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Xero Efficiency Tips

Xero is a cloud-based accounting software designed to help businesses manage their finances more efficiently. The software is user-friendly and offers a wide range of features making it easy for businesses to track their income and expenses, create invoices, manage inventory, and generate reports.

One of the key benefits of using Xero is its ability to save time and reduce the amount of manual work involved in managing finances. With Xero, businesses can automate many of the tedious and time-consuming tasks associated with accounting, such as reconciling bank accounts and generating reports. This allows businesses to focus on more important tasks, such as growing their business and serving their customers.

Another benefit of using Xero is its ability to provide real-time financial information. With Xero, businesses can access their financial data in real-time, which allows them to make informed decisions about their finances and ensure that they are on track to meet their goals. This real-time information can also be shared with other members of the business, such as accountants and investors, which can help to improve collaboration and communication within the organization.

Xero also offers a range of tools and resources that can help businesses to improve their efficiency. For example, the software includes features such as the ability to track inventory, create purchase orders, and manage bills and expenses. This allows businesses to easily manage their finances and stay organized, which can help to reduce errors and improve overall efficiency.

In addition to these features, Xero also offers a range of integrations with other popular business tools and software. This allows businesses to connect Xero with other systems and platforms, such as point-of-sale systems and ecommerce platforms, which can help to improve the overall efficiency of their operations. For example, businesses can use Xero to automatically import their sales data from an ecommerce platform, which can save time and reduce the risk of errors.

 

In summary, there are several ways to use Xero more efficiently and effectively, including the following tips:

  1. Import your bank statements directly into Xero to save time and avoid errors.
  2. Use Xero’s mobile app to manage your finances on the go.
  3. Use Xero’s built-in reports to get a clear picture of your business’s financial health.
  4. Set up automatic reminders for invoices and bills to avoid late payments.
  5. Use Xero’s collaboration tools to work with your accountant or bookkeeper in real-time.
  6. Take advantage of Xero’s integrations with other business tools, such as online payment systems and inventory management software.

In addition to the tips mentioned earlier, there are several other ways to use Xero more efficiently:

  1. Use Xero’s recurring invoices feature to automatically generate and send invoices on a regular schedule.
  2. Use Xero’s multi-currency support to manage transactions in multiple currencies.
  3. Use Xero’s project tracking feature to track time and expenses for specific projects.
  4. Use Xero’s inventory management tools to track stock levels and generate purchase orders.
  5. Use Xero’s payment gateway integration to accept online payments directly from invoices.

Overall, Xero is a powerful and efficient tool for businesses looking to manage their finances more effectively. The software’s user-friendly interface, real-time financial information, and range of features and integrations make it easy for businesses to save time and improve their efficiency. By using Xero, businesses can focus on growing their business and serving their customers, rather than spending time on tedious and time-consuming accounting tasks.

Talk to our experienced bookkeeping team if you want to explore Xero and it’s additional features for your business or would like someone to help you with keeping your accounts updated and relevant.

6 Top Tips on Keeping Your Xero Tidy

Now is the perfect time to go through your Xero and give it a good tidy up.

We recommend checking your contacts, bank reconciliation and bills regularly to avoid errors and headaches. It will save you hours later trying to figure out what has gone wrong.

1. Contacts 

Is your Contacts list getting out of control? It is long and you have a few names for the same contact but you can’t remember which one you used last time?

It is good practice to do a little housekeeping on your Contact list in Xero. Some could be merged if they are duplicates. Maybe some are so old or even erroneous, and they could be archived.

How to merge a contact:

  • From the Contacts menu click the one or more contact you wish to merge into another contact
  • Click Options at the top and select Merge
  • In the Merge Contacts box select the contact that you want to merge to – this is the contact that will remain – choose Merge.

To Archive unwanted contacts, follow the above but in the Options menu select Archive.

Keep your accounts data clean and reduce the risk of missing something, for example if you look up an invoice in one account, only to find later it was on duplicate account.

2. Credit notes

Do you have unallocated credit notes showing in Bills Awaiting Payment screen? Where possible these should be allocated against invoices or cash refunds allocated to them.

