businesses who would benefit most from this sort of service aware that I’m offering it so that I can help them to integrate it.”

“People start their own businesses because they want to do something they love doing… And then find themselves spending a huge proportion of their time and energy on administrative tasks which they don’t enjoy.” Sarah Jones

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Issue 03 / 15

Making Xero clients even more profitable for accountants

Stay competitive with year-end compliance work We all know that accountants’ yearend compliance work is becoming a commodity product and the client won’t accept that you add much value in the process. The consequence is price pressure, lower margins and increased competition. Yes, the future is in moving to more Words: Adrian Pearson, specialist, added-value services but to checkmybooks.co.uk be able to sell these new services to the client, from an existing position of trusted advisor, you need to maintain the ongoing compliance relationship. So you need to make this compliance work as efficient and low cost as possible. Checkmybooks is the way to maximise the profitability of your year-end work whilst improving accuracy and consistency. And, by allowing you to turn around year-end accounts much quicker, Checkmybooks helps you to protect your compliance revenue stream. The quickest way from the client’s numbers to yours Our unique new software collects a copy of your client’s Xero data for you, analyses 16 / Issue 03

every single transaction in the accounting period and then tells you exactly what you need to know. Automatically providing a list of Review Points, Checkmybooks shows you exactly where you need to focus your attention. From there you can easily and quickly drill down into the detail and make journal adjustments as needed. When you’re happy with the revised numbers simply export the final trial balance into your accounts production system and send the adjustments back to your client’s Xero ledgers. As an accountant working with small business clients, you know exactly what to look for when reviewing a client’s year-end records. Clients make similar bookkeeping mistakes and have similar misunderstandings about accounting. This means that most of your year-end review and correction work is the same year after year, client to client. Checkmybooks knows what you look for too, and can therefore automatically find and highlight the potential issues for you some examples being: • Small amounts posted to fixed assets • Large items in repairs • Negative customer balances • Potential bad debts

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Issue 03 / 17

Meet: Guy Pearson About Guy Pearson: Guy has more than a decade’s experience in professional practice and is a Chartered Accountant. Before Practice Ignition he founded and grew Interactive Accounting and Your Modern Practice. Guy’s extremely passionate about providing small business owners with better information and better advice.

We spoke to Guy Pearson, CEO and founder of Practice Ignition, an Australian company that helps accounting practices to streamline and grow their business. Guy shared with us his story how he managed to launch five startups in five years. Some have been successful, some not so much, and some he is still waiting on... My interest in accounting started from an early age and is probably the best way to frame the path that eventually lead me to start Practice Ignition. It all started with a summer internship at 16 that lead to a job offer in accounting before I finished high school. I worked steadily in mid tier all through university and for a few years after. In 2009 I pulled the classic Aussie maneuver of “I’m dropping this and traveling around the world for a year.” Pouring beer and treading water for a few months led me right back to accounting and startup number one. #1 Interactive Accounting Armed with 7 years of accounting experience and the blind self confidence of being 25 Interactive Accounting started on a very simple principle, you can even find it in the name. We wanted to build a fully online experience for our clients that efficiently provided for their needs while maintaining a strong personal relationship. To do this we decided to fully embrace technology as early adopters, including a little company you might have heard of called Xero. We happened to be at the right place at the right time: other accountants weren’t online or interactive, that was our niche. In the early days of IA Xero and Skype were enough to differentiate us from the pack. Cloud technology gave us the real time data we needed to be efficient and video calls allowed us to sustain personal relationships without the travel costs they usually incur. IA experienced tremendous growth in that first year but we are going to have to put it on pause while we talk about start ups two and three. #2 & #3 MyPIR and Financial Conversions While I was running IA my mate (friend for those of you outside Australia) Nick

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Muldoon and I had been discussing getting our MBA’s. We decided instead that cobbling together a software startup would provide us with better education. We called it MyPIR My Property Investment Report (probably should have come up with a better name). It was designed to make a decision if you should buy a property based on tax benefits, growth of suburbs, the current interest rates and the rental yields. Users were able to share the reports and prepare multiple scenarios. All in one place, easily, for a simple one time fee or a subscription if you needed multiple reports. Using designers and software engineers from all over the world we launched the product to market, and even managed to sell a few reports. We spent less than a single MBA fee and got the experience we wanted. Neither of us wanted to run it full time though, so we put it on the backburner. Another startup focused on

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Issue 03 / 19

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Implementing Xero: Stern’s systematic approach Implementing new software for a large group of companies can be a big task. Daniel Balakrishnan at Stern has proven it is more than possible however, with the successful migration of Paperhat Group, a print, media and consulting business. Here he explains the key steps you need when implementing Xero. Words: Daniel Balakrishnan Daniel is the Xero Specialist at Stern, West London’s most forward-thinking cloud accountants and business advisers. Daniel specialises in the implementation and migration of Xero as well as training and educating Stern’s clients in how to use Xero effectively. You can get in touch with Daniel at @Stern_ DanJB

Implementation is simple if you approach it systematically. And that’s exactly what we’ve done at Stern with the Paperhat Group.

apparent that what was needed was a long-term project, starting with the implementation of Xero and then taking in staff training, education of different end users and ongoing support and guidance for the whole group.

Paperhat came to us for two reasons. One, they were impressed with what As the business has expanded, the need Xero could do that their current package for on-going support has grown. Stern could not; for example the flexibility provides the group with specialist support that the platform offers when it comes and expertise to ensure Paperhat get to implementation across a range of the most out of Xero and adapt to the companies. Two, they valued our regular updates and new experience of setting up features. Xero with medium-sized “We knew businesses and the that Xero was the Originally, there ongoing support we right choice. We realised were two main give our clients. that cloud based software business issues causing Paperhat As a group, would be easy to implement to look around Paperhat are on a global scale. Integration for a cloud expanding at an amazing with new acquisitions would accounting option to replace pace and now also be easy” their desktophave a turnover based software. of over £30M. 11 Phillip Maritz, FD, One was the companies in five Paperhat Group amount of time they countries with over spent on admin and data 200 staff globally means entry as part of their financial the group is a big concern and processes. The other was accessibility growing all the time – two acquisitions for staff spread across the globe. As any have been made in the last year, so reader of XU Magazine will know, these growth is a key factor in their ongoing strategy. One of Paperhat’s big reasons for are two areas where Xero can deliver a new experience. choosing Xero as their financial platform was its ability to flex and grow with the Paperhat decided that Xero was the business. right system, as their FD, Phillip Maritz Why Xero was perfect for Paperhat Group explains: Originally Paperhat were looking to build an API that would let them integrate Xero into their existing systems. Once we started talking with them it became

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“We knew that Xero was the right choice. The easy-to use interface and simple functionality would be easy to integrate with new acquisitions.

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• Make the change following the yearend – implementation will be much easier if you start using Xero at the beginning of the new financial year. • Give ongoing support – remember that migration and implementation are just the start of the process. You will probably need ongoing support to get the most from Xero. Paperhat Group have certainly been

pleased with the functionality Xero has brought and the easily deployable nature of the software as it pursues its rapid expansion.

We believe that with the right planning, a systematic approach and a deep understanding of the business, a Xero implementation can start adding value from day one.

As Xero continues to change and grow, so do the options for businesses who may have thought it was only for smaller companies or sole traders. We’ve seen a huge range of clients adopt Xero, from individuals to groups like Paperhat.

Chargify + Xero: Easily manage recurring revenue

Words: Adam Feber, Chargify

What is Chargify? Chargify provides a web based recurring billing solution that simplifies managing a subscription business collecting recurring revenue. Their service handles everything from customer signups to billing to account management, and with their new Xero integration, all transactional data is seamlessly synced to Xero as statements. If you are selling subscriptions for a product or service, Chargify is able to handle almost any billing scenario imaginable: • Trial periods • Monthly, annual, or custom billing dates • Quantity based billing such as billing for a number of users • Metered usage billing such as billing for a number of hours • Collect taxes when applicable Getting started is simple and they plugandplay with all the popular payment gateways around the world. Simply enter your credentials and you’re instantly ready to start accepting payments. When you’re ready to sign up new users, you can use Chargify’s ondemand public pages or API to integrate seamlessly with your website or app. Once implemented, Chargify’s user interface makes managing a subscription business easy for everyone involved: • Customers can upgrade, downgrade, and make account changes on their own • Marketing and sales can create coupons and special pricing in minutes • Support and customer service can

quickly access account history and usage • Stakeholders can monitor the company’s health and key performance indicators like new subscriptions and company revenue If your business collects recurring revenue, Chargify is definitely worth a look. Why Connect Chargify to Xero? When you connect Chargify to Xero, all transactional data in Chargify is synced with Xero as statements. Each statement provides an itemized breakdown of product charges, discounts from coupons, and taxes providing a crystal clear view of revenue in Xero. While Chargify streamlines the subscription management and recurring billing portion of your business, the Xero integration save a tremendous amount when it comes to accounting and reporting of revenue. Quick and Easy Integration Integration of Chargify with Xero is simple and can be configured in a matter of minutes. From Chargify’s user interface, select the Xero option from the integrations tab, and follow the onscreen instructions to connect your account Xero account. Chargify supports most global currencies and works with all versions of Xero. Tax Management

tax breakdowns on Xero statements. For US, Canada, and EU businesses, Chargify has partnered with Avalara, the leading cloudbased software for sales tax management, to provide access to Avalara AvaTax, delivering instantaneous sales tax decisions based on precise geolocation in more than 10,000 taxing jurisdictions. Simply define where to collect sales tax, and Chargify will calculate, itemize, and bill the correct sales tax based on the customers shipping address or billing address – you decide. Outside of the Avalara integration, you can define custom taxes based on any location in the world and map your Chargify tax details to the system taxes in Xero. If you need to collect sales tax, it couldn’t be any easier. RealTime Data Synchronization Transactional data automatically synchronizes to Xero when transactions occurs in Chargify such as new subscriptions, membership renewals, upgrades and downgrades. It also updates Xero when a card is charged, fails to charge, or when a refund is processed. This sync allows you to always have the most uptodate data in Xero, letting you see your cash flow and revenues in Xero as they are being captured in Chargify. For more detailed information on Chargify and their Xero integration, check out chargify.com/xero

