Starting a business can be overwhelming and quite difficult at the same time. It requires more than just paperwork. You start with a business plan. You also add an estimated budget and everything related to the financial feasibility of the project that you wish to start. However, when the data starts to come you don’t know how to put it together. Managing and organising all of your data could be a difficult task. Especially for the beginners. Mostly what businesses do is hire accounting professionals but that too might be not feasible for a start-up. For organising your data, there is multiple software available on the internet. The one we would like to highlight here is Xero Accounting Software – a cloud-based online accounting software. You can do all possible tasks that are related to finances and accounting on this software. This includes bank reconciliation to generating reports and managing your cash flows and even chart of accounts.
With Investment Working Group, you can learn how to manage your finances. As we pay great attention to helping you understand your numbers. Knowing financial health is the sole purpose of running a business, which is why we would want you to stay ahead of the game by managing your data properly. Xero is one of the many tools that help you doing so.
What is Xero?
Xero is cloud-based online accounting software with over 1 million subscribers from 180 countries as reported in 2019. The reason behind its massive usage is it’s easy to navigate design with huge flexibility to customize the product. You don’t have to download and install the software because it is available online. So, a big task just got eliminated before you actually start working on it. Xero accounting software is a platform that will help you manage all the financial records. It also allows you to manage your personal financial activities in a synchronized manner.
What is the beautiful thing about this software is that people who aren’t accounting professionals can easily learn, understand and use this to get a picture of what’s happening. The transparent the better. Complicated data can hide problems very easily especially in a grown business. This tool will let you monitor and manage your data and helps you in increasing revenue. Most of the financial tasks will be simplified using Xero. Let’s take a deeper look at this tool so read ahead.
How is it helpful for business?
Xero Accounting Software can take all of the hassle required to keep up your financial records. It saves time, money and effort and provides an organised, well-structured product. So, that’s a win-win situation. Especially for start-ups, it becomes easier for the team to keep everything on track or even identify a problem if there is any. One company account can be assessed by multiple team members at the same time so the picture gets clear to all.
Through this software, you can do almost everything that you might need for any audit or tax payment. As there are several options available to generate financial reports. Not only this but it keeps you updated and alerts you if there is any financial task to be done. Such as paying a bill or receiving an amount against a particular invoice. In short, it’s a managing tool for your business that is available online, provides secured cloud data. And above all, you can learn to use it easily.
Now let’s take a look at how you can set up your account on Xero Accounting Software. Don’t worry, it’s quite easy!
Setting up account with Xero
Before we move on to different features and functions available in this software, we need to create an account.
How to sign up?
For first-time users, you need to sign up where some personal information is required. You will have to add your first name, last name, email address, contact number and location. The sign-up screen would look like this.
Here, click on the security check to prove that you are not a robot. Then agree to t all the terms and conditions as are necessary for signing up. Click on the ‘next’ to get a confirmation text on the next screen. After doing so, you will get a confirmation email at the address you provided while signing up. Open the email and confirm that it is you to activate your account. After doing so, go back to the home page and log in by entering your email address and password.
30 days trial
As mentioned earlier, Xero is a cloud-based software so you don’t need to download, install or update the software. You need to pay for its subscriptions and offer multiple plans. However, you can try using its features for free by opting for a 30-days trial. The process for getting a trial is very simple, just log in and your period will be started. You will have access to almost all of the functions of this software. Thus, allows you to test whether it will suit your business or not. Or how will you be managing your data here and in what form? Another amazing feature of this software allows you the transfer your data very easily. Whether is importing your data to Xero or exporting your data from Xero into PDF, Excel or Google sheets. All of these features are available in the trial as well.
Through this trial you can get a;
- secure online accounting software
- help center to provide support and answer any query
- cancellation at any point
- chance to test and run all the functions for free
Making profile
Before adding any financial data to your account, you should set up your profile. The profile page is given below;
It includes all the basic information such as name, profile picture, job details and brief description about your business. Then there is a contact details section where you have to add a contact number and a website link. Save all this information by clicking on the green ‘Save’ button on the right bottom of your page. You can also choose whether you want your profile to be public or private.
Lets take a look at the Dashboard
After you have set up your account, added all the personal and business-related information, you will be landed on your dashboard. This dashboard will look like
The dashboard will give you a snapshot of some important data that you might need to monitor on daily basis. The above dashboard is highlighting all the bills that you have to pay, the pending receivables. It shows a graph of cash inflows and outflows. Xero’s dashboard can be customized so you can add information here that needs to be considered every day. Also, you can change the layout by moving the boxes and once the editing is done, save all the changes. By looking at just this dashboard, most of the things will get clear at first sight thus saves time and effort every day. You don’t have to search for papers or documents to tell you what’s going on in your books.
Xero’s Menu Bar
While staying on the dashboard, you can see the top blue bar which has multiple tabs. This menu has links to all the other pages so from here you can basically visit different tabs. Whatever tab you open, this menu bar will remain on the top. This menu bar in Xero is added down below;
This is the left top corner of the menu. Here you can see your organisation name and logo mentioned in the left-most corner. If you click on this you will get a drop-down menu from where you can choose another organisation account, or go to settings. The menu has the following other options
Then comes the dashboard tab as mentioned and explained above. After the dashboard, you have a tab of business. This tab will open up to offer different links where you can see the financial situation by opening purchase orders, invoices, bills to pay and much more. So basically all the activities are to be performed or have been performed. Also, it demonstrates the current situation in the form of business snapshots and overviews of expenses and revenues. The business tabs open up and have the following further links
The next comes the Accounting tab. This tab is all about financial reports and the accounting of a business. Here you can also manage a list of all the bank accounts to form a chart of accounts so that all the information is stored finely. Other than that, all of your starred reports are added to favourites and are mentioned in this tab.
The last tab of contacts is where you can manage all your contacts. These can be grouped into customer contacts and supplier contacts. Thus, making it easy to locate.
The Final Word
Xero Accounting software is easy to learn and efficient in organising your large or small data. It helps you get in order with the financial situation of your business and make you alert if some transaction has to be done. All of its features are adding up to a synchronized accounting system thus helping you stay updated. Because the entire team, if given access, can see what’s happening, everyone stays on the same page, which is important for running a successful business.
