Xero and reports

cubix

We have been using Xero for a number of years but have never used it to
its full potential I believe , monthly reports etc to see how the business is doing , coupled with using a different payroll package. I wouldn't really get involved in the admin side of the office but would know bits but not enough.Would keep an eye on what's going out/coming. We will most likely be moving accountants, they never seemed keen on Xero from a reporting point of view for an end of year and were looking for us to change over to sage or similar, this may be one of the reason we never got the most out of Xero.

Gone into partnership with someone so we would like to keep a better eye on what the business is doing month to month/ each quarter in relation to printing off reports in Xero to see exactly what the business is doing as opposed to waiting till the Account does the end of year which by then the ship has sailed and money is lost.At least with the monthly we can see if are over staffed, not making profit on certain one off jobs etc

So hoping someone can give me an A-Z of what needs to be checked on a monthly/quarterly basis to keep a business in check, I know some will be obvious but would be gratefull to get the checklist to make sure we are ticking the boxes. Going to start using Xero for both invoicing and payroll and believe you can tie in bank accounts so I take it we should be able to print off a easy to read monthly report out of Xero that will show all that is required at a glance.

IF we were looking to get the office person trained up who inputs all the info (receipts/invoices etc) to make full use of Xero and be able to print off the relevant reports/info when required could some one recommend a 2-3day course in Dublin/Meath or does Xero have easy to follow "how to's". From what I can see we are doing all the necessary steps otherwise the accountant would have been on but just not in away that they can all be checked in one easy to read report as opposed to pulling out various lever arch folders and cross referencing. The information may already be in Xero but we have utilised it.

davindub

cubix wrote: »

We have been using Xero for a number of years but have never used it to
its full potential I believe , monthly reports etc to see how the business is doing , coupled with using a different payroll package. I wouldn't really get involved in the admin side of the office but would know bits but not enough.Would keep an eye on what's going out/coming. We will most likely be moving accountants, they never seemed keen on Xero from a reporting point of view for an end of year and were looking for us to change over to sage or similar, this may be one of the reason we never got the most out of Xero.

Gone into partnership with someone so we would like to keep a better eye on what the business is doing month to month/ each quarter in relation to printing off reports in Xero to see exactly what the business is doing as opposed to waiting till the Account does the end of year which by then the ship has sailed and money is lost.At least with the monthly we can see if are over staffed, not making profit on certain one off jobs etc

So hoping someone can give me an A-Z of what needs to be checked on a monthly/quarterly basis to keep a business in check, I know some will be obvious but would be gratefull to get the checklist to make sure we are ticking the boxes. Going to start using Xero for both invoicing and payroll and believe you can tie in bank accounts so I take it we should be able to print off a easy to read monthly report out of Xero that will show all that is required at a glance.

IF we were looking to get the office person trained up who inputs all the info (receipts/invoices etc) to make full use of Xero and be able to print off the relevant reports/info when required could some one recommend a 2-3day course in Dublin/Meath or does Xero have easy to follow "how to's". From what I can see we are doing all the necessary steps otherwise the accountant would have been on but just not in away that they can all be checked in one easy to read report as opposed to pulling out various lever arch folders and cross referencing. The information may already be in Xero but we have utilised it.

A lot of Xero information is online, I'm not aware of any training packages but Xero is an accounts package, and aimed at generic businesses, i.e. SOPL and SOFP will not be tailored to your business and require journal entries to close out the period (e.g. monthly). The bank Rec function appears easy but often variances arise and it is time consuming and tricky to reconcile bank statement lines to account transaction lines, after 3 years of not having this done I'd imagine it will take a lot of work to get the package to the point where someone unskilled might be able to complete.

Financial control is actually quite varied, metrics will differ depending on industry and your companies activities, it requires some knowledge and experience to create a set of useful metrics without just dumping a lot of information into reports which will remain unread. But commonly bank recs, creditors recs, cashflow are the critical items to control. Really you need a qualified accountant or someone very experienced in the position, but a lot of businesses cannot afford this so they outsource to accountants, I know a couple of businesses have varying degrees of their functions outsourced to a company near Blanchardstown, but your own accountant might offer the same.