Chargify simplifies collecting sales tax when applicable and displays the itemized

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Clever Credit Control Clever Credit Control means taking advantage of integrated credit risk data to avoid problems before they arise. Steven Renwick is the Founder & CEO of Satago (satago. com), clever credit control software that helps businesses get paid faster. He started Satago after experiencing the problem of latepaying customers in his family business in the construction sector and deciding to build something to help tackle the problem. Satago automates the process of chasing customers for payment through automated statements, escalating email reminders and posted payment demand letters. Satago recently partnered with Experian to make integrated credit risk data easily accessible to Xero users. 24 / Issue 03

How would your clients cope if their biggest customer went bankrupt tomorrow? Are any of your clients overexposed to their riskiest customers? For most small businesses the loss of a major customer with outstanding invoices would at the very minimum put a severe strain on their cashflow and at worst quite possibly result in their own bankruptcy. 80% of B2B transactions are undertaken on trade credit terms and a small business’s accounts receivable can make up to 37% of its assets. This makes credit control one of the most vital functions in a small business, yet it is often the last thing that business owners think of. As the name suggests, credit control is the function of controlling the credit that a business extends to its customers and

then making sure that they pay on time. Yet for too many small businesses their “credit control” involves only chasing their customers for payment once they realise an invoice is overdue. Know Your Customer The bedrock of good credit control is KYC: K now Y our C ustomer. In the businesstobusiness (B2B) world many companies will buy a credit report as part of basic due diligence when they first take on a new customer, but not enough of them will continue to monitor their customers’ financial health. This needs to change. Full credit reports can be overwhelming for a small business owner, but contained within them are a few key metrics that every business owner should be aware

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Above: If your client’s accounts receivable risk profile looks like this, they probably need your help.

With credit scores, perhaps more important than the number itself is the trend. A company with an average credit score is not necessarily one to avoid, however when a company’s credit score shows a deteriorating trend it is time to focus collection attention on that customer. In these cases the company’s credit limit may be reduced, meaning that in Satago you will be notified that your outstanding balance with a given customer now exceeds their credit limit and is in the red.

How can accountants and bookkeepers help their clients? Accountants and bookkeepers need to educate their clients that clever credit control is not just about reminding your customers to pay you: it starts with knowing your customers and making use of credit risk data so that you can be forewarned about potential problems before they arise. Using credit control tools, such as Satago, is not just for those companies that need to chase debtors it’s for the entire 80% of small businesses that are doing business on credit terms.

Our intention at Satago is to make it easy for accountants and bookkeepers to identify clients whose sales ledgers represent the greatest risk. As accountants move more and more towards becoming business consultants, they have an opportunity to take advantage of Xero and Satago’s integrated credit data for all their clients allowing them to advise on best practice, from the basics such as good invoicing discipline, through to the benefits of credit insurance and finance options such as invoice discounting and factoring.

Spunky solutions to traditional tasks

Words: Gayle Buchanan, Founder of Number Nurses®

When someone shouts across the room “what’s a Number Nurse®?” prepare yourself for a bit of a cheeky response. 26 / Issue 03

People may not know exactly what it is that Kiwi business woman, Gayle Buchanan, does but she knows she has them hooked when they quiz her about her quirky business name, Number Nurses®. Gayle’s service is as reassuring and comforting as a nurse, who deals with day-to-day needs that keep their patients on a healthy pathway.

in the hands of the doctors – much like the relationship between bookkeepers and accountants. “During a brainstorming session with a copy writer, graphic designer and web developer, the name Number Nurses popped up and we decided to run with it,” says Gayle. “Think of all the fun we could have with rubber gloves, nurse uniforms and stethoscopes.”

She says the analytical stuff and prescription of serious remedies remains

What Gayle really wanted to do was shake off the limitations of the traditional

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Issue 03 / 27

Book Review:

Review by Karen Reyburn, Managing Director of the Profitable Firm

Adding a Xero to Your Practice by Doug Sleeter & Bruce Phillips, foreword by Rod Drury (CEO of Xero) Almost every accountant I work with lately is talking to the Profitable Firm about Xero. Far from being ‘the latest fad’, Xero is now recognised as a tool that can make not only your accountancy firm, but your clients’ businesses, better in just about every way. I love Xero and what it does for accountants. I also love writing and am a voracious reader. So being invited by XU Magazine to read a book about how Xero helps accountancy firms, and write about it, was a perfect fit in every way. ‘Adding a Xero to your practice’ is written by an accountant who is now an expert in Xero, and an expert in accounting technology. See the key word there? Expert. Now more than ever it is imperative that you (and by extension, your firm) become what Hinge Marketing calls a “visible expert”. And this is where it impacts your marketing (the area that I’m regularly talking to accountants about). You can’t just be an expert, in your mind and heart where you know it deep down. It needs to be visible, obvious, shared with the world.

“There is no question that specialised industry knowledge makes a difference. Of course it matters in providing service, but it also matters in the sales process.” Chapter 7: Specialise for Success The first thing I love about this book is that it’s a beautiful example of the visible expert concept: Sleeter and Phillips have built their expertise, written it down, shared it with their world and other related worlds, and now I’m reviewing it and sharing it with you. That’s how visible experts work: they share their expertise in obvious ways – books, webinars, blogs, events. The second thing I love is that it’s an easy read. Just over 100 pages, it’s hardly a research tome that you avoid. Rather, the topic and the absolute applicability to accountants means that you may – like me – end up reading it whilst on holiday. (I fired through it in the hour and a half I was waiting in the airport.) Finally, it’s got what every accountant wants more than anything else: someone who has been there, done that. Not just any someone, but an accountant who is like you – or was like you, but now he has blazed a trail. This is a reason many of you will be keen to pick it up: but hopefully by the time you’ve finished my review (or the book itself ) you will realise that you too need to do some trail blazing if you’re going to have the kind of results he’s talking about. As I went through the book, I marked items that were related to: A – the Accountant: what do you need to be aware of? B – the Buyer: what do they really want? T – the Team: who should you surround yourself with? I also marked a few smiley faces for sections that were really encouraging. If you’re an accountant who has not yet embraced the cloud as much as other firms have, it can be tempting to get a bit

28 / Issue 03

discouraged. You realise it’s not a matter of quick easy wins, but a mindshift and culture change, and that’s hard. “If today’s changes seem scary, keep in mind that we’ve already been through several foundational shifts like this before”. Chapter 5: Getting over the fear The most encouraging thing you can take from this book is the truth that the fundamentals stay the same. All this talk about cloud and the internet and mobile devices does not change the debit and credit system, or the critical importance of relationship. And accountants tend to be really, really good at both. I’m constantly amazed by how caring, helpful, and supportive my accountancy clients are to their own clients. You ‘get it’. And Xero is simply a tool that helps you showcase your expertise better to your clients, and helps them solve problems in their businesses (making you the hero). This is encouraging because you don’t have to 1) panic, 2) despair, or 3) give up and hope it goes away. Trust your expertise, and apply technology to that expertise to your own and your clients’ benefits. So, let’s start with the ‘B’ items: your Buyer. (I specifically use the term Buyer instead of Client, because it’s so important to remember that you are a business with buyers – a business that just happens to be an accountancy firm.) “What I found most surprising is that ‘proactive strategic advice’ was the thirdhighest rated factor…coming in ahead of ‘reputation’ and ‘low fees’.” Chapter 3: Becoming the most trusted and valuable advisor Here are a few ‘B’ items from throughout the book. This is what your buyers want: - Instant access to information - To do business online - To achieve what they want (not just need) - To be led, and partnered with

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Issue 03 / 29

I predict a Riut! Small business services in the cloud Can a one person startup really run a global manufacturing business in the cloud? Sarah Giblin, founder of Riut, shares her five favourite cloud based services which helped her take user focussed design philosophy and revolutionary rucksack from a sketch this time last year, to a RiutBag on users’ backs in just 12 months. When you start your business, you’re predicting that you can do it. Sarah predicts a Riut: a Revolution in user thinking. She believes users are the best people to spot problems and come up with simple solutions to fix them. In fact, she believes this so strongly, she named her business Riut pronounced “riot”, which stands for Revolution In User Thinking, and her first product the RiutBag. More than ever, users starting small businesses have all the online tools available to them to start and run a fully functioning successful, global business. Revolutionary rucksack: RiutBag Sarah’s revolution in user thinking is this: she revolved the body of the rucksack to take all the outer zips and place them against your back. Fittingly, it’s called the RiutBag. Pronounced “riot bag” it’s an urban rucksack with no outer zips; they’re all against your back for safe, calm city travel. Sarah believes all urban rucksacks should be this way round. She predicts a revolution of rucksacks across the globe in the coming years. But why? It’s all about peace of mind. As a startup business owner connected to the cloud, her business is fully present wherever she is. When she travels through China, Europe or even her hometown, she doesn’t believe anyone should spend a second concerned about their belongings. Instead, she wants to be dreaming up the next idea, considering the next strategic move or trying to get some all important rest.

