October was a busy month for Xero Canada. All personnel was deployed in some capacity to support Xero's mandate to personally visit accounting professionals throughout Canada in their 13 venue tour.
What I love about the Xero team is they are not just beautiful humans, they are accounting professionals themselves.
They get me. They understand the challenges and fears of running a practice. They get that selling to me is a No! But supporting me is a Yes!
As we dive into Xero in our own practice (Moore Details) we soaked up 3 venues to get a greater understanding of what makes this platform the preferred option for major accounting practices like LiveCa and Connect CPA.
In just over one year our practice has quickly found that Xero is a streamlined accounting system that makes it easier for us to move big data. There is less monkey business with having to reconcile data twice. We simply review the bank feeds for accuracy instead. No separate bank reconciliation module is required. With such we've saved on average 30% in time costs with the sample data of clients moved from QBO to Xero.
When we started our Xero journey a year ago the sales tax module was not in product. For us it wasn't a deal-breaker as we were completing the sales tax filings manually using a journal entry method in both accounting systems we support. It was the only way we could ensure 100% that the filings were correct.
Being part of the Beta testers for the GST/HST Tax module I was astonished at how dedicated the development team was to solve this problem for Canadians. Low and behold, the team had a sturdy platform for me to use in September. That's only 11 months after promising to bring GST/HST reporting to Canada from Xero's last roadshow in 2018. We launched it for two clients and was pleasantly surprised at the strong core this module has. We offered a few suggestions and by our second roadshow stop in
Ottawa, those exact features were baked into the mainstream product!
Check out this feature by going to Accounting > Reports > Tax - GST/HST Return in Xero (infographic above).
Here's a quick recap of all the great features released.
CIBC SmartBanking alliance to bring in cleaner data via a direct integration (API) into Xero.
Ready for open banking to get cleaner and better data just like our counterparts in Australia and New Zealand.
Deeper integration with Stripe for smart and easy reconciling along with the ability to invoice automatically on a recurring basis and auto prompts to customers for expiring credit cards! Xero has strategically built an integration with Stripe instead of building its own in-house solution to provide a better customer experience.
Strong Hubdoc learning with 200% increase in documents going through the portal than 12 months ago. This feeds Hubdoc's learning core that will make data easier to build algorithms and help Xero in their pursuit of code-free accounting.
Small Business permissions now available in Hubdoc for you to set permissions on what your client can see and do. For example, you can set permission to allow your client to only load documents and not muck up the portal!
PDF Splitter now available in Hubdoc so that one scan with multiple receipts can be captured individually.
GIFI mapping now lives to link a chart of accounts to export the file into tax software like Caseware. Our boutique bookkeeping firm is now appeasing our CPA friends by making it even easier for them to wrap up the year-end but selecting the GIFI codes of their choice for our client’s chart of accounts. This feature is allowing bookkeepers and CPAs to work collaboratively to get data sooner to our mutual client.
Notice to Reader & Reports templates available on a global basis on your Xero file which can be customized on a client basis. This is a HUGE time save for our firm which focuses' on client feedback. Previously we were customizing reports for each client on a monthly basis. Now we can create a company Management Report template in our XeroHQ and pull that same report for EVERY client! But it gets better once we customize that report for the client it is there to easily replicate for our next monthly or quarterly report. If you are new to Xero this can be overwhelming. I recommend that you connect with your account manager to get a private session on how to streamline your practice using this feature. Allison Hawkins ofHawkins & Co and Canada's Xero National Ambassador absolutely love this feature in her practice.
We got a sneak peek at Xero's 30-day cash flow tool that will be rolling out shortly. This impressive dashboard will give accounting professionals insights for 30 days on potential issues that may impact their business.
Our journey with Xero continues as we understand how we can use this clean interface to build better workflows for our data-hungry clients. We are equipped with a solid understanding of applications and experimenting on how each integration fits and ties into Xero.
Some things for you:
If you feel that now is the time to adopt Xero or perhaps you are just a little curious here is how to sign up for a Partner Account.
If you are in Calgary, check out this event November 26th 2019 as we talk about our Journey Advisory with our good friend Twyla Verhelst of Co-founder of Helm Cashflow and Twenty Eighty Financial Services.
I'd love to hear more about your journey to Xero on our Fintech Details initiative to make bookkeeping simple. We are found on all social media channels and openly discuss how to use technology to streamline our workflows. We are your collaborators, not competitors.
Yours in apps,
