Xero Accounting Software is all about managing your finances and the related information in a very reader-friendly manner. Whether you own a small-medium enterprise or run a big business, this tool will make your life easy. Running a business is all about knowing your numbers, where you stand in terms of the financial health of the business and much more. Xero basically allows you to do that by generating reports that are helpful in creating a clear and bigger picture. These reports have an easy layout, simple and understandable. There is an option of editing so that you can make custom data according to your requirements. The software is offering a huge variety of functions that you can play with and even lets you import and export this data easily.
Through the platform of Investment Working Group, we would love to give our readers a learning experience in order to manage their financials in a better way. We will be providing information that is going to be helpful for your investments, business and other personal finances. To understand this, it is important that your data is well structured and organised. For this purpose, Xero Accounting Software is the best and most reliable as it provides an easy approach to start with even for first-time users.
So, let’s take a look at how the reporting section of Xero works and what different features it has to offer.
Reports Page in Xero Accounting Software
For creating reports in Xero, first, you got to get the software installed or you can even try their 30-days trial to see how it works. After logging in to your account you will be directed to a home page. Here at the top, there are different pages available from which you have to select the ‘accounting’. Once you click on it, there will be a drop-down menu and you will see the option of reports. By clicking here, you will land on the Report Page of this software.
This page will show an array of reports in Xero that can be generated using this tool. All of these reports are categorized into seven headings that are; Financial, Tax, Accounting, Fixed Assets, Sales, Purchases and Inventory. We will talk about a few of these reports and how are they generated in the coming headlines. First, let’s take a deeper look at the options this page is going to offer you.
Tabs and their function
On the Report Page, you will see five tabs including summary, custom, drafts, publishes and archived. Each has its own function and can be added and edited as the user likes it. The summary tab shows all the categories and their subcategories of reports that can be generated using this software. From here you can generate a new report as well. You can keep your reports in drafts and they can be viewed under the drafts tab. Or if you wish to see your published reports, click on the Published tabs. Similarly, you have a function for customizing the reports especially made according to your organisation. Then you have an option to archive the reports you have generated which can be restored at any point. In this way, your reports are organised and grouped together.
Some of the options are to be extended by clicking on ‘more reports’ and you cal close the by clicking ‘fewer reports’. There is another feature where you can add the most frequently used reports to your favourites. You can do so by clicking on the star right next to the report you want to highlight on the summary page. These will then be added to the accounting drop-down menu.
How to generate reports in Xero Accounting Software?
Let’s take a look at how these reports in Xero are generated step by step. First, we will explain some of the steps that are to be followed for each type of report that you will be generating. Then we will explain the procedure by taking an example of two reports from the summary section.
Choose a report from available options
As mentioned earlier, there are seven different categories of reports in Xero that you can make. Each of these is further broken down into a wide range of other smaller reports. These seven categories of reports are;
Financial
- Balance Sheet
- Budget Manager
- Cash Summary
- Movements in Equity
- Statement of Cash Flows
- Profit & Loss
Tax
- Sales Tax Report
Accounting
- Account Transaction
- Bank Reconciliation Summary
- Blank Report
- Cash Validation Customer Report
- Contact Transactons – Summary
- Duplicate Statement Lines
- Foreign Currency Gains & Losses
- General Legder
- Income Expenses
- Journal Report
- Trial Balance
Fixed Assets
- Depriciation Schedule
- Fixed Asset Reconciliation
Sales
- Aged Receivables Details
- Customer Invoice Report
Purchases
- Aged Payable Details
- Outstanding Bills
- Supplier Invoice Report
Inventory
- Inventory Item Summary
- Sales by Item
Select date range and period
Before inserting any data, you need to set a time period for which the reports are to be generated. On top of the screen, you can click on the date range for which you will have to enter the starting month and ending month of the year. Then you have to select a number of periods. Each period represents one month thus there are options for one period, a quarter, half a year and so on.
Choose Accounting Basis
On the extreme right side under the date range, you can see a blue button saying ‘More’. Click on this for a drop-down menu as shown in the image below.
This menu will give you an option of choosing your accounting to be in accrual or cash. Then there is an option of displaying the amounts in decimal. If you need so, click on this specification. Then you can select show codes and percentage of trading income as well.
Update Report
Once you have selected all the specifications and opted for your options to be displayed, click on the update button. This will apply all the selected specifications to your given data.
How to edit, export and print reports?
In Xero, you can always play around with reports as it allows you to edit them at any point. Whether the desired report is in drafts or published. Simply click on the tab where the report is placed and then click on the specific report you want to edit. Here go to the settings and you can edit and change whatever you want to. Then click on update to save all the changes. From here you can even export your file or by clicking on the print icon you can also get the report printed. Everything is easy to locate and understand which makes this software user friendly.