To allocate credit note against invoice:

  • open the credit and to Credit Note Options menu.
  • select Allocate Credit
  • enter the credit amount against correct invoice
  • Click Allocated

3. Duplicate purchases invoices

It is a good practise to check if any outstanding purchases invoices in Awaiting Payment have been duplicated. Sometimes you can write the invoice number incorrectly or use purchase order number instead of the invoice number which would result in the same invoice entered twice. If that happened Xero won’t alert you that the invoice is a duplicate.

To quickly check if you have any errors:

  • go to Bills to Pay and select All
  • Search supplier name
  • Review outstanding invoices, amounts and dates

If you think you have paid the invoice, but it is still showing as outstanding you might have reconciled the payment as spend money and not as invoice payment. In this case, search for supplier or amount within the bank account transactions.

4. Outstanding bank items

With direct bank feeds, managing bank account transactions is fast and pain free. But sometimes Xero and bank statement balances do not match. There can be numerous reasons for this, for example unreconciled transactions entered in Xero, missing statement lines, duplicated transactions or errors recording transfers between accounts. See our article 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Reconciling Bank Transactions in Xero.

To check if your bank account balance and the balance in Xero match review the Bank Reconciliation Report.

5. Xero files

If you are using Xero files you can upload and store any document you need for easy access from anywhere. This will help you declutter your office and keep things in one place. Create a separate folder for bank statements, back up documents, supplier statements, HMRC items etc. All Standard and above users can see Xero Files and it is a perfect way to share documents securely with your team or accountant.

6. Bank rules

Are you using bank rules? Set up correctly Bank Rules will save you time when entering recurring transactions such as bank interest or direct debits where a bill is not entered. You need to set up the criteria accordingly, so the correct transactions are identified. For each bank statement line that matches a rule, Xero suggests a transaction using the condition you have set. See our Bank Rules in Xero article for more details.


While Xero is intuitive and easy to use it is not always simple. There are areas we find users make mistakes and find themselves stuck not knowing how to set Xero straight. If you need help fixing Xero, we are here to help. Give us a ring for a friendly chat today.

What is Xero Business Snapshot?

Business Snapshot is a dashboard-style report displaying business performance measures to help you better understand the financial position of your business at any given time.

Examining your key business metrics regularly will help you keep on track with your growth. The dashboard gives you a snapshot of your income and spend and highlights if there are any issues with payment collection from your customers. If you don’t look at your balance sheet regularly, this gives you a summary of your liabilities to have in mind when planning your cashflow.

Xero Business Snapshot


Dashboard features:

  • Profit and Loss – you can view your profit before tax for last month, last quarter, last year or year to date with instant comparison to previous period. Instantly see if your profit has increased or decreased as a percentage against previous period.
  • Income and Expenses – see a summary of your income, cost of goods sold plus operating costs as a figure and a chart. You also see the percentage comparison against the prior period.
  • Gross Profit Margin – monitor your gross profit margin and how it changes compared to prior period.
  • Latest Operating Expenses – instantly see the highest costs and comparison to previous spend. You can pick up areas where the spend has gone up or reduced significantly.
  • Financial Position and Cash – this gives you a snapshot of your balance sheet which is vital for understanding your liabilities at any given time.
  • Overall Cash Balance – see the total of all your cash across all bank accounts.
  • Average Time to Get Paid – the average number of days it takes your customers to pay you.  Identify in an instance if you need to address how you collect your payments or if you have bad paying customers.
  • Average Time to Pay Suppliers – how long do you take to pay your suppliers. If it is outside your credit terms, do you need to address this to improve your relationships with your suppliers?

Xero Business Snapshot 1


To benefit from using Business Snapshot dashboard you need to have at least a couple of months’ worth of transactions in Xero. Keep your bank reconciliation up to date too to see the correct cash balance.

Use the dashboard to discuss your organisation’s financial health with us or your accountant.

 

 

We do Xero bookkeeping

Xero Bookkeeping on Biteable.

App of the Week – AutoEntry

With every task we do, we always ask the question “Is there a better way?” And with day to day bookkeeping – YES, there is! That’s why AutoEntry is our choice of The App of The Week.

