One of our innovative UK customers, Ash Young of evoluted web services, has resolved issues he was having with his Abbey Bank statements for himself and for other joint Abbey Bank and Xero cusotmers.
Abbey provide bank statements in a slightly unusual .CSV format not easily converted or imported into Xero.
Well not any more - Ash has developed his very own Abbey .CSV to .QIF converter which enables the Abbey .CSV file format to be converted to a .QIF which is fully compatible with Xero. Not only this, but he’s embedded the converter within a page on his website making it accessible to all Abbey Bank customers experiencing the same issue.
Thanks Ash and the evoluted team. Great job building this and making it readily available!
One of our most requested features has been the ability to raise a credit note directly against a customer or supplier account. We’ve delayed for a while delivering on this so that we could take some time to extend our accounting engine to support this and a lot of other future features we have on our roadmap.
As of yesterday, you can now raise a credit note directly against a customer or supplier account and you will be prompted to apply it to any outstanding invoices, or you can carry it as a credit until the next invoice you raise.
We’ve also made some improvements to our Accounts Receivable dashboard and to all reports that include credit notes. You can read the full release notes here.
This is an exciting release for us as even though we’ve kept the changes to a minimum, we’ve set up the accounting engine for the next 12 months of features that we’ll be delivering like foreign currency invoices and bank accounts.
As you’d expect, raising and applying credit notes is as simple as working with invoices - here’s a quick walkthrough.
The upgrade to Xero over the weekend has been completed. We hope the downtime didn’t cause you too much inconvenience.
Improvements to credit notes are the major part of today’s release. You can now raise credit notes directly against a customer or supplier in either accounts receivable or accounts payable.
We’ll post more details soon, in the mean time you can view the release notes here.
Thanks to all those who fed me coffee and zapped me to keep going - I’m off home now!
As announced, this weekend we have some scheduled downtime. Many members of our devoted team will be working around the clock to make this upgrade go smoothly.
We’re installing a live webcam so you can keep an eye on Craig Walker, our Chief Technology Officer.
In addition, you will have the option to supply Craig with coffee OR give him a jolt of electric shock therapy - your choice - as a way to make sure he stays focused and motivated.
Be sure to visit go.xero.com during the scheduled maintenance period and show your support.
We’re doing some upgrades to Xero this coming weekend, 8-9 November. During the upgrade Xero will be unavailable for approximately 24 hours beginning at 12:00am Sunday 9 November NZT (click here for your local times).
The upgrade includes some great improvements to credit notes, plus it lays the foundation for many upcoming features, including multi-currency.
We’re sorry if this causes any inconvenience.
You might regard it as a welcome holiday from your accounting!
UK accounting partner Pearson & Associates have a small business client whose bank manager has stopped charging her unnecessary fees because Xero is so good!
Adrian Pearson tells the story in his blog post and explains that because the management reports produced by Xero were so up to date and detailed, their client’s bank manager has cancelled the monthly account ‘management’ fee. This Xero user is now £50 a month better off and we all think its a great result.
The bank manager in question could not justify the management fee being charged as all the financial information he had been calculating is now worked out by Xero. He waived the fee on the spot when he saw the management reports from Xero!
Since releasing our Common Formats feature in Profit and Loss reporting a few weeks ago we’ve had some great feedback from our accounting partners that this very useful. Especially when used with tracking categories.
Most companies use P&L reports to see how their business is going. P&L reporting is especially useful in Xero as the numbers are up to date every day so they are a valuable management tool. How is my income doing compared to last month? Are my expenses under control?
We had lots of feedback that while everyone uses a P&L, there are many ways to look at the information.
This month compared to the last few, so I can see how I’m tracking
Actual vs Budget
This month compared to the same time last year - for businesses with seasonal variations
As we designed this Andrew came up with the idea of just creating some common formats so that you could quickly look at your P&L in a number of ways. Here is a video that shows you how simple it is.
You probably spotted that I’m using the Blue microphone I picked up in Palo Alto a couple of weeks ago. We use Screenflow to capture the tour and Vimeo to host the video. It only takes a few minutes to make a movie and get it up so you’ll see many more of these from us. And yes - we all dislike the sound of our own voice :)
It’s great being asked to write for industry publications such as the ICAEW (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales) newsletter. I love getting the message out to the masses that online accounting is quite simply the only way forward in accounting best practice.
The following is an article, entitled ‘The future of accounting is online’, that I submitted as part of the ICAEW Software Accreditation Scheme newsletter under the banner of ICAEW Commitment to Technology. It was sent out this week to over 27 000 UK-based accountants.
As the ICAEW says, preceding the article, “The whole area of software-as-a-service (SaaS) is seen by many as the way of the future, with online accounting looking to make inroads into the accountancy market.” Too true we think. Too true.
We’re pleased to announce that Deloitte NZ has signed up as a Xero partner. Deloitte is recognised as one of the ‘Big Four’ international accounting networks who are are highly regarded and well recognised throughout the world.
Deloitte’s evaluation and support is major validation of what Xero has to offer. It also reflects their confidence in where Xero is heading.
Bridget Musker, Associate Director in Deloitte’s Accounting & Advisory practice focused on helping SMEs grow, commented…
“For our clients, Xero dovetails brilliantly with our ‘Virtual CFO’ service where our Deloitte team is on call and available to assist businesses on all sorts of strategic, financial or management issues.”
