We passionately believe that automating your processes by using online apps will save you time, but sometimes we talk to business owners who aren’t convinced to start with.
We’ve been talking to a lovely and very hard-working client about moving to Xero for a few years (let’s call her Summer) but it never seemed to be the right time. We finally caught up with Summer this week to really dig into her invoicing and payment collection processes, and managed to give her a day a week back!
The current situation
- Every Friday about 80 weekly invoices are raised in microsoft word
- These are printed 2 times and driven to Summer to check
- Any errors or extra charges are handwritten onto the invoices
- Invoices are updated in microsoft word at a later date
- Invoices are filed in a customer’s file
- Any changes to the weekly amounts are given to customers on a post-it note
- Customers can pay cash, cheque or online, and are given a copy of the invoice on payment
- The other invoice copy is saved in a “paid invoices” folder
- Customer payments are manually matched to customer invoices
- Outgoings are handwritten into a red book once a month
- Bank reconciliation is updated manually, once a month
The new way!
We’ve removed some processes altogether, and automated many more:
- Automated: Xero repeating invoices are created every Friday, and saved as draft
- Summer checks and updates any invoices
- She then bulk approves the invoices (all 80) and bulk emails the invoices to customers – No printing of invoices!
- Automated: Gocardless collects payment of invoices on their due date and notifies customers
- Automated: When the Xero invoice is paid, Satagosends the customer a thank you!
- Automated: Supplier invoices and receipts are sent to Dext and pushed to Xero
- Automated: Direct bank feeds are set up in Xero, pushing daily transactions into Xero
- Bank reconciliation is now processed daily
Changes for our hard-working business owner
- Summer can now have Fridays off, as she can manage all of this from anywhere, and there is very little to do
- Most of the invoicing and payment collection is done automatically
- Summer’s team will be taught how to check and update the repeating invoices and bulk approve and send
- She has more visibility of how her business is doing, and can manage this on a daily basis
- Summer has reassurance and peace of mind that these processes are happening automagically!
- We can now move onto supporting her with her future plans!
The next step
This is just the first step, we’ll get this running smoothly, and then at Summer’s pace we will introduce further time saving apps and solutions.
These could include Ignition for customer contracts and direct debits, Capsule or Insightly for customer contact info and other data. Soldo prepaid credit card for staff expenses, Capitalise for funding needs.
We’ll also run through our Clarity Action Plan looking at where Summer’s business is now, and where she could get to in the next 12 months. We’ll then set goals and actions, and walk by Summer’s side as her accountability buddy, with regular meetings to hold her accountable, and keep her moving towards these goals.
We will now have the data at our fingertips to work with our financial advisor Kevin Morris to make sure Summer has a financial plan for her future, and is paying as little tax as legally possible!
If you’d like our support please get in touch!
Thank you for reading.
Sharon