AutoEntry simplifies your business’ bookkeeping. It eliminates manual data entry for accountants, bookkeepers and small businesses. It automates the extraction and processing of bills, invoices, expenses and receipts and inputs them directly into your accounting solution.

It is perfect for small and medium businesses across all industries where volume of invoices and receipts is high. No more manual data entry of invoices, receipts, bills or statements. Simply email, scan and upload, or snap with your mobile app.

Features

  • Submit Documents – No more manually inputting invoices, receipts or invoices. AutoEntry extracts the data you need and publishes to your accountancy package.
  • Data Security – AutoEntry employs best practice security policies including encryption across the platform.
  • Full Line Item Capture – AutoEntry captures full line items, including the description, unit price and quantity for each line, with verified accuracy.
  • Item line settings – Apply rules to allow AutoEntry to ‘remember’ specific line item descriptions, or certain words within a description.
  • Purchase Order Matching – AutoEntry syncs captured invoices to matching open purchase orders.
  • Document Storage – Once AutoEntry has posted your data, it creates digital records, so users no longer needs to hang on to large quantities of paper documents, with client data stored securely in the cloud.
  • Integrate seamlessly – It integrates with your accounts software including Xero, QuickBooks Online, Kashflow, Sage 50, Sage One, Reckon, Freeagent and others.

 Additional Features

  • Data extracted & verified – Remove manual errors and rely on quickly searching secured stored, digital copies.
  • Smart analysis – Easily submit invoices, expenses and receipts as you get them, on the go.
  • Auto-publish – Seamless automatic publishing of verified data into your account software.

 How it works

  • Capture and submit documents – Forward emails from suppliers, snap receipts on the mobile app, or scan and upload to the website.
  • Accurate, automated data extraction – Data is processed and verifies before applying remembered Supplier, Tax Code and Category rules.
  • Seamless integrations – The add-ons ensure the seamless automatic publishing of verified data in your account software

Benefits

  • Save time – No more manually inputting invoices, receipts, expenses or statements. AutoEntry extracts the data you need and publishes to your accountancy package.
  • Paperless – With data stored securely in the cloud, there’s no need to store, file, print and copy paper documents anymore.
  • Integrations – Seamless automatic publishing of verified data into your accounting software.
  • Mobile app – Submit invoices, receipts and expenses on-the-go via the mobile app for iOS and Android devices.                                                                                                                       

Pricing

Powered by AI, AutoEntry is becoming increasingly sought after, due to its accuracy, speed and impressive range of in-built features. And, as well as being the smartest solution out there, with its flexible, pay-as-you-use pricing plans, AutoEntry also offers the best value for money. Users only pay for the documents they upload onto the platform, as needed month by month. Adding more companies or employees incurs no extra fees, meaning the whole team can make use of the solution without any fuss or extra expense. Advanced pricing plans available for firms with a large volume of documents.

By using AutoEntry, your businesses gain the following benefits:

  • Reduce the time and cost spent on manual data entry
  • Eliminate human error
  • Improve service turnaround times
  • Submit receipts and invoices on-the-go with its mobile app
  • Drive employee engagement
  • Store data more securely in the cloud

 AutoEntry + Xero

AutoEntry works by capturing and analyzing details from paper documents, before posting this information into a user’s Xero account. By leveraging the solution’s in-built intelligence, the data is entered into the correct fields every time, so there’s no fuss or room for error. 

 

Getting started

  1. Log into your AutoEntry account and go to ‘Company Setting’
  2. Click on the ‘Integrations’ tab and select Xero

Link your Xero with AutoEntry so that when you Publish your receipts or statements, they will directly be uploaded into Xero.

 With AutoEntry, you can say goodbye to piles of paperwork and hours spent typing up data, and get back to what really matters, serving their customers and growing their business. If you need help with setting up AutoEntry or integrating it with Xero we, at Cloudit Bookkeeping, will be happy to assist you.

Are you wasting time processing expenses?

Expense claims are an administrative burden for all businesses. From taxis, flights, meals, supplies, and everything in between – there are countless expenses that need to be reimbursed to the people who work at the company. But it’s amazing how the simple task of reimbursing employees turns into a paper-filled back-office nightmare.

