Report Packs update – custom Report Fields
Report Packs make the task of preparing financial and management reports for clients much more efficient. They let accountants and bookkeepers create reporting templates that can be populated with real-time client data from the single ledger.
Report Fields are a key part of Report Packs, and our Development team have managed to launch a major Report Fields update off the back of the big release on Monday: custom Report Fields.
Custom Report Fields let you insert placeholders that are automatically replaced with data when the report is run – like a mail merge. This latest release means you can now create your own fields to be populated with any data you want.
Practice Fields, such as your firm’s address, can be instantly applied to any report.
Client Fields are specific to a particular client, like their banker’s name. So once the field is setup at a practice level, the banker’s details can then be entered on the client side.
We’re continuing to make progress on Report Packs as Australia prepares to be the next cab off the rank in time for FY12 reporting. Report Fields will be available when we release Report Packs in each region.
If you’re a Partner in New Zealand you can find out all about Report Packs by registering for our Report Writing training course here.
Read more about Accountants
What needs to be taught in school to become a small business owner?
All too often Elizabeth Pitu hears people say that accounting and other subjects at school did little to prepare them for the practicalities of running their own business.
A teacher of accounting for 26 years, Elizabeth has always suspected the subject matter was a little too academic and theoretical. Now, with exposure to small business owners, she’s convinced the school curriculum for accounting in New Zealand (and she suspects other countries too) needs a rethink.
“In my experience accounting at school is not as real or practical as it should be in terms of running a small business,” she says. “Understanding the concept is quite different to doing things like working out what to cost your work at, making sure you get a market price and allowing for the advertising you might need to do. Most business owners end up learning the hard way.”
In the hope of convincing policy makers to consider changes to the way accounting is taught in schools, Elizabeth has embarked on a research project through Waikato University titled ‘Financial Skills for Small Business Owners’.
Read more about Business
Budgets and checks
It’s release day at Xero and we’re shipping some big features.
Budgets
When it comes to budgeting, Microsoft Excel is the best tool in the world. You can create all kinds of customised reports and graphs, run ad-hoc queries, and even do some fairly complex forecasting. Now you can export your actuals from Xero, do some heavy lifting in Excel, then import the results as your budget line.
We looked at developing smart budgeting tools ourselves. However, Excel really is best-of-breed, so it made more sense to connect the two.
We teamed up with Deloitte to test this feature with Microsoft Office 365. Check out the video to see how the data round trips from Xero, to Excel, and back again.
Read more about Business
Pocketrent – online property management
So what is Pocketrent?
Pocketrent gives property owners and managers all the tools they need to manage their rental property and get the best from their investment.
Who is it for?
For those who need to manage tenants or keep track of rental payments, property inspections and building maintenance. Pocketrent works for single units or the management of entire buildings/multiple complexes.
How Pocketrent works with Xero
Pocketrent can monitor your Xero bank statement for payments and create bank transactions as rent money is received. There’s also the option to create an invoice as rent falls due.
Where you can use Pocketrent
It’s been customised to support New Zealand, Australia and UK customers. Pricing is in NZ dollars.
Check it out
Pocketrent is free for one property and there is a one month trial for all property levels. Find out more here.
Read more about Business
Unexpected extension to scheduled maintenance outage (updated)
We have just had to extend a what was planned to be a short 5 minute maintenance outage due an unexpected network issue within our hosting infrastructure. We are working on resolving this and will provide an update on expected resolution timeframe shortly. Our apologies for any inconvenience caused.
(UPDATE) We are back online as of Tuesday 8th 18:55 GMT. We are still completing an review of what occurred but it appears to be a network configuration issue with the system’s database servers. We are not expecting any further problems.
(UPDATE) Confirming that the extension to the maintenance outage was caused by a network configuration issue between two of the underlying database cluster nodes. We choose to delay bringing the system back online until the network issue had been resolved so as to ensure the fault tolerance within this database layer was functioning correctly.
Read more about Company News
Growing your business – the equity story
If you own your own business you’ll know that it burns cash daily and you need to know how to fund this. But you should also be thinking about the equity side of your business too.
Highly successful entrepreneurs live more in their balance sheet than their Profit and Loss. The P&L is a short-term view of the operating status of the business. The balance sheet tells you where the future is and how to resource the business for growth. Pre-empting where your cashflow will be 6 to 12 months out is critical. All too often entrepreneurs grow their business, run out of cash and end up raising funds under desperate circumstances, which can be expensive.
I caught up with a friend recently who is helping investors from offshore find solid businesses to support. The businesses will not only receive $10m but the investors will use their skills and networks to open up opportunities in foreign markets. Strategic investors such as these can be a huge help to a business. While a cash injection is one thing, having doors opened for you can’t be underestimated.
Read more about Business
Farewell, Nathaniel Hornblower
The world got very sad news that Nathaniel Hornblower lost his battle with cancer. Better known as MCA of the Beastie Boys, his real name was Adam Yauch.
No doubt, he was a musical trailblazer, but he was a pioneer in more ways than you probably knew.
