Your First Week on Xero
A Complete Guide To
Getting Started on Xero
- Key Features
- Eight Steps
- Integration Tools
Key Features of Xero For Small Businesses
Invoicing and Billing Like many other software platforms, Xero makes it easy
to send invoices to your clients and track payments,
making it easy to manage your accounts receivable.
Xero also allows you to enter bills from your vendors,
helping you keep track of your accounts payable.
Bank Reconciliation Xero offers automated bank reconciliation, which
makes it easy to match your bank transactions with
the transactions you've entered in Xero, such as
invoices and bills. This will be an enormous time saver
when running your small business and will help ensure
the accuracy of your financial records.
Expense Tracking Through the software, you can track your expenses
easily by either entering them manually or importing
them from your bank transactions. You can categorise
your expenses using your customised chart of
accounts, helping you analyse your spending and
make informed financial decisions.
Xero provides a wide range of financial reports, such
Financial Reporting
as profit and loss statements, balance sheets, and
cash flow statements, which give you insights into your
business's financial health.
The software provides tools to help you manage your
Cash Flow
cash flow effectively. You can easily track your income
Management
and expenses, view cash flow projections, and set up
automated bank feeds to reconcile your bank
transactions.
Payroll Management Xero offers payroll management features that allow
you to set up and manage payroll for your employees.
This includes registering for Single Touch Payroll,
calculating wages, managing leave requests, and
generating payslips.
Integrations Xero integrates with over a thousand third-party
applications, such as payment gateways, e-
commerce platforms, CRM systems, and more. This
allows you to streamline your business processes and
eliminate manual data entry by automating tasks
across different software systems.
Collaboration One of the features we love the most, Xero offers
collaboration features that allow you to work with your
accountants in real time. This means you can easily
share access to your financial data, collaborate on
transactions, and communicate within the software,
making it for us to assist and manage your business
finances.
Scalability As your business starts to scale up, so will the
demands on your accounting. Xero offers various
pricing plans which will allow you to handle increased
transaction volumes and additional features to
accommodate your expanding business requirements.
How to Use Xero in 12 Easy Steps
1 Sign up for Xero
If you haven’t done so already, you’ll need to sign up to get started.
This can be done through Xero’s website, where you’ll need to choose
a plan and enter some of your business and financial details.
Xero offers different subscription plans with varying capabilities, so
choose the one that best fits your business's needs and budget.
2 Set up the details of your small business
Once you've signed up, you'll need to set up your organisation details
in Xero.
To do this, go to Organisation Settings to input or update your
business’s contact details such as email, business name,
organisation type and description and more. Ensure that you have an
Australian Business Number (ABN) and a registered office address as
this information needs to be displayed on any invoices you issue.
3 Set up your financial settings
Now it’s time to set up your financial settings, which you can find
through Settings > Advanced Settings > Financial Settings. Here you’ll
need to input details such as your currency, financial year-end, and
tax rates.
You can also set up default accounts for sales and expenses, as well
as configure your tax settings.
4 Add your business' branding
Customising your invoices and other financial documents with your
business's branding is an important step to establish your brand
identity.
To set up your invoices with your terms of payment, contract, logo
and more, go to Settings > Invoice Settings. Here, you can also
customise invoice templates and set up email templates with your
branding.
5 Set up your chart of accounts
Your chart of accounts is a key component of your financials in Xero.
It's essential to set up your chart of accounts accurately to track your
income, expenses, and other financial transactions.
You can add, customise, or delete these accounts to match the needs
of your business. To make changes to your accounts, go to
Accounting > Chart of Accounts. Xero provides a default chart of
accounts, but you can customise it to suit your business's needs. You
can also import your existing chart of accounts from a CSV file.
If you are unsure about this step, you can reach out to one of our
accountants about getting your chart of accounts set up correctly.
6 Set up your bank account feed
The next step in getting started with Xero is to set up your bank
account feeds. This allows for one of the best features of Xero where
you can automatically import transactions from your bank accounts,
credit cards, PayPal accounts and more.
Xero makes the process of bank reconciliation incredibly easy for
small business owners, saving time, ensuring accuracy and enabling
insightful reporting. To complete this step, you can find ‘Add Bank
Account’ in the accounting tab.
7 Set up payroll and register for STP
If you need to manage payroll, Xero offers payroll features that make
it easy to set up and manage your payroll processes. You can set up
payroll items, enter employee details, set up pay rates, and even
manage leave requests and timesheets. Xero also integrates with
various payroll providers so you can tailor payroll management to
your business.
In Australia, if you have employees, you need to comply with Single
Touch Payroll (STP) requirements, which you can easily register for
within the Xero software.
Once registered, Xero will automatically submit your payroll
information to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) on your behalf.
8 Add payment services & connect apps
The last step we recommend our clients do when setting up is linking
active payment services to their Xero account, including services like
PayPal, Stripe, and GoCardless.
There are also over 1000 integration options with third-party apps on
Xero for you to consider. Using these integrations, you’ll be able to
streamline repetitive processes and save yourself some time in areas
where your business needs it the most. Xero offers apps with a wide
range of functionalities from cash flow forecasting to document
management and many more.
To finish your Xero set up, we recommend you research these
integration options to find the ones that will be most beneficial to your
business.
Popular Third-Party Apps
Hubdoc Paypal Spotlight
BigCommerce Xero Expenses Float
Shopify Mailchimp GoCardless
ReceiptBank Hubspot CRM Chaser
Stripe iTrade Deputy
Xero Projects Planday Airwallex
Tradify DEAR Unleashed
Square Vend Clockon
Tyro Expensify Veeqo
Tanda DiviPay Timely
If you’re getting set up on Xero for the first time and are unsure of
what integration options would be beneficial to your business, please
get in touch with a member of our accounting team.
Our accountants will be able to walk you through every step of setting
up your accounting software to ensure you are best placed to
manage and monitor your financial and tax activity.