With many apps now available, the task of tracking and recording expenses is becoming easier and more efficient, saving business owners and their accounting team hours in administrative time.

We love Xero and their new Expenses function where employees can capture receipts and submit claims for their work expenses with their mobile device. Let’s have a look at how it works and how it can save you hours in dealing with paperwork.

Xero Expenses:

Xero Expenses works seamlessly with Xero accounting package, and has all the tools and insights small businesses need to efficiently track and manage expense claims. You can now Capture expenses on the go and keep everyone up to date with push notifications.

A better way to manage expense claims in Xero

The Xero Expenses offers small businesses a more efficient way to manage expense claims with:

Expenses Mobile

  • Faster expense captureto reduce data entry through automatic scanning of receipts and eliminating the need to store paper versions.
  • iOS and Android appspush notifications to let businesses, employees and advisors capture, submit and keep up to date on the status of expense claims from anywhere.
  • More flexible user permissionsto give complete control of whocan view, submit, and approve or pay an expense claim for or on behalf of someone else.
  • Simple and intuitive workflowsto make it easy to see where an expense is at, review and approve all unpaid expenses, and create batch payments to get employees paid promptly.
  • Greater insights and powerful analyticsto empower businesses and their advisors with a detailed and real-time understanding of spending habits and patterns.
  • And with multi-currency, relevant notificationsand seamless Xero accounting integration, the new Xero Expenses is smarter, easy to use, and designed to benefit both the small business and their employees.

Advantages

  • Easily capture and submit expenses

You’ll find automatic receipt processing in the Xero Expenses. Small business owners can easily capture and submit expense claims through their mobile device on both iOS and Android. Simply take a quick picture of the receipt and let Xero submit the expense claim. The design and workflow improvements make it easy to capture and submit an expense claim without the paper chase or endless follow up.

  • Eliminate Hidden costs

With reduced data entry and by streamlining everything from submitting expenses through to reconciling transactions, you can eliminate the hidden costs.

  • Better visibility

You can see all the most important information at a glance, so you always know where your expenses and cash flow stand.Expenses chart

  • Enables Growth

Access valuable real-time reporting and powerful analytics to monitor patterns, plan ahead and make fast, informed decisions.

  • Flexible controls and permissions

The user permissions model gives more flexibility and control to the right people at the right time during the expense claims process. This significantly simplifies the workflow and boosts efficiency. That’s because only appropriate people in the business can view, submit, approve or decline, and pay an expense claim.

You can also find a highly-requested feature – the ability for a user (typically an accountant or owner) to submit an expense claim on behalf of other people in the organization. The relevant people will receive real-time push notifications on their mobile phones, which makes it easy for accountants, business owners and employees to keep each other up to date.

  • Easy review and payment

Xero expenses provide you list views and expense drill-down views, which can save you time and let you enjoy better functionality:

  1. The expense claim list immediately gives you a high-level view of your own or your employees’ expense claims in easy-to-consume groupings, such as by status or by employee. The most important information required for review, approval and payment are available at a quick glance. These include status, amount, expense account, description, vendor and date. From the list, just one click will let you drill down into the details of the expense – and provide a view of the receipt, tax details, tracking categories and associated label.
  2. You can view approved expenses claims that are awaiting payment within bills. Xero provide links to and from bills, so you can conveniently view bills associated to expense claim reimbursement side by side with vendor and supplier bills. This allows you to more easily make a decision around who and what gets paid in one simple view.
  • Expense analytics

Quite simply you have to know how your staff spends money and if they follow established rules and policies. An exciting new feature gives small businesses and their accounting partners deeper insights into spending and expense claims that will provide actionable findings. Accountants and business owners have access to a real-time and accurate view of their expenses.

With Xero Expenses function, expense claims are no more a burden. It makes create, review, approve and paying an expense claim not only easy but also quick. It saves a lot of time and provides you the opportunity to enjoy better functionality. If you need any help exploring Xero Expenses or any other Xero features, talk to one of our trained bookkeepers and we will be happy to assist you.

What does Proft and Loss report tell you about your business?

What is a profit and loss statement?