Nathanial was the first “customer” of Xero. If you look closely, you might notice the name Nathanial Hornblower in our screenshots and demo videos. When I designed the first screens for Xero we needed a fictitious customer name. To make sure long names didn’t break the design I used Nathanial Hornblower.
It was also a nod to my first real customer, the Beastie Boys.
Skills to Pay the Bills
In 1994, I quit my first job, bought a computer on credit cards and lived on unemployment checks while I worked on a business idea. I designed and coded a prototype of an online music store, based on my local record shop Groove Merchant. I flew to LA and pitched it to all the major labels, who promptly laughed me out the door. Still laughing? Continue reading ›
Small business marketing: Do I need a social media strategy for my small business?
The short answer is no.
In general terms, the smaller you are, the easier social media is.
Most social media technologies such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have been designed for individual humans to talk and connect with each other. So if you are the owner of the business, it’s generally pretty easy for you to log on to an account and chat with your customers the same way that you would at a business breakfast or if someone called you on the phone.
I highly recommend that you post from a personal account with your face on it in first-person rather than off a company account (or as well as). Most big companies would love to have the freedom to connect online the way that small businesses can so use this to your advantage. Be yourself and don’t try to sound corporate. Corporates are all desperately trying to sound small and personable!
It pays to not overthink it and just have a look around at what some other individuals and businesses are doing and learn from them. Play is a very important part of developing engagement and learning how to come up with creative ways to get people talking about you and your business. So don’t feel guilty about spending some time looking at silly cat videos on Youtube and commenting on them. It’s the best way to learn new features and to see what people are drawn to online.
I’ll do a full post on the benefits of blogging but the main thing to remember is that blogging is the cornerstone of any social media strategy.
Blogging is often overlooked as the nerdy older brother of cool kids like Pinterest and Instagram but it is absolutely essential to hold all of your different online accounts and channels together. Blogs can also serve as the top end of your sales funnel to drive customers through to transacting with your business so its worth putting the effort in.
Again, spend some time discovering successful bloggers that really interest you and read and comment to learn how they drive engagement. What posts get lots of ‘likes’ and comments? What do you like reading and when do you read blogs the most? Where are you reading this blog now and how did you discover it? Who are some of your favourite bloggers?
Read more about Company News
Meet Denis Breen, Irish accountant
A few weeks back during on a trip to Dublin I caught up with Denis Breen, the owner of a fast growing Waterford based accountancy firm that now supports more than 100 Irish businesses online with Xero.
If you were to spend more than five minutes chatting with Denis, it would quickly become evident that he just gets where the future of accounting advisory services is going.
So, I went into Kubrick Mode and grabbed a few minutes with him on camera.
As you’d expect from an Irishman, Denis tells it straight about why he believes the traditional accounting services model is flawed, and how the aftermath of the Irish financial crisis has created an acute commercial context in which businesses need to know where they stand financially month to month, sharpening the commercial senses of Irish business owners.
Read more about Accountants
Peoplemine – superior customer analytics
So what is Peoplemine?
Peoplemine is a customer intelligence and CRM tool designed for retailers. It gives you insights into your customers and their behaviour so you can target different groups or promote special offers tailored just to them.
Who is it for?
Anyone involved in retailing. If you have customer and sales data in Xero and want to use this to drive repeat business, Peoplemine is worth considering.
How Peoplemine works with Xero
Peoplemine extracts and uses key data such as contacts, inventory items and invoices from your Xero organisation for detailed reporting and analysis. It automatically synchronizes at regular intervals to keep the data up to date.
Where you can use Peoplemine
Anywhere and pricing is available in all the same currencies as Xero.
Check it out
For more details on Peoplemine and to sign up for a free 14 day trial, check it out here.
Read more about Business
Search all articles
Browse articles
Subscribe
- MatthewNott: Went to the #xeroroadshow today. Can wait to introduce @Xero to our clients. It's the solution we have been looking for. No more data files!
- 5waysgroup: @storminwalker writes quality code, @andrewtokeley ensures quality, @xero = Quality!! We love you all. ;-)
- blincagency: @Xero makes accounting so easy. #servicesyoucantlivewithout
- View all favourites
Recently commented
- 10 Quotient - simple quoting for your business Thanks for the feedback everyone! @Bernhard Accepted quotes are sent to Xero, along with the contact which will be matched to an existing contact if the ...
- 21 ABUKAI - expense reports in a snap @Rob ABUKAI scans the information on the receipts like vendor, amount, city, state, country and categorizes the receipts automatically among many other things.
- 1 Report Packs update - custom Report Fields @Richard - thanks for the update good sir. We're looking forward to seeing the report packs in business before 30 June, 2012 (hopefully).
- 3 What needs to be taught in school to become a small business owner? Hi I agree with all of the above but the accountants language around debtors and creditors seems archaic. We have just got stuck ...
- 24 Budgets and checks @Michael - you're obviously passionate about this feature, would love to hear what things you'd like to see. We're currently working on supporting multiple budgets ...