30 / Issue 03

Words: Staff writer

Starting up in the cloud This time last year the RiutBag was a sketch on a piece of paper. In the last year, Sarah went through all the stages of prototyping, crowdfunding (Editor’s note: see XU Magazine’s experience on page 37), manufacture, freight and dispatch with the first production run. As a one person startup, trying to get things right, she used a number of online tools to make Riut work. You’ll notice a theme: all of them are cloud based. She can access them from anywhere, anytime, as long as she’s online. Here are five: 1) Market research: SurveyMonkey surveymonkey.com To make sure that the bag she made really solved the problems rucksack users were having, she surveyed commuters.

Sarah Giblin is the founder of Riut and the creator of the RiutBag. Sarah decided that the conventional rucksack had a flaw: the person behind you can get into your rucksack better than you can :/ So she turned the rucksack round to create the RiutBag. With no design background she took the idea from a sketch to a trading startup with over 1,000 people now using the RiutBag in one year. She believes users of products can find useful innovation in the things big companies have forgotten about. For more information see riut.co.uk

Using SurveyMonkey Sarah built basic, free surveys and started distributing them around social media for any commuters to take. The first survey was taken by 150 people, the next 300. Finally, by learning from mistakes, the survey was taken by over 1,000 people. Walking into the prototyping room, it wasn’t just Sarah in there. She had the views of 1,000 rucksack users, helping her answer every design question. Which base should she use? Looking at the data: something waterproof and sturdy. Which colour? Anything but black! How should a rucksack look? Smart, inconspicuous and unique. Collectively, these users were

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Why would a website builder be at an accounting conference?

Words: Grant Johnson, Co-founder at Rocketspark

Rocketspark is an online website builder and at our first Xerocon Rod Drury, Xero’s CEO, asked us a direct question - why are you at an accounting conference? It was a fair question as accountants and bookkeepers are not widely known for making their own websites. Selling websites to accountants and bookkeepers is not the reason we attend Xerocons.

We come to Xerocon because we know that good accountants and bookkeepers are business advisors who are involved in a client’s business beyond just doing annual accounts, payroll and tax returns. A modern business advisor will introduce their clients to the tools and processes that can help their client succeed. Rocketspark is one of these tools that can help your clients improve their business through the creation of a professional and effective website. However, getting a nice new website is just one part of the online equation. Harnessing the wider range of Xero add-ons that connect into a Rocketspark website is where significant 32 / Issue 03

performance and efficiency gains can be achieved. The brick and click All across the UK there are independent high street stores who carry a range of specially selected or created products that could be sold online. The store operator has done the hard work of creating or selecting products for sale but is missing out on a key distribution channel - selling online. A key barrier to entering the world of e-commerce is the additional effort that a business owner fears may be required

to run an online store. With Rocketspark, Vend and Xero the operational aspects of running an online store can be kept to a minimum. A single stock base is contained in Vend’s retail point of sale system and products available for sale in store can be presented immediately for sale online just by connecting a Rocketspark online store. The maker / importer Selling online only With Rocketspark it is very easy to set up your own online store with limited funds or fuss. Someone with even quite basic computer skills can set up and manage their own online store.

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3 ways retailers can make the most out of cloud-based software Cloud-based solutions come with an array of benefits that prove to be essential to any business. Words: Francesca Nicasio Francesca is a retail expert from Vend, a point-ofsale, inventory, and customer loyalty software that helps over 12,000 retailers manage and grow their businesses. She’s the author of the bestseller “Retail Survival of the Fittest: 7 Ways to Future-Proof Your Retail Store,” a practical guide to modern-day retail success. Learn more: atvendhq.com

For one thing, unlike on-premise programs, which tie down information to a single device, solutions that run in the cloud store data online, so you won’t have to worry about losing your information in case you misplace or damage your devices. Additionally, cloud apps rarely come with long-term contracts. Most work at “pay-as-you-go” plans, enabling companies to lower costs and scale with ease. There’s also the joy of automatic updates. When you’re running cloud apps, keeping up with new versions is easy and, in some cases, seamless and automatic. These advantages, however, are only the beginning. In the succeeding paragraphs, we’ll take a look at the additional benefits of cloud-based applications and what you can do to get the most out of them. Integrate with other apps Cloud apps work best when they’re connected with other programs. Integrations pave the way for seamless data transfers, thus speeding up operations and reducing human error at

34 / Issue 03

the same time. Consider, for example, what Shoes Feet Gear is doing. The running shoes store, which has locations in Brisbane and Gladstone, integrates its point-of-sale system (Vend) with Xero, making it faster and easier to stay on top of end-of-day totals and banking information for both stores. Prior to using Vend and Xero, the retailer did things manually, and the process ate up several hours a month. “We would be printing out reports and then sending them off to the bookkeeper at the end of the month, or I’d be manually checking the data against bank statements,” says owner Peter Charles. After adopting the solutions, however, things became immensely simpler. “We have two practices, and they’re about 600 kilometers apart. Having Vend and Xero helps me manage the stores remotely,” says Charles. “Vend sends the data straight to Xero, and this makes reconciliations so much easier. The end-of-day banking gets done, the EFTPOS gets settled and things

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Strength in numbers XU Magazine: 1 year on It is hard to believe it is one year since XU Magazine was just an crowdfunding campaign! So how has the first year gone? Words: Staff Writer

“The longer the campaign, the harder it is to continue to keep your audience engaged, excited, and contributing.” The overall audience was international. There were four main countries represented – Australia, New Zealand, United States and United Kingdom, and also some interest from Canada. The worldwide nature of the response meant working around the clock, answering queries from many time zones.

PayPal. The great thing about crowdfunding was that it offered the chance to raise awareness of what was, at that time, just a concept. It also offered the chance to pre-sell advertising and subscriptions. An incredible 100 people pledged to become patrons, with a promise of being named in the magazine as a founding supporters, as well as an inclusive subscription to the magazine.

Brothers: Wesley Cornell and David Hassall, Co-founders of XU Magazine celebrating 1 year on after launching the magazine

It was December 2013 when brothers David Hassall and Wesley Cornell started to think of ideas to pull the Xero user community together. In the pub the pair dreamed dreams, and scribbled possibilities on the back of a beer mat. They decided to let their thoughts settle over Christmas. When the festivities were over the magazine still seemed like a good idea, so it was set into motion. The first thing was to raise awareness amongst the Xero community, and find out what they really wanted. Of course, a major issue was finding the funds to set the whole thing up. Although neither of the brothers had ever dealt with crowdfunding before, they decided that this would be the way forward. They attempted to set up a campaign on Kickstarter. Unfortunately this was not accepted due to a technicality – it fell into the category of ‘financial advice’ - which is not permissible on KickStarter. But to avoid unnecessary delay, they decided to investigate other crowdfunding sites. They came across Indiegogo, and could see it was a perfect fit for their project. It offered some features not available on Kickstarter, such as an option for payments to be made by

After a lot of research into crowdfunding, it was surprising to find that many campaigns were offering pledges for tee shirts, mugs, posters and the like - things that were not the ‘main product’. That was not the way for what was to become XU Magazine. It would have been extra work, and not in line with the professional quality of the product that David and Wesley wanted to sell. Indiegogo offer the following advice about perks: “Campaigns that offer perks raise 143% more money than those that don’t – they have the power to make or break a campaign more than you’d think! The most common advice from experienced campaigners is to make sure your perks strategy is airtight, as the many variables at play (fulfillment, shipping, feasibility) are almost certainly more complex than they first appear.” (http://ow.ly/MGSqM) So, it was clearly very important that the right perks were offered, and it was decided that these should all be centred on the magazine itself , not irrelevant novelty items.

Additional support and manpower was needed from Xero users who shared the same vision. The help had to come from active and well known members of the Xero community. From the very start the brothers knew they wanted Heather Smith (author of the Xero for Dummies series).

Heather Smith with Rod Drury (CEO, Xero) at the XU Magazine at Xerocon Auckland 2015

Wesley had been following Heather on Twitter for some time. By chance they spotted that she was on a family holiday in England, at a nearby destination. Wesley says it seemed like stalking, but he contacted Heather via Twitter, asking if she could spare them an hour during her holiday.

Crowdfunding looks easy – until you do it! After producing a video description and working out what backers would pledge on, the experience was somewhat different from their expectations!