A profit and loss statement shows how much your business has spent and earned over a specified time. This shows whether your business has made a profit or loss during that time – hence the name. A profit and loss statement might also be called an ‘income statement’, a ‘statement of operations’, a ‘statement of earnings’ or a ‘P&L’.

A profit and loss statement shows all your revenue and expenses. This includes things like payroll, advertising, rent and insurance. It will also show your earnings from sales and other forms of income.

Your total profit or loss for the time period you’ve chosen is what you’ve earned minus what you’ve spent. If this amount is positive, it’s called a net income. If it’s negative it’s called a net loss.

What does a profit and loss account include?

A profit and loss account will include your credits (which includes turnover and other income) and deduct your debits (which includes allowances, cost of sales and overheads). These are used to find your bottom line figure – either your net profit or your net loss.

What is a profit and loss account used for?

The profits shown in your profit and loss account are used to calculate both income tax and corporation tax. Failure to file either of these correctly can result in you paying added interest and penalties, so it’s important to get this report right.

The P&L account takes revenues into account for a specific period. It also records any expenses or costs incurred by these revenues, such as depreciation and taxes.

This can be used to show investors and other interested parties whether or not the company made money during the period being reported.

Why You Need to Prepare a P&L Statement?

  • Make Wiser Decisions

If you have your P&L statement on hand, you are able to look back on it to review how well your company fared over a chosen period of time. With the results in mind, you will then be able to make better financial decisions, as you’re armed with concrete knowledge of how your business is doing in terms of revenue and expenses. Provided that the numbers aren’t in the red, you will be able to invest money back into your business and make decisions that would have otherwise required dangerous guesswork.

  • Monitor your Business

Preparing a profit and loss statement and reviewing it regularly will give you insight into areas of the business where you are making money (or losing money). It will also provide you with where you are spending your money which can help you determine where you may be able to cut costs.

  • Have Proof of Your Business’ Success

Having your P&L statements on paper means that you’re able to show a chronological record of how well your business has been doing over the course of its operation, allowing you to play your cards right around investors, or with buyers if you have the intention of selling the business. It also serves as a measure of trust, as it may be requested by any new clients who wish to do business with you.

  • Prepares You to File Taxes

If you regularly update your P&L statements (as well as your other financial statements), you’ll have all the information you need for sorting out your business taxes when the day inevitably arrives. Updated financial statements also mean that your accounting software is also being regularly updated.

How to read Profit and Loss Report

P&L

If we want to understand a company report, we need to know what all the income, expense and profit figures mean. The Profit and Loss Statement is explained as follows:

  • Income

Add all income from sales for the period the profit and loss statement includes whether or not you’ve received payment for the sale. We might sometimes see this figure broken down into revenues from continuing operations and revenues from new business, which is a useful way of comparing like with like for a company that is expanding into new businesses or disposing of old ones — we can use the breakdown to help see how its core business is performing year-on-year. And different companies might show slightly different breakdowns, but we’ll always see a figure for total revenues.

  • Cost of sales

These are all costs directly associated with the sales mentioned above. They may include the cost of the product purchased and wages for people making the product. For example, if you are a consultancy, your cost of sales might include Advertising, Freelancer or sub-contractors etc.

  • Gross profit

Gross profit is simply the difference between your sales and cost of sales.
The gross profit margin is probably one of the most important figures to the business owner and manager. It shows the sales mark-up and can therefore highlight inefficiencies and pricing issues.

  • Expenses

Expenses or overheads are all other costs you’ve received invoices for during the period. These may include:

  • Rent and rates
  • Professional fees, such as legal and accountants
  • Advertisement
  • Travel
  • Entertainment
  • Vehicle costs such as fuel and maintenance
  • Technology and computer costs
  • Office staff salaries, national insurance, pensions, and bonuses
  • Stationery and postage
  • Utility costs such as heating, water, gas, and electricity
  • Depreciation: This line is an accounting adjustment and not directly used for tax calculation purposes. Depreciation represents the periodic, scheduled conversion of a fixed asset into an expense as the asset is used during normal business operations. Since the asset is part of normal business operations, depreciation is considered an operating expense.
  • Profit before tax and interest

This calculation is an indicator of a company’s profitability. By ignoring taxes and interest expense, it focuses solely on a company’s ability to generate earnings from operations, ignoring variables such as the tax burden and capital structure.