Adding reports to favourites
After your reports are ready, they can be easily accessible by adding them to favourites. If you go to the summary page in the accounting tab, all the available reports have a star on their left side. Click on this star and it will be blue. These will then be added to favourites. The favourite reports are shown directly in the accounting tab menu. Add all the reports here which are frequently used to make it more efficient. You can see it in the image down below
There are a lot of options available in this software to create reports that suit your requirement however we are going to explain only two here. We will try to explain everything step by step for easy understanding
Aged Receivables Details
Aged receivable is a list of outstanding invoices from your clients for which the service or product has been delivered. This means that the amount of work done is yet to be received. It is believed that a simple formula for aged receivables in 30, 60 and 90 days in which the outstanding amount should be received.
In Xero, the aged receivable is a detailed report showing the required information of every client that owes you money for a particular service or product. Any invoice that is paid but has a payment date after it was reported will go into the outstanding invoice. In this report, you can apply specifications according to which the final report will be generated. So let’s take a look at these options available.
Features & Functions
First of all, add the current date on which the data is being entered. For instance, if I’m adding an invoice today, I will add 27th July 2021. Then you have to select that on which date the receivables are ageing. It can be either on the due date or on the invoice date. After selecting this, you need to decide the period for aged receivables. All of these tabs can be seen in the figure below
Then you can choose which information of a client or n invoice you want to save in record. For this purpose click on columns and a drop-down menu will appear showing all the options that you can select from. The menu looks like this
There are other customization options as well like you can group a particular set of invoices together. They can be grouped on the basis of your selected criteria such as by contact or due date etc. Here, you can also apply a filter while searching for any particular invoice. After all the specifications are applied, click on update to see the results. All of your data will be visible in the list just like you wanted. There is an option of adding text at the bottom of the page where you can write your notes for a particular entry.
Balance Sheet Report
The second report that we are going to highlight in this article is the balance sheet as most people are aware of its importance. It shows the overall financial balance of a particular business or organisation. The main elements of the balance sheet are assets, liabilities and equity. To get to the balance sheet report, you will need to go to the accounting tab from the main menu where you will find reports in the drop-down. After clicking on the reports here, you will be directed to the summary where you can find the balance sheet under the heading financial. Click here to land on the following page
Features & Functions
In the figure above you can see two fields where the data must be entered. The first one says the date when the fiscal year will end so you can add that accordingly. The options available are the current date, end of the month, end of the quarter and end of the fiscal year. Then you see the comparison periods. Whatever you will enter in the date section will depend on how long the period will be. Let’s say you chose the end of the month from the date field. Then one period in the comparison field will represent one month.
You can again choose the accounting basis here as mentioned above by clicking on the more button. After all the specifications are made, click on the update button to see the latest version of your data. At the bottom of the page, there are a few more functions including the edit layout. This will take you to a page that will look like this
You can see a layout here. If you click on the heading, a box will open on your right side offering few options where you can edit the data. Here you can edit the heading title, you can choose if the heading is supposed to be on the credit or debit side. After adding all the requirements you can simply save the changes and they will appear in your balance sheet. The editing box will look like this
By the end of the report making process, you can always save it as customs. You can also export the report in different formats that include PDF, Excel and Google Sheets.
Report Formatting
If you wish to format your report, you can simply click on the edit layout as mentioned above and it will take to a page of the balance sheet as shown above. At the top of your page, you will see an editing bar with multiple options and will look something like this.
So first we have T that says ‘Text’. By clicking on this, a block will be added to the sheet where you can write something such as notes or anything important. This text block could be a standard one or a numbered one. Then the next we have says schedule icon. If you click on this a section will appear on your balance sheet where you add entries to your balance sheet. You can choose accounts to be added to the list. Moreover, you can place them either on the debit or credit side. If you open this toolbar, it will appear as follows
Other useful formatting options such as moving your blocks up and down, adding or deleting a text box, adding a footer or a page break, everything is easily accessible through this software. When these tools are utilised in a good way, a very structured report is generated at the end so you must be aware of all the functions and their details.
The Last Word
Xero is one of the most user-friendly accounting software that is available online. Once you get a hands-on experience with all of its functions, it can create very well organised financial data for your business. The transparency of data is everything for running a successful business because it enables you to figure out any problem on time. Xero helps you to understand your company a little better. Through the variety of reports in Xero that can be generated, the financial picture of a business becomes very clear. You can also take look at how the chart of accounts works in Xero Accounting Software.
investmentsworking.co.uk wants you to learn all the amazing features of their software so that you can manage all your personal finances in a much better and organised manner. We will help you understand this software thoroughly so that you can achieve your goal of maintaining and recording all your financial data.