She answered that she was happy to meet, but only for a short time, as she had a flight in a few days, and was moving to a location in Leicestershire. This was extremely close to the magazine’s Leicester office. In a matter of 48 hours an arrangement had been made to meet up for coffee. David and Wesley described the whole vision and shared the early version of the crowdfunding video with Heather. The result was that she became XU Magazine’s Australian Ambassador. Heather describes it like this:

The campaign ran for 22 days. 22 long hard days, and 21 sleepless nights. Indigogo advise that:

“My involvement with the independent magazine for Xero users: Xu Magazine came about quite

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Issue 03 / 37

fortuitously. I was in England enjoying a family holiday in Sherwood Forest, and the founders of XU magazine Wesley and David contacted me over social media. We commented back and forth over social media. My holiday progressed to my husband’s hometown of Leicester, and Wesley and David asked to meet with me, and miraculously we met at The Lounges in Market Harborough just outside Leicester. They explained to me “Not since what they were doing, Demi Moore An image included in a tweet sent out shortly and showed me their appeared naked and after the crowdfunding campaign finished video: pregnant on the front cover We spoke for of Vanity Fair, has a about an hour and the money was So, ambassadors and funding were both magazine’s front cover had I was impressed raised in just a secured. A great start, but now reality with them and week, and after 22 hit! Issue 01 must be produced! Initially such an impact on a what they were days on Indiegogo the magazine was going to be digital, but community.” trying to do, create the result was a surprisingly, research showed that what a magazine for Xero total of US$30,753 people wanted was a good old fashioned Heather Smith, users, written by Xero from an initial target paper magazine. XU Magazine Issue 02 users.” of US$25,000. This was testament to the generousity A stunning picture was needed for the – Heather Smith, Heather and support of the Xero user front cover of the first issue. This took Smith Small Business Blog community. the form of a ‘Double Denim’ shot of the Crunchboard Girls, Amy Harris and Next, an ambassador for New Zealand “XU Magazine is now just over 50% Hannah McIntyre. Apart from being a was needed. Gayle Buchanan’s name funded and all of this happened in just great picture, this was appropriate as was well known in the Xero community, one week since we launched!! Crunchboards was starting up where she was very active within the We could not have done at the same time as XU Xero Community Forum. A Skype call “Thank you it without you! We are Magazine. was arranged, and Gayle liked what she to everyone for eternally grateful heard, and agreed to take on the role of everything and a special to all of our early The magazine was Ambassador for New Zealand. Wesley thanks to @XUmagazine for then launched recalls that during the Skype conversation stage backers - you guys really got Gayle spun the camera round to show off spotting the newbies to watch in style at behind the vision Xerocon Sydney, her pet chickens! and making us their launch of XU Magazine the biggest of issue’s front cover and and got things off the Xerocon With the first two ambassadors found, centre-spread.” to a flying start.” exhibitions which others followed. Jonathan Gaunt for the are held around the UK, Carol-Ann for Canada (and recently – Wesley Cornell, Amy Harris, world. Rory Finegan for Ireland). XU Magazine Indiegogo update CrunchBoards Blog became an international team. Half of 02.14.2014 Xerocon TV reported:

The hottest pink stand! The XU Magazine stand at Xerocon London 2015

“Xerocon Australia 2014 is done and dusted – and what a huge success it was! 1300 people and 83 exhibitors attended the accounting conference in Sydney to get the latest news from the world of cloud accounting”. What a great event that was to launch the magazine! Next, there was the logistics of distributing the magazine around the world, now that it was to be in paper format. It seemed sensible to have it printed and distributed in each of the main countries represented. This turned 38 / Issue 03

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out not to be the most cost effective solution. Courier pricing was up to 40% more expensive in Australia, and having the magazine printed in different countries would mean losing bulk savings, so the decision was made to print in, and distribute from, the UK. It is now possible to get a copy to most parts of the globe within 7 working days. On to Issue 02, and the cover this time was provided by Steven Renwick of Satago, Colin Hewitt of Float and Michael Wood of Receipt Bank, all sporting kilts. The major outing for this issue was to Xerocon London 2015, another great event. The atmosphere there was brilliant, and the magazine was very well received.

The XU Magazine Easter Bunny visiting the UK Xero HQ, April 2015

David Hassall stopping for ice cream at the Xero Village at @accountex 2014

It has been a very eventful year, Heather represented the magazine at Xerocon Auckland 2015, and weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re currently preparing for Accountex in London. Even Crunchy, the XU Easter Bunny, was busy this year! He made an unexpected visit to Xero UK Headquarters, along with XU team members. He had lots of pink foil wrapped eggs to give out, along with a few carrots! Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re very excited to see what the next year brings!

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Issue 03 / 39

While you were sleeping Automatically transfer sales information into Xero every day. As many businesses can attest, moving sales information from point A to point B is no small feat. Specifically, transferring sales information from the point of purchase into accounting software is a deceptively difficult task. And yet, every small business owner needs to count the beans as they say.

Words: Charlie Wilson Charlie is President and CEO of IP Commerce (commercesync.com), a company that develops innovative products and services that automate business processes for small and medium sized businesses. Prior to IP Commerce, he held various senior management positions at Visa and Green Dot, and he has more than 15 years of experience in payments and commerce.

With the Xero Add-On model and robust developer API, Commerce Sync provides Clover businesses that other way. From any browser - or even the station itself interface with payments just as Xero is - users can connect Clover to Xero via doing for accounting. Stripe users connect Commerce Sync. With a few more clicks, to Xero using Commerce Sync with the setup is complete, and users do same simple activation process. From Commerce Sync eases not have to do anything else here, all daily Stripe Charges, Refunds this burdensome task to automate daily sales and Fees appear automatically in Xero “Commerce Sync by transferring sales information transfers. as Invoices and Payments. What’s more, is a valuable tool that information into Xero This includes basic businesses using both Clover and Stripe helps us optimise and automatically, everyday, information, such as can connect each to the same Xero streamline our business while you are getting taxable and non-taxable Organization through Commerce Sync. processes.” a well-deserved rest. income, tips, discounts, Indeed, all current and future Commerce Over the last year, sales tax and refunds Sync payment partners can and will Bill W., PupJoy small business owners that are rolled up into connect to Xero in the same way. As more nationwide have recognized a single Xero Invoice with and more SMBs turn online to bolster the timesaving and errorPayments for each tender type. their brick and mortar revenues (or vice minimizing benefits Commerce Others want more sophisticated versa), it isn’t enough to just get some Sync offers. An asset to small businesses features such as tracking sales sales information into Xero - we and entrepreneurs, Commerce Sync by category or connecting want everything! simplifies routine tasks so our customers multiple locations to the “I am so glad can focus time and energy on running same Xero Organization. Xero, the Future and that technology has their business. In fact, Commerce Sync Power users or their Commerce Sync arrived... I have a life saves the average small and mediumaccountants may change now!” sized business (SMB) 300 hours a Commerce Sync settings Commerce Sync year - the equivalent to $15,000 annually at any time to fine-tune Pat H., currently focuses Mike Harbour Golf - a powerful value proposition for an how their sales appear on serving the U.S. overworked and underserved segment. in Xero without affecting market. However, given payment acceptance. worldwide adoption of Xero, Xero, Clover and Commerce Sync as well as similar inroads by other Xero, Stripe and Commerce Sync major payment partners, International Our service to SMBs is typified by our expansion is a key area of focus for partnership with Clover, a sophisticated One of the great benefits of the Internet Commerce Sync in 2015 and beyond. As cash register, payment terminal, receipt is its potential to turn any device in they say, money never sleeps, and the sun printer and barcode scanner replacement the world into a point-of-sale. Stripe, a never sets on Xero. with an impressive app ecosystem. The company that provides a simple way for sleek, tablet-based solution doubles as businesses to accept online payments, one of the fastest growing retail point of is at the vanguard of commerce, making sale (POS) devices in history. Clover is also it particularly easy for developers to backed by the sales force of its owner, First Data, the largest payments processor in the world. Diverse as the Clover merchant base may be, all Clover merchants are attempting to achieve a common objective: saving time on manual accounting. Many businesses and their accountants have been using pen and paper or spreadsheets for years, not knowing there is another way.

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Interview: Matt Bullock - eWay Words: Heather Smith

In the middle of the dotcom bubble, Matt Bullock thought it would be a good idea to create a secure payment gateway that made it hassle free to accept credit cards online. His friends thought he was crazy. Nevertheless, he founded eWAY in Canberra in 1998 – giving one guy a case of beer to create a banner... ...and another a case of beer to design a logo. Matt wrote the code himself. At that time, the connection to the web server was 64k and the business ran on one server. He placed an ad in Internet magazine NetGuide and found his first customer, a Queensland man who sold bike parts. Fast-forward 17 years and eWAY has grown to 18,000 customers, with international operations three data centres and hundreds of servers, and has processed AU$4.6 billion – about 25% of the Internet purchases in Australia last year. Only a small part of the original ASP code Matt wrote remains – running the engine.

major bank. I’m going to charge for it and they give it away for free.’ That’s the deal. That’s what it was and what it still is – they give it away for free. But we charge for it and we still have as many customers.” Part of eWAY’s growth strategy has been partnering with other businesses; recognising partners drive traffic in the form of customers to the business. Matt feels it’s one of the smartest things he ever did.