  • Interest

This entry summarizes interest and bank charges paid from your business within the accounting period.

  • Tax

Tax will be the estimated amount of corporation tax on the business

  • Net Profit or Loss

And finally, the net result is what’s left. It’s a calculation of all income less all expenses and purchases less interest and tax paid providing your overall profit or loss in the period of the accounts.

Interpreting and understanding the profit and loss account

If your business is fairly consistent, look for comparisons with previous years. If there are any deviations from the general trend, ask yourself if you are able to explain them.

Also, look for comparisons with your competitors and the industry the business operates in.

Ultimately, the profit and loss account should tell a story of what has happened during the year, so you as the business owner/manager are best placed to make sure the profit and loss account shows a true reflection of this ‘story.’

Your bookkeeper can help you to understand and interpret the figures in the profit and loss account and can highlight the areas that may require further investigation. They will also be able to identify any ‘anomalies’ which might trigger the attention of HM Revenue & Customs, such as a large increase in the cost of repairs or a dramatic downturn in drawings. If you need any help with interpreting your Profit and Loss Statement, we at Cloudit Bookkeeping, will be happy to assist you.

The Credit Control Revolution

 

One of the most awkward and uncomfortable situations in business is having to remind clients about late payments on your invoices. Even harder is trying to respectfully request immediate payment without the conflict associated with adding late payment charges.

Credit control is another name for ‘getting the money you’re owed’. Not many businesses have a formal credit control process when they start out. However, each business should consider whether it is doing everything it can to ensure that its customers are paying on time. Furthermore, the recovery of business debt can be frustrating, time consuming and often unsuccessful. This then effects the business cash flow and the accountant asking questions about the recoverability of debts.

The introduction of cloud technology has made it possible to move forward in the management of credit control. Through up to date information and clever technology, the process has become much more streamlined, automated and productive. The features both within the accounting packages and also specific apps help businesses take back control of their debtors with positive results on their cash flow.

Easy Invoicing

If you use cloud based accounting software like Xero, it makes keeping your invoices up to date very easy. Through using your customized invoices and saved templates, issuing invoices has become a relatively quick and easy process. You can also invoice using your Xero mobile app keeping up to date when you are out and about!

You can simply email your invoices directly from Xero and the customer receives it immediately in their inbox. You will no longer have to push this task to end of the month or incur any postage costs.

In Xero, you can customize the look of your invoice by using invoice templates. You can edit the default templates or create new ones. You can also set up branding themes for your invoices so you can select the one relevant to the customer you are sending it to. For Instance, by using the DOCX custom templates you can create up to 15 branding themes which opens to a wide range of invoicing options.

Payment services

The more ways you give your customers to pay you, the more likely it is that they will pay you, and the less time you’ll spend chasing the payment. Add a payment service to your online invoice and your customer can pay it with just a few clicks.

Payment services in Xero allows you to accept the payments online. When the customer views the invoice, they can use the “Pay now” button to pay you securely using your payment service.

When the customer makes an online payment via their Xero invoice, the payment service used will take the payment and deposit it into your bank account.

You can set multiple payment modes giving your customer a choice and making it easy and accessible to them. Getting paid is easy with a range of payment services that seamlessly integrate with Xero, including PayPalStripe and GoCardless. You can find more payment providers in the Xero app marketplace.

Advanced reporting

Through regular invoicing you can keep your sales ledger up to date whilst having the ability to run an Aged debtors analysis at any time with ease. With the advanced reporting available in Xero you can quickly identify customers with outstanding invoices, and you can go through the details of the customer accounts and see where action is required.

The Aged receivables report in Xero allows you to select the “as at” date which will report the outstanding transactions at that specific date. This therefore will give you a clear overview of who owes the business and how much at any time.

Reminders

Instead of you spending hours chasing overdue payments, Xero can send automated invoice reminders for you. All you have to decide is when and how often the reminders are sent out, like setting a reminder to email customer when an invoice is 7 days overdue or 21 days overdue etc. You can also see whether your customer has seen an invoice and if it’s been paid.

