How we’re making it easier for practices in the UK to manage clients in Xero

We’ve made some great progress towards creating a single source of truth for your client data. It’s all part of our work to connect our practice tools, so that in the future, as you manage your clients’ tax obligations in Xero, the data flows seamlessly into our practice management tools.

This will help you work more efficiently, collaborate with your clients more effectively, and manage everything for your practice within Xero. Here are our latest updates and what they mean for accountants and bookkeepers in the UK.

Rolling out the single client record

If you’ve used our practice tools in the past, you may have noticed that adding or changing a client record in one tool didn’t automatically update the client record in other tools. We’ve solved this by creating a single client record across our practice tools.

New practices in the UK who joined the Xero partner program after 6 March 2023, and those who have only ever used Xero HQ, can now enjoy a single client record. If that’s you — it’s a great time to try Xero Practice Manager (XPM) and easily manage jobs, time tracking and billing in your practice, with the same client data that you’ve been using in Xero HQ.

As soon as you start using XPM, you’ll have all of your clients, contacts and groups details from Xero HQ in there straight away. If you offboard a client, they’ll be archived in both places.

Once we’ve rolled the single client record out to new practices and those using Xero HQ, we’ll focus on existing XPM users. As you have two sets of client records, we’ll guide you through the consolidation process to make sure your client lists are accurate at all times.

What’s new for UK practices in Xero Tax

In addition to delivering a single client record across Xero HQ and XPM, we’ve made a number of updates to Xero Tax in the UK, to help you further streamline accounts and tax work.

Latest updates to company accounts and tax:

• You can now prepare accounts in Xero Tax, then export to another tax software to complete the corporate tax return, if needed
• In response to your feedback, we’ve added the ability to see a detailed breakdown of figures that make up a company tax return
• We’ve added new features to company accounts, including additional disclosures, support for dormant companies, and increasing the number of directors that can sign off accounts
• We’ve made substantial improvements to the formatting and presentation of our accounts.

Latest updates to personal tax:

• Our new Personal Tax report helps reviewers see all entries for the year in one place, and helps clients see the breakdown of figures in the tax return and within the summary
• We’ve added the SA104 form to personal tax — a supplementary form for filing partnership pages on your Self Assessment tax return, when partnership income needs to be disclosed
• You can now file tax returns where capital gains income needs to be disclosed. We’ve also included a Capital Gains report to show breakdown of disposals for Capital Gains Tax.

We’re continuing to develop our MTD for ITSA solution, working closely with HMRC and beta participants to make enhancements that add value to you and your clients.

A sneak peek at what’s next

In the months ahead, we’ll be making a number of updates as we continue connecting our practice tools, so data can seamlessly flow between XPM, Xero HQ and Xero Tax in the future. 

These updates will help you:

• better manage connections between Xero organisations and clients, such as seeing their subscription status in the client list, and removing an organisation from a client record
• see and manage client groups easily in XPM and Xero HQ, within your single client record
• assign client access and permissions more easily to staff working across your entire client list in Xero HQ
• quickly see the level of access your staff have in XPM, and easily assign and manage their permissions
• send reminders in bulk when sending document packs for approval and signing

Helping you become more efficient is the number one priority for our teams, and we’re excited about the progress we’re making towards a single client record.

In the meantime, it’s important to make sure your client list is in good shape. Here’s a best practice guide for onboarding a client, so you can avoid duplications in your client records and make sure you’re ready for what’s next.