“What I realised was if you’ve just got yourself, there’s only so far you can go. What I was looking for was connections.” Sixteen years ago, Matt contacted shopping cart software Easy Matt’s focus is on growth and “Committed Merchant. “Then I drove to constant improvements. Sydney with a mate and “I’m constantly building to giving back spent the day getting something, finding to the community, them to agree to link something that’s eWAY has adopted the to us. That was the broken and fixing 1% pledge programme. first cart that ever it. Building it, fixing It donates staff time to linked to us.” it, building it, fixing it, building it, fixing charities and assists Matt dedicated the it, and the customer merchants’ chosen next three years to number is the metric charities.” contacting shopping carts of how great we’re going. and getting them to link to the We’re constantly getting more eWAY payment solution. “We got to customers. It’s amazing to find how a point where so many people linked to you can just keep refining and changing us, that when someone would build a cart the process. they’d go, ‘Oh, I have to link to eWAY’.” “You look at all the friction and all the Matt’s advice for businesses looking to rubbish that’s in the banking world and form partner relationships is to find a how you can get rid of that stuff. When reason why the other business should do I talk about the business and starting it it, and find something you can solve for up from the beginning, I’d say to people, them. eWAY provided the payment side ‘Well, I’m going to compete with every 42 / Issue 03

of the service — a task too complicated for the business, and the business provided the shopping cart — a task too complicated for eWAY. Matt is passionate about improving online store-fronts and ecommerce businesses, and believes the key is focusing on conversion rates - looking at what’s coming through the pipeline and how it can optimised. eWAY does a lot of AB testing. As Matt explains, “You might have two prices, and with different options we’ll figure out which one sells more, which one you make more money from. Out of two buttons, which button got clicked more? Change the test. That’s how simple it is. People could put zeros on the end of their business turnover if they just constantly optimised their website.” Xero offers the ability to link payment services to online invoices (you can find the option under Invoice Settings). Partnering with Xero has been an amazing experience for Matt, as it has opened up the world of payments beyond shopping carts to invoices. “Payments plus invoices means you start to think about other things that you can do.” He explains that a plumber, who is unlikely to realistically sell plumbing supplies from a website, can benefit from payments linked to online invoices. “Now we can change that plumbing guy’s life – and his customer’s life. His customer doesn’t have to write a cheque or log on to Internet banking. The plumber just goes online, and thinks ‘Yes, I want to use that card, click the button, paid’.”

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Journey from mum’s desktop to Xero’s Add-on Marketplace

Vistr is a free addon to automatically forecast cash flow and access loans to grow your business. The business started in Sydney, and became an official Xero add-on in June 2014. It has been accumulating customers throughout Australia, NZ, UK and Asia with their unique offering - a free Xero add-on. XU Magazine sat down with cofounder and CEO Jeremy Kwong-Law to ask him about their journey from start to now.

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Jeremy Kwong-Law (@jeremykwonglaw) is the co-founder / CEO of Vistr (www.vistr.co), an alumni to Telstra’s startup accelerator muru-D. Prior to Vistr, Jeremy spent 7 years in investment banking for Macquarie Bank and Rabobank, advising large corporations on buying other businesses or selling divisions of their company.

Mum’s desktop frustrations In late 2013, my mum asked me to help her forecast how much cash she needed to expand her business. Having spent 7 years in Investment Banking, forecasting the cash flow of multi-billion dollar businesses, building a cash flow forecast in Excel is pretty easy for me. After producing the Excel forecast for Mum, we realised that my Excel was way too complicated, took forever to update, and was always crashing on her computer. We went in search of a better solution, principally something that she can use without my help (simple), would update based on changes in her business (real-time) and doesn’t require work to maintain (automated). After months of searching, no solutions were found. Instead, we found Xero and immediately realised the potential to create cloud software to automate a cash flow forecast by relying on a real-time general ledger.

Start of the Xero Journey From there, I teamed up with 2 mates who are great software developers and started working on Vistr. A few months later, we were accepted into Telstra’s startup accelerator muru-D. The 6 months program gave us a kick-up the butt to move fast, get customer feedback and build a great product. Between Feb – Sep 2014, we got fantastic feedback from early adopters who were so forgiving on buggy software, bad user experience and not many features. Their feedback massively improved our product really quickly. A few lessons really stood out, as they were things we didn’t appreciate until we spoke to them: • Instant gratification: since business owners and their advisors (accountants & bookkeepers) have very limited time, they wanted us to build their cash flow forecast for them. They just want to edit the prebuilt forecast so they don’t waste time with changing formulas,

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Issue 03 / 45

5 essential ingredients needed to successfully transition to Certified Xero Partner Status

Heather Townsend, the practice management expert, is the award-winning author of The FT Guide To Business Networking and The Go-To Expert. Over the last 12 months she has helped her clients add over £1 million GRF to their practices. To read more articles by Heather, visit growingyourfirm.co.uk

With seemingly everyone telling you that your firm MUST have Xero to keep up with the times, you’d be forgiven for thinking that all you needed to do was worry about how to get your software talking to each other, and your staff trained up on how to use Xero.

In reality, integrating Xero successfully in your practice is not about the technology. It is about how well you bring your staff and clients along with you in the journey to become a certified Xero partner. In this article, Heather Townsend explores the 5 essential people ingredients needed to quickly, profitably and sustainably offer Xero to your clients. Most accountants when faced with introducing a new accounting software into their firm will draw up a decent plan of how they will get the systems and technology aspects to work. Despite a normally very diligent and measured approach to introducing Xero, it is not unusual for firms to take much longer than planned to get Xero properly integrated into the way the practice works. This is because the ‘people’ side of introducing Xero also needs to be addressed in parallel with the technology and system part of the change. This ‘people’ stuff is not just about making sure your staff and clients are trained how to use Xero. It is much more than it. 1. Clarity about the vision Before you even consider sending a member of staff off to get certified as a Xero partner you need to have clarity

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Issue 03 / 47

Moving the medical world to the cloud Words: Heather Smith

A passion for healthcare and determination to improve efficiencies is driving Marcus Wilson to revolutionise the healthcare industry’s financial operations.

While studying Realising Entrepreneurial Potential at the European business school INSEAD, Surgical Partner founder Marcus Wilson and his fellow team mates presented a project to venture capitalists and won, beating 40 other groups. The buzz from this achievement led him to discover he liked being solely responsible for his own destiny and revenue. Before attending INSEAD, Marcus worked as a healthcare analyst at Macquarie Bank. It was there he developed insight into the macro realities of the healthcare industry and the fiscal pressures from government and the like. Having completed his MBA, Marcus wanted to get more into the operational side of healthcare. He started running a specialist practice day surgery. “Once I got in there I tried to work out the drivers of the business, how we could forecast and how we could tinker with the levers to improve it,” Marcus said. “What I discovered was that the business’ performance isn’t really known until the BAS is due at the end of the second month. You don’t know how January went until the end of May - and, of course, it’s all cash based, so the information you get is fairly limited in value in any case.” Charged with improving the financial 48 / Issue 03

management and business processes of the day surgery Marcus integrated Xero with the practice management system. He then looked to the Xero ecosystem to adopt efficiencies across workflow. It was a lengthy process. “There didn’t seem to be any integrator services in the regulated healthcare industry. There was certainly nothing listed on the Xero site. To be honest, I’ve yet to come across any organised operation since. So, there still seems to be a wide open opportunity. It’s one thing to be a technology familiar person and to find a solution but, to find the right solution, you need to live and breathe the problem,” Marcus said. The project made Marcus realise that the healthcare industry could benefit from his knowledge and experience so, in November 2013, he founded Surgical Partners. Moving a healthcare business to cloud solutions is challenging as in regulated health (as opposed to Allied Health) almost all practice management systems are desktop based. There are many different platforms and they operate as businesses’ Point of Sales (POS), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The data trapped inside the practice management system holds enormous value. Surgical Partners recognised that practice management systems are entrenched in health practices’ operations. Rather than create a cloud-based practice management system for healthcare practices, Surgical Partners worked with Wellington based developers End Game to develop a standardised user interface in the form of a transaction feed – a ‘clearing house’ integration hub

that connects practice management systems to Xero. “It collects the relevant raw transaction data from, hopefully, all practice management systems, and pushes that data into Xero as an invoice, credit note or payment. It is a translator, a standardisation clearing house if you like, of all the different transaction data from practice management systems into Xero,” said Marcus. If the practice management system you work with is not listed on the Surgical Partner website as integrated, Marcus is keen for you to contact the provider and tell them you want it to connect the solutions they are offering. “These guys respond to demand” says Marcus. Revenue management in the healthcare industry is exceedingly complicated. “There are claims to insurers, claims to army, to Garrison Health, to Medicare, to DVA and to ACC in New Zealand,” Marcus explained. “There are all kinds of different delayed payment mechanisms and how do you reconcile that in the bank reconciliation? These are all the problems we are slowly solving. We’re not going to have the onesize- fits all solution tomorrow, but we’re slowly iterating towards it and I guess you have to rely on related technologies to develop.” The three core elements of a medical practice are revenue and payments, payables and payroll. The most complicated element to integrate (and this the element that has the biggest impact on the time it takes to implement a solution) is revenue and payment. There are two cloud solutions on the market that integrate with practice management systems and facilitate medical practice revenue and payments: Tyro and Eclipse.

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One further complexity of healthcare practices in Australia is that 95 per cent of practices are structured as a services trust. In effect, they collect billings on behalf of a doctor, but it’s not their revenue. The way Surgical Partners replicates that is as a current liability. Even more complicated is the split of that liability into a share to the practice’s revenue and the rest into a payable account to the doctor. Surgical Partners and End Game have built a Doctor Revenue Management solution which integrates with an iPhone app. The technology can split current liability billing based on payment, according to a matrix of this item code, the percentage the doctor is paid, or the percentage retained as a facility fee. The system splits every invoice triggered by payment on the fly, so doctors can know every day what their share of billings is, accruing across the month. This enables doctors to access realtime revenue information on their iPhone app. Surgical Partners has evolved into a cloud integrator and an add-on developer. To meet the growing demand it is focused on undertaking the technical deployment and technical support. It also works with healthcare orientated accounting firms and consultants to add value through to the on-boarding process. “They get a whole wealth of data and realtime performance measurement on which they can sell high value-add services,” Marcus said. Surgical Partners works with various solutions listed in the Xero marketplace; Receipt Bank, Deputy, Tanda, and Coreplus.