Xero have created templates with suggested wording for the reminders, but you can change these if required and also can add other information such as details about preferred payment solutions and links to the invoice PDF. You need the adviser or standard user role to set up and turn on invoice reminders for your organization.

Once invoice reminders are turned on, Xero’s default reminders are sent at 7, 14 and 21 days after each invoice due date (overdue). You can also add a reminder that’s sent to your customers before an invoice is due. Specify the number of days before the due date that you’d like it sent.

Xero approved debt management apps

There are an increasing number of apps that link with Xero to automate and improve your credit control, letting you get paid faster and saving you time. The fact that you do not have to chase all your customers and you do not have to use the same templates for them all means that the business remains in your control at all time. Apps like Fluidly, Chaser, Debtor Daddy, Satago helps you to manage debt collection and ensures that you remain in full control of the process.

In addition to automatically sending your email chasers, some of these apps also offer a credit control CRM to automatically log all emails and replies. In addition to this, some apps can provide you data-driven insights into your credit control function, to help understand which customers are good payers, which are bad, and to help you better decide who to grant credit to.


The use of cloud software has revolutionized the Credit control management. Online invoicing, automated reminders and up to date ledgers which means that the whole debt collection process is much simpler, faster and less painful for business owners. The outcome speaks for themselves with cash flow improved and more time available to dedicate on growing and developing the business. If you need any help regarding the credit control management, talk to one of our trained bookkeepers and we will be happy to assist you.

App of the week – GoCardless

GoCardless is the easy way to collect Direct Debit Payments.

GoCardless allows you to take control of your payments, ensuring your invoices get paid on time, every time via Direct Debit. With automatic reconciliation in Xero, GoCardless improves your cash flow and reduces your admin.

Once your business has connected its Xero and GoCardless accounts, and has obtained direct debit authorities from its customers, payments are automatically collected by GoCardless and the transactions marked as paid within Xero.

Why we love GoCardless:

  • Improved cash flow – automatically collect payment for any Xero invoice on the due date, whether recurring or ad hoc.
  • Reduced admin – be more productive. Spend less time chasing unpaid bills and manually reconciling payments.
  • Happier customers – make payment hassle-free. Set up once to pre-authorize future payment collection so you can focus on business.
  • Integrated with Xero – fully synchronized with Xero to collect payments and automatically reconcile against your invoices.
  • Quick and simple set-up – get started in minutes with a simple set-up.
  • Low, transparent fees – no set up costs, hidden fees or charges for failed payments. GoCardless charges a 1% transaction fee, with a minimum of 20p and a maximum of £2. This makes it cheaper than credit card transactions, which typically cost around 2% with no ceiling.
  • Currency options – collect payments in British Pounds, Euros, Australian and New Zealand Dollars, Canadian Dollars.

How it works with Xero

The GoCardless payment service lets you set up direct debit with your customers to automatically collect payments for your Xero invoices.


Getting started with GoCardless for Xero in 5 steps

Connect your account

Get started in minutes by connecting your GoCardless and Xero accounts to the GoCardless for Xero app. See and manage all your GoCardless payments in one place.

Set up your customers

Your Xero customer data will be automatically synced so you can send out Direct Debit mandate requests via email. If you prefer, you can manually select customer records to send mandate requests to. The online mandates take seconds for your customers to complete. You can even add a link to your website or engagement letter.

Add a pay now button to your invoices

Get paid on time by enabling your customers to set up a Direct Debit mandate with you straight from the invoice. Add a pay now button to your invoices so customers can pay for recurring and one-off payments by direct debit.

Start collecting payments

Each time you create an invoice in Xero you can collect the payment automatically by Direct Debit on the invoice due date. Alternatively, you can manually collect payments for specific customers or by Xero branding themes.

Automatically reconcile invoices

Once you’ve received a payment, the relevant invoice(s) will be marked as paid. Xero records the GoCardless fee posted as an expense automatically.


We enjoy automation and making life easier is every way possible. And GoCardless adds to the smooth sales and payment collection process. For more specialist advice –  talk to our expert bookkeepers.