Mint Accounting goes platinum

Pictured: Mint Accounting accepting their award for Accounting Partner of the Year for Scotland at the London Xerocon Awards 2015. L-R: Rod Dury - CEO of Xero, Charlotte Gillet - Commercial Director of Mint Accounting, Allison Walker - MD of Mint Accounting and Gary Turner - MD (UK) of Xero. Mint Accounting are the first Scottish based accountancy practice to reach Platinum (the highest Xero partner level).

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Issue 03 / 49

A new app to take the guesswork out of client management Imagine an app that can tell you what VAT scheme your clients should be on, whether they should incorporate, mispostings by staff, what sales opportunities are available and how effective staff are, all based on the information from Xero with a couple of clicks? That’s what we have built at Hindsight. Words: Jon Jenkins Jon has used cloud technology to build up one of Dorset’s leading cloud accountancy firms. A ‘geek’ at heart, he teamed up with software developer Lee Mallon to develop Hindsight, after spotting a gap in the market for an app that helps advisors cope with scaling a successful practice and enhancing client relationships. He believes cloud accounting has revolutionised the industry but there is yet more that can be done to blend traditional accounting with new technology.

Technology can be a blessing and a curse for businesses, particularly small firms. Yes, it’s made our lives easier on one level; on another, we expect to have instant access to client data to offer them support, and manage their expectations. In terms of bookkeeping and accounts, I’ve seen how the cloud has revolutionised many businesses. Now, it’s time to take it one step further. The idea behind Hindsight is to be a blend of cutting-edge technology with a back-tobasics ethos at heart. Insights run daily, looking for ways to reduce debtor days, overspend vs budget, tax planning and other financial considerations that give small firms headaches daily. The result? An instant snapshot of your client list that helps you make informed decisions on which need the most attention – and which lead to more sales opportunities. It’s ideal to scan before a big meeting; senior management can use a dashboard for day-to-day troubleshooting; bookkeepers get a daily list of tasks to action. There’s no need to just keep throwing

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bodies at the issues as you scale your practice, Hindsight allows you to scale your practice whilst maintaining fantastic client service. Beta testing The app development has been funded by Rarely Impossible and Smart Accountancy Systems along with support from the Bournemouth Community Finance Company and Dorset Growth Hub. With Bournemouth being the fastest growing digital economy in the UK its a great place to be for app development. With beta testing nearing completion Hindsight is already getting rave reviews. That said, we are actively looking for more partners who can offer us feedback. We believe early adopters of apps are getting tired of the constant barrage of new apps to market and believe Hindsight is something that will stand the test of time. Craig McKie from CNJ Accounting, a Xero Gold Partner, said: “I can honestly say that I haven’t seen an add on for Xero yet that I am so excited about using - it really is a product that is going to add real value for both the advisor AND the client.”

Customer Opinion: Craig McKie, CNJ Accounting (Xero Gold Partner), said: “I can honestly say that I haven’t seen an add on for Xero yet that I am so excited about using - it really is a product that is going to add real value for both the advisor AND the client.”

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Issue 03 / 51

Five ways to improve profitability when value pricing As value pricing becomes a popular way to charge for services, it’s critical to make sure your pricing is right. Jared Armstrong from MinuteDock talks to XU Magazine...

Jared Armstrong is the Founder & CEO of MinuteDock, the toprated time tracking software on the Xero Addon Directory.

With value pricing you’re charging the customer a fixed price for a set of services One of most important thing to remember when coming from time-based billing is that your inputs (time) are no longer guaranteed to have a constant profit margin. Where before you may have made a margin of $60 per hour, now your margin on an hour of work could be $1000, or it could even be negative. You don’t want to be losing money, so we need to make sure that it’s closer to the former! How do you do this? With data. Now hold on, don’t get scared away by the dreaded Dword. You’re not going to have to pull out your highschool statistics notes or sit over a spreadsheet for 3 days a month working everything out. Instead, you want to capture and have access to the information you need as a natural part of your daytoday business. Funnily enough, the way to capture this data is actually something you were (probably) already doing before: tracking your time . You may have thought that by moving to value pricing, you’d be done with timesheets for good. As it turns out, they’re actually more important than ever! For the most part, your cost of doing business is going to be the amount of time your team spends to provide a service to your clients. You already track this at a high level with salary & wages, but unfortunately that doesn’t give you a lot to go on in terms of determining what specific aspects of the work you’re doing are profitable (or not). To be able to make smart decisions, you’re going to need to know the raw input costs of the services you’re providing for each client. To do this, you’ll want to use timetracking software (like MinuteDock). You want software that not only allows you to track an appropriate level of detail (so you can get the insights you need), but also something that is easy and quick for your team to use. Since tracked time doesn’t translate directly into invoices anymore, it’s important to reduce the barriers for your team to get their time tracked, otherwise excuses will be made for why it wasn’t done!

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What level of detail should you track? This really depends on the types of services you’re offering. A good place to start is to itemise the handful of things you spend time on at high level, and then break it down further if you think more granularity will be useful to compare. For example, an accounting business might break their time down as: bookkeeping, business advice, tax advice, annual accounts, admin. Most time tracking software will allow you to tag or assign tasks to your time entries, and allow you to drill down into each task when running reports. The sooner you’re tracking time, the sooner you’ll have actionable data to make your business more profitable. Here are five things that timetracking will let you do to improve your business: Figure out where you need to charge more The very first thing you should do is check to make sure you’re actually making money with all your clients. Are you making as much profit as you thought you were? If not, consider increasing your prices for any new customers you bring on board, and when possible increase the price you’re charging existing customers. The easiest way to earn more is to charge more. Remember: you’re no longer working on an hourly rate, you’re working on a value outcome. Different customers will have a different perceived value of what you’re offering them. Start thinking about “how much value does what we do add to this particular client”, rather than “what is the cost of what we do plus margin”. Optimise the costs of the services you’re providing Time is your input and cost of doing business. Look at what services are incurring the most overhead, and brainstorm ways to reduce that cost without compromising the value to your customers. For example, consider automating common tasks with software, or eliminate unnecessary communication with your clients by having them do some things themselves. Often the most

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Issue 03 / 53

The best practice tools for advisory businesses Words: Heather Smith

At XU Magazine we’re constantly asked what cloud tools other advisory practices are using in their business. We spoke with Charlotte Prigmore from startup The Business Hut, as well as experts from three more established businesses – Jac Gallagher from Notch Above Bookkeeping, Paul Miller from Cornish Accounting and Adam Puckett from Delap. Charlotte, Jac, Paul and Adam shared with us the cloud solutions they are using and what efficiencies they’re realising from them in their business.

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For Jac Gallagher, the managing director of Notch Above Bookkeeping, Xero’s Practice Manager is the main hub of task scheduling, client database maintenance and job allocation. As you’d expect, it syncs seamlessly with Xero – their beautiful online accounting solution. Practice Manager offers a 14-day free trial and is free for Xero partners (xero.com/ au/practicemanager/). Jac also cites Receipt Bank as an essential part of their and their clients’ business workflow. ‘Receipt Bank snaps copies of receipts and invoices, extracts the data and relevant information and sends it straight to our Xero accounting solution.’ Receipt Bank offers a 14-day free trial with single user plans starting at AU$21.95 per month. The subscription is free for Receipt Bank partners (receipt-bank.com). Utilising the business intelligence tool Spotlight Dashboard, Jac produces a one-page KPI summary highlighting the business’s main revenue and profit areas. ‘I can see changes we need to make at a glance.’ Spotlight has a number of solutions that transform data into valuable intelligence; one of them is called Dashboard. You can access a 28-day free trial, with plans starting at AU$75.90 a month for up to six organisations. The subscription is free for Super Virtual Chief Financial Officers (SuperVCFO) (spotlightreporting.com/ product/dashboard/). Charlotte Prigmore has used Skype since starting The Business Hut in January 2014. She subscribes to a SKYPE telephone number, which looks just like a typical phone number, and pays a quarterly subscription with top-up facilities. This low-cost flexible option enables the team to answer client calls anytime – even when on site. Skype is an online communication platform offering telephone, video conferencing, instant messaging and simple screen sharing. It can be downloaded and installed for free on computer and mobile devices. A user can set up a SKYPE name and, if connecting via that name, all communications (excluding possible data charges) are free (skype.com).

Jac Gallagher of Notch Above Bookkeeping

As a more robust screen-sharing option, Paul Miller of Cornish Accounting (Xero’s accounting partner of the year for England/South), uses Citrix’s GoToMeeting. Paul says this has significantly reduced his team’s travelling time. Available via a monthly subscription, it can be used for online client and staff team meetings. Citrix has a number of offerings: GoToMeeting GoToWebinar, GoToTraining and GoToAssist. These options come in at different price points, and have different features depending on the number of people you need to connect with in a single sitting, how interactive you need the session to be, and whose computer you need to view. You can try a free version here (free.gotomeeting.com); the other solutions offer a 30-day free trial and are priced accordingly (gotomeeting. com.au/web-conferencing-comparison) or (gotoassist.com.au). Based in Brisbane, Jac from Notch Above Bookkeeping has also found the time savings and efficiency gains from these online meeting tools to be immense. While travel time is the main efficiency, she notes the team working remotely from home offices also don’t need to invest time in hair and make-up! As a new business, building a comprehensive client database was critical for The Business Hut’s success. For

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Issue 03 / 55

to’ videos for both client and internal use. The Lite plan is free, while the Pro plan is US$9.95 a month (screencast.com). Xero also has a growing collection of free online training videos (xero.com/training).

While still in their start-up phase, The Business Hut have already found themselves comparing solutions. For a time tracking platform, they originally used Toggl but it does not interface with Xero, so they are trialling MinuteDock and Harvest. ‘We save a lot of time using a time tracker; it makes monthly invoicing so much easier and gives our clients peace of mind if they’d like to know what we’ve been working on. We would estimate that a tracker tool gives us back at least one hour every month when we calculate hours spent.’ One of the first-ever Xero add-ons, MinuteDock offers a 14-day free trial, and is priced at $US19 a month (minutedock.com). Harvest offers a 30-day free trial, and pricing starts at US$12 a month (getharvest.com). Effectively embracing cloud technology requires a bit of a mind shift. Jac sums up her approach to absorbing cloud solutions into her workflow as follows: ‘There is a host of applications out there and when I come across a task I think should be able to be streamlined, I will search for a tool to help’.

What about you? We’d love to hear what solutions you are using in your advisory practice – write to us at hello@XUMagazine.com and let us know.

Building an Add-on: lessons learned

Mark Woodbridge is the co-founder and CTO of Chaser (chaser.io). He has over 15 years experience of developing software for informatics and data analysis in both academia and industry, including developing Financial Trading Systems at Reuters Group PLC.

Most XU Magazine readers will recognise Xero not only as an increasingly comprehensive accounting solution but also the centre of a vibrant and supportive community of users, business advisors and developers. This is due in large part to the development of Xero as a platform which has led to a proliferation of complementary add-ons. So, if you’ve spotted an opportunity to extend Xero...

...perhaps to cater for the requirements of a specific industry or user group, how do you actually go about building an add-on? It’s a journey Chaser embarked on about 18 months ago and we’re enthusiastic about sharing what we’ve learnt so far... Most XU readers will recognise Xero not only as an increasingly comprehensive accounting solution but also the centre of a vibrant and supportive community of users, business advisors and developers. This is due in large part to the development of Xero as a platform which has led to a proliferation of complementary add-ons. So, if you’ve spotted an opportunity to extend Xero, perhaps to cater for the requirements of a specific industry or user group, how do you actually go about building an add-on? It’s a journey Chaser embarked on about 18 months ago and we’re enthusiastic about sharing what we’ve learnt so far... First Things First Firstly you should ensure that you’re

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attempting to solve a genuine problem preferably one you’ve experienced firsthand. And of course, you should check that there are no existing products amongst the hundreds available on the Xero marketplace that already provide a satisfactory solution. The next step is to decide on the initial functionality of your add-on, which will determine the timescale and budget for your project. It’s never too early to reach out to potential users and existing add-on partners for suggestions and advice in this regard. The process of going on to develop even a relatively simple add-on is a considerable task. You can choose to either approach an approved Developer partner or build it inhouse. Either way, you will first want to check that Xero’s API provides the functionality required by your integration. We would recommend starting with an app that just retrieves information rather than updating any accounting records in Xero itself. This reduces the scope for mistakes and subsequent loss of trust from users, as well as the time taken to gain certification. Choice of technology is

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What is #XeroUserHour? #XeroUserHour is your chance to shout-out over Twitter what youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re doing with Xero. Perhaps youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got a new Xero-related service, launching a new Xero Add-on, want to share a top-tip with other Xero users... this is your chance!

NEW!

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Starting soon on Twitter:

#XeroUserHour

XU Magazine - the independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users. Find us online at xumagazine.com

How does it work? It’s easy...

During the ‘hour’ (this will be a regular event taking place at the same time each week - the first will be announced shortly), compose a new tweet in the normal way but include the hashtag #XeroUserHour

Here at XU Magazine we’ll be watching closely for any tweets that include the hashtag #XeroUserHour.

We’ll then retweet your tweet on @xerousers

Follow what’s happening during the ‘hour’ at

twitter.com/xerousers

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Issue 03 / 59

Transforming the way we hear with Xero and Fundbox Sound makes Tim Crossley tick... In 2011, Tim founded New York Citybased Crossley Acoustics, a company that designs and builds private commercial recording studios and also applies acoustic treatments to bars, restaurants, conference rooms and other similar spaces. Prior to that, Tim worked as a freelance designer. But once a large project came his way, he figured it was time to go out wholly on his own. Tim Crossley, founder of Crossley Acoustics

Words: Jordan MacAvoy VP Marketing at Fundbox Jordan MacAvoy is the Vice President of Marketing at Fundbox and manages the company’s go-tomarket strategy. Prior to joining Fundbox, Mr. MacAvoy spent nearly 6 years at Intuit’s Demandforce, where he was the Director of Business Development, overseeing go-tomarket efforts across both emerging and established verticals. Prior to Intuit and Demandforce, he held both marketing and business development roles at a variety of seed stage and venture-backed companies. Mr. MacAvoy is a graduate of Boston University.

It proved to be a wise decision. To date, Crossley Acoustics has wrapped up more than 25 major projects; the company now employs six people. Tim and his team manage projects from conception to completion, also performing some of the onsite work themselves. “We do all the drawings, blueprints and acoustic calculations to make sure their studios [or rooms] are going to sound the way they’re supposed to sound and function the way they’re supposed to function,” Tim says. How about a project that stands out? That’s easy: Crossley Acoustics built a recording studio inside an old 1958 Airstream Trailer for the Lower East Side Girls Club in New York City. It now sits inside a building in the Alphabet City neighborhood of the East Village. “The trailer was lifted into the second floor of the building. It was pretty amazing,” Tim says. “That one was definitely interesting and fun—not to mention for a great cause. It’s a project that wows a lot of people at first glance.” Tim and his team love transforming spaces into acoustically superior rooms. But like any other business owner, the success of Crossley Acoustics is tied to the company’s ability to masterfully manage its finances. To do that, Tim relies on two modern financial tools: Xero, an accounting platform, and Fundbox, a service that helps businesses solve cash flow problems.

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Xero Fits in Your Pocket After trying out other solutions, Tim made the switch to Xero in January 2013. It was the right move, and Tim says Crossley Acoustics won’t be looking for new accounting tools any time soon. In addition to a crisp user interface that works exactly as it’s designed, Xero is packed with the powerful functionality that helps his company keep its fingers on the pulse of its finances. “There are a lot of features Xero has that I really like,” Tim explains. “I love how we don’t have to pay for additional logins, so my administrator, business partner, sales guy and accountant can get in, too. Then there are the bank feeds, which are great in making sure that we have a bird’s-eye view of our finances at all times.” The fact Xero is cloud-based doesn’t hurt either, he continues. “We’re doing our taxes right now, and whenever we modify our books, our accountant sees those changes instantaneously,” Tim says. “We love the fact that it’s cloud-based. Our team members can access the data they need from any connected device, and all changes are available in real time.” Tim also enjoys how easily Xero integrates with other applications he uses like time-tracking tool Harvest, ZenPayroll and Fundbox.

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Issue 03 / 61

Proposal writing is a necessary evil

Words: Kevin Springer, President & Co-founder of proposify.biz

Proposal writing is a necessary evil for many industries, with no guaranteed outcome. It can chew up a lot of time and as we all know, if you are in the service business, time is our product. This is why we created Proposify! Proposify streamlines your proposals in the cloud and helps you win more projects. We offer beautiful, customizable proposal templates and streamline your sales in the cloud by connecting with your favorite CRM and invoicing apps. You can save sections, snippets and fees to your library so you can drag and drop your proposals together and get them done in a fraction of the time it normally takes.

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We also let your clients legally sign-off, so you can close deals faster. We offer metrics so you know how long your clients spends in each section and notify you when your client opens the proposal. We are extremely proud to announce our recent integration with the beautiful accounting software, Xero . Our Xero integration lets you import all your contacts from Xero into Proposify. And

when your proposal is accepted by your client, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll let you specify a percentage of the initial deposit and the system will create an invoice. After your invoice is generated, you can download a PDF or link right into Xero to customize and send it. Sign up for a free trial at: proposify.biz

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Issue 03 / 63

Staying ahead of the curve The future is bright, the future for the next generation accounting firm is expert, cloud-based and interconnected. George Soros had a philosophy that every decision we make has a fatal flaw and as a business we have to focus on where that flaw is; recognising the flaw is the first step, taking action or not to correct the flaw it is the next step. Concentration on particular fee earning activities such as compliance can lead to concentration risk, particularly when technology is eroding the fee margins so it may well be worthwhile to evaluate your overall engagement strategy to ensure that you have a balanced portfolio of products and services to meet your partnership fee aspirations and your client needs. Disrupt & Engage

Bruce Campbell, Chairman, addMASS. Bruce is a passionate technology consultant with almost 20 years business management experience. With a proven track record in business development as operations director, financial manager and as a company director, Bruce is passionate about new technologies particularly those which live in the cloud.

While Software as a Service has the potential to disrupt the traditional Accountancy and Bookkeeping model it also represents a tremendous opportunity to engage with businesses on a level not possible before, delivering advice that can lead to transformational insight. This short article looks at some of the opportunities that lie ahead. Let’s consider a traditional SME relationship model: • Annual returns six months after the year end with hard to reconcile journal vouchers • Yearly meetings with grand plans for the future which never materialise • High fees for getting help from partners • Limited insight into a business’s real needs Perhaps with a simple re-alignment and active encouragement that relationship might change with the introduction of real time accounting solutions, paper scan to accounts, automated payment system together with a plethora of common disc, mail and messaging techniques without too much effort the situation may look quite different: • Real-time and interactive accounts giving year end accounts at year end • Bank reconciliations completed on demand with no intervention • VAT and PAYE direct to the HMRC

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• Regular interaction advice and guidance based on timely data Technology solutions are revolutionising the SME market. They are also empowering Accountants and Bookkeepers to deliver more back to their clients without tearing up the old rule book. We think it’s about taking the best from both worlds and blending a strategy that plays to your team’s strengths. Knowing Vs Doing We have a tendency to undervalue what we already know and to change, modify and upgrade what we are doing, sometimes riding roughshod over best practices because we are programmed to believe that old fashioned is bad and new is better. The first thing lots of people do when they start new jobs is to do things differently than those before them because inherently we want to make things ‘our way’. The problem arises when doing things in the old way is actually better and when you actually look at a methodology you will often find that unless there is a disciplined workforce the way the old way happens can be very different from the way it is supposed to happen. Knowing and doing are vastly different. Here’s the problem: “Everybody already knows that” is very different from “Everybody already does that.” Just because a solution is known and proclaimed it doesn’t mean it is done. Even more critical, just because a solution is implemented occasionally, doesn’t mean it is implemented consistently or effectively. We assume that new solutions are needed if we want to make real progress, but that isn’t always the case. Consider the incredible sums of money that are focused on pharmaceutical research and drug development (i.e. seeking new solutions). And then the 9th Century Balds Leechbook cure that is killing off MRSA Bacteria so many years on! (www.popsci.com/ancient-medicalremedy-works-against-modern-resistantbacteria) Technology is facilitating, more readily, the

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Issue 03 / 65

5 reasons to ditch Excel as your rostering tool Kristin Harris explains why Excel spreadsheets are a poor choice for work scheduling. If you’re the owner or manager of a business that is still relying on Excel spreadsheets as your rostering tool, I have one very important question for you. Why?

Words: Kristin Harris Kristin Harris is the General Manager of leading online work scheduling and people management platform Deputy.

It’s hard enough figuring out how many staff you need to work at any given time, let alone keeping track of who’s available and able - to work which particular shifts. The consequences of not scheduling enough staff can be so detrimental to your business in terms of being able to provide a satisfactory level of service, maintaining compliance with employment laws and your own business rules not to mention overworked or stressed staff and of course lost sales. On the flip side, rostering on too many staff is simply a waste of resources and money. It’s a drain on your profitability. And if that isn’t enough to make you reconsider your use of Excel as your primary work scheduling tool, here are five other really good reasons to replace your spreadsheets right now. 1. No built-in calendar This is not strictly true – if you are an Excel master then I believe there is a way. You can follow a ten step process to set up the built-in calendar control function in some versions of Excel. But only some. For us mere mortals however, it’s certainly not easy to use, and requires a great deal of your time (and patience) to set up and implement. Remember, Excel is a spreadsheet tool. It wasn’t specifically designed to help you schedule your staff. However, with dedicated work scheduling tools, they’re built around a calendar and designed from the get-go to help you schedule your workers easily and painlessly. Online software tools like Deputy help ensure you cover all your shifts with the right person while the process is

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both efficient and less stressful. With scheduling conflict management, you can’t roster on an unqualified or untrained member of staff to specific shifts, and you can’t mistakenly schedule an individual to work more than one shift at the same time. With the built-in calendar, the rates for weekends, and public holidays are automatically factored in to your forecasts. And if you have to meet a certain criteria, for example, number of shifts, number of people, maximum working hour per week, and so on, you can set up the business rules in Deputy so that you’re always compliant. 2. Setting up formulas Again, for Excel gurus, this may be no big deal, but for the rest of us, I’m sure you’ve got better things to do with your time (like running your business) than spending hours creating the formulas for labour costing. With Deputy you produce a fully costed roster forecast really quickly showing total hours and dollars. And because Deputy uses actual award rules to calculate costs, you can be guaranteed of 100% accuracy in your cost calculations. 3. No communication If you’re trying to build a motivated, well informed workforce, then communication is key. Tell me how does your Excel work schedule spreadsheet pinned up in the lunch room, or emailed to staff help you achieve this? It doesn’t. Publishing a roster then soliciting feedback and changes and then republishing is not a great use of anyone’s time. When individuals are running late or have called in sick, how do you replace these staff members without endless telephone calls. An Excel spreadsheet can’t begin to help

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Issue 03 / 67

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XU Magazine - the independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users. Find us online at xumagazine.com

Words: Heather Smith

Blueprint for a case study Profiling a real-life client via a case study is a powerful way to share with potential customers what your business delivers, and explain how your business can help them. A compelling story resonates with people and is proof your solution works. Case studies are an essential element of your content marketing toolkit, and can be used on business websites or brochures, and used in different mediums like podcasts or videos. To facilitate the development of your own killer case studies, here’s a simple guide split into three parts: - An explanation of the different elements of the case study. - Fourteen areas to cover or questions to ask your case study client – simply substitute ‘the solution’ for the product or service you provide. - An example case study – Linen Hire from Di Simmons, implementing RentalSaaS. (This example case study is interspersed throughout this guide in the green boxes.) The essentials To give your story authority, gather the following key information about your case study client: 1) client’s name 2) overview of the business 3) business age 4) name of key contact 5) contact details for potential clients wanting to verify accuracy of the case study. Founded by Di Simmons 18 years ago, family based business Linen Hire from Di Simmons offers one of Australia’s largest ranges of high-end linen hire to the hospitality and event industry in Victoria, Australia (www.linenhiredi. com.au). The problem Now paint a picture of what the business looked like before using your solution, answering the following:

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6) What problems or challenges did the business face before starting to use ‘the solution’? The current Owner/Director David Simmons joined the business ten years ago. With his mother’s retirement looming, David realised he needed to download important client information from ‘her head’. Initially he made the mistake of choosing a clunky old hire management database, and started a long and expensive struggle with the rigid solution. The journey to find the solution Next, explain how the client started the process of exploring and evaluating other options. Include the answer to the following: 7) How did you try to resolve ‘your problem’? When David moved the business accounts to BPO Connect, they were encouraged by the firm to adopt Xero as their accounting package. BPO Connect took responsibility for switching all the data from their old system to Xero. David describes the move to Xero as ‘seamless and easy’; however, the old hire management database was still there, so they were doubling up on the invoicing process – mailing out paper invoices and re-inputting the data into Xero. They explained this cumbersome work process to BPO Connect’s Managing Director, Arjuna Samarakoon, and he encouraged David to look at RentalSaaS – a solution specifically built for the rental-hire industry that ‘talks’ to Xero.

>> Issue 03 / 69

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Issue 03 / 71

A great excuse to doodle... Karen Reyburn (MD of the Profitable Firm) discovered sketchnoting in June of 2014 and was instantly ‘hooked’. Sketchnoting is a form of visual note-taking that incorporates a mix of handwriting, drawings, shapes, and other visual elements in a way that helps you remember and share what you’re listening to in an incredibly powerful way.

Accountant / Bookkeeper Directory

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020 8354 9000 Interested in appearing here? To find out more please email advertising@ xumagazine.com 72 / Issue 03

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Issue 03 / 73

An alternative use of Xero Words: LC Clarke and CM Sabin of Crunchers

Xero can be considered a disruptive technology, here to challenge the complacency of other software providers. Crunchers Accountants uses Xero as the basis of a new approach to the accounting market, giving business owners the opportunity to enjoy ‘Alternative Accounting’. Crunchers want to disrupt the accountancy marketing and kill off the traditional business model of exchanging of time for money. The reality is that many firms using Xero still think using this model, although they may sweeten the deal for clients with a fixed fee. Crunchers have a radical new approach to accountancy in which knowledge is exchanged for money. Bob Harper, Crunchers’ Managing Director at Crunchers explains it in the following way: “We aren’t really interested in discussing accounts with clients; the numbers in the accounts are always in the past – so

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they are just a history lesson. Crunchers have the mindset that annual and management accounts are worthless in terms of business management – by that I mean they are worth a lot less than other numbers the business owner could be looking at.” Instead of outdated, compliance-focussed services, Crunchers seek to improve the lives of business owners by helping clients to create better businesses. Crunchers transforms accountants into knowledge-givers. We see that the future of accounting lies in the development of easily accessible packaged knowledge for clients and in the expansion of accountants’ skillsets. This vision gave rise to Improving the Numbers, an exciting new service utilising Xero’s technology to assert innovation at the heart of business. Using Xero in innovative ways creates interesting and fulfilling work, but this approach isn’t without risks. There is no certainty in how the client’s business will develop, but with that comes the offer of unlimited potential. Carefully calculated risk has the benefit of greater rewards in the form of high calibre clients. By adopting this approach, there is freedom to take calculated risks safe

in the knowledge the Xero system can provide support, regardless of the direction the business takes. This groundbreaking approach is attractive to the elite of innovative and skilled digital natives looking for a place to flourish; remarkable individuals looking to challenge conventional business approaches and improve small businesses. If an accountancy firm wants to be interesting and marketable (to business owners and the best employees), this is the way to use Xero: as an integrated platform providing an indispensable service to businesses. This alternative style of accounting gives opportunity for growth and new value creation through an entrepreneurial vision. Crunchers chose Xero not just for its “beautiful accounting software” but because of the ethos behind this, particularly the business network or ‘ecosystem’ that Xero has established of 475,000+ business owners and 10,000+ advisors across the globe. Being part of this ecosystem makes businesses smarter and faster, unlocking a world of potential and freedom for any agile young company.

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Issue 03 / 75

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XU Magazine - the independent magazine for Xero users, by Xero users. Find us online at xumagazine.com