Thinking about Xero for a large number of clients

Thinking about Xero for a large number of clients

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I spent a liitle time looking at Xero yesterday. I will look at in more detail next week.

The bank feeds will be a real time saver. Plus the support/help and marketing from Xero looks exceptional.

I am thiking about going with Xero with as many clients as I am able to. Only where Xero has bank feeds on the bank account that client has.

I do not think my clients will pay for Xero. I think the time saving on bookkkeeping will justify the practice paying for Xero.

I am a highly satisfied user of VT+ . The time savings would justify for use to move from VT for a fair number of our clients.

My intention is not to use Xero as a business model like some practices are doing.

I would be grateful for views/comments on this. Have you done this?

Replies (13)

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By zarathustra
17th Mar 2011 10:26

What about u/p cheques ?

How will you post these.

The other thing that bothers me about subscription software is the length of contract. Are you tied in with xero?

Also at £25 per month you need to save £300 per job, can you do this?

To my mind, if it is the practice doing the posting (which you seem to imply), I dont think you are really making use of the software features.

Can you import bank statements as CSV into VTT+ ( I dont know - just asking)?

Just a few thoughts.

 

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By ourtone
17th Mar 2011 11:05

Hmm...

 I think Xero is brilliant and groundbreaking...  We've just become a Bronze Partner with Xero and are now encouraging some exisitng clients to transfer onto this software platform.

It does so much of the data-entry and is such a flexible system that there really are not many downsides.  You can import all sorts of data using .csv files and the data feed from the Bank is a real time saver.  Never again will we be chasing clients for bank statements!

Its very cost effective, most clients will be using the £19 a month package, and as a partner we get 25% discount which we can either pass onto the client or package up in a monthly fee.  

The biggest advantage for us is that we can now offer clients a cost-effective bookkeeping and annual accounting service in one neat package.  

Give it another 12 months and I think the software will become more dominant in the SME market than Sage/Quickbooks, although they are likely to release something to try and compete.

Interesting times...

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FT
By FirstTab
17th Mar 2011 11:42

Bookkeeping

The cost of Xero (they should pay me for this!) is outweighed by time savings:

Chasing clients for dataEasy access to dataLess input means far more accurate dataJust overall headcache of chasing is eliminatedI do not do that much bookkeping. I did at early days. For these clients I would save far more than annual fee of Xero.

The downside Barclays is not yet on bank feeds with Xero. Please sort this out Xero as one of my client with high volume of transactions has a Barclays account. I understand you are reliant on Barclays.

As regards to chqs they are becoming a thing of the past. The volume of chq my clients use is less than 1%. It is on a downward trend.

 

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By ourtone
18th Mar 2011 09:33

Agreed...

Barclays does need to be added to the data feed, I believe this is happening in the 2nd quarter of this year.

And cheques... well it won't be much longer before they're obselete - well 2018 anyway :-)

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By User deleted
18th Mar 2011 10:48

What am I missing?

If its the clients doing the bookkeeping themselves then you'll still need to chase as if they won't give you the stuff promptly then they're equally unlikely to stick it on Xero without prompting. And if you're doing the bookkeeping on Xero for them then you'll still have to chase for the info in the first place. Yes it will give you downloaded bank statements but that's only half (or less) of the overall picture. What do you do when you don't know what the bank entries are for? What about sales invoices? What about purchase invoices if they run a purchase ledger? Wages?

Don't get me wrong I think Xero looks okay and there's a lot to be said for online accounting but it still needs client input and some clients will be a nightmare with any system.......

Unless your clients want to swap why bother? VT is either free or not that bad (depending on the one you need). And you don't have to upgrade each year. And if the client is doing the bookkeeping themselves they can email you over the file just as easily. £200-300 per year per client is a lot of money to spend for no real gain that I can see in your current situation. I wouldn't rush to swap all your clients over.....

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Gary Turner
By garyturner
20th Mar 2011 20:07

Xero Pricing Plans For Accountants & Bookkeepers

We have pricing plans available (not published on our public website) for practices depending on which features of Xero each client needs, e.g. just cashbook or full accounts & bookkeeping.

In summary Xero Partners with multiple clients pay the following discounted* pricing.

Xero Partner Edition (Cashbook, no transaction limits), £9 per client, per monthXero Business Edition, Small £9 per client, per month Xero Business Edition, Medium £14.25 per client, per monthXero Business Edition, Large £18 per client, per month

*The regular pricing for each of the Business Editions is shown here http://www.xero.com/pricing/, there is no minimum contract term, you can add or remove clients at will and without incurring a cancellation penalty. 

I hope this helps with your calculations, but drop me a line to [email protected] and we'll fire you over more details.

Regards,
Gary Turner
Managing Director, Xero
@garyturner

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By petersaxton
20th Mar 2011 21:29

I agree with Flash

Clients who are good with giving your information can usually provide it in spreadsheet form which is easy for them and easy enough for you.

Clients who are not good with giving you information would most likely produce a mess in Xero or any other online accounting package.

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FT
By FirstTab
20th Mar 2011 22:09

garyturner

Thanks Gary.

Can you please let me know does Xero or are they plans for Xero:

-Produce statutory accounts

-Santande rbank, as you know is made up of various banks combined into one. Can you please confirm that all Santander commerical current accounts have bank feeds on Xero.

-Any idea when Barclays will have bank feeds on Xero?

 

 

 

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Gary Turner
By garyturner
21st Mar 2011 14:12

Quick answers

 

- Statutory accounts? Yes - just about to ship in New Zealand, committed to do the same in the UK and other territories, but not for a few months due to other things we're working on first, so no date set but coming.

- Santander feeds, let me check the system for which Santander account types we now support. I'll post back.

- Barclays feeds, our next big bank feeds release, including Barclays and others, on track to be out next quarter. We'll probably signpost this on our blog when we're closer.

** UPDATE ** - Santander Retail Banking feed is active, the business banking feed is to come, will have a firmer view as to which release that will be on our blog in a few weeks.

Gary Turner
Managing Director, Xero
@garyturner

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By petersaxton
21st Mar 2011 16:00

Really?

Gary

Producing statutory accounts production software seems like a massive undertaking plus I don't see the cloud benefit of that.

 

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Gary Turner
By garyturner
21st Mar 2011 16:44

Ripe for innovation

Peter,

There isn't a discrete cloud angle to final accounts in so much as rolling it in with online client facing apps just makes sense from a software licensing cost mitigation perspective at the least. But we also have a thing about elegance and simplification and online accounting and bookkeeping has thus managed to eliminate the costly inefficiencies of running multiple instances of accounts data on the practice and client sides. So, extending that single ledger rule or principle to other professional services accountants undertake like year end accounts preparation that hang off the clients' financial data just seems to make logical sense to us.

It's not a small undertaking to localise it and so we're away off cracking this globally, but New Zealand accountants get to be the guinea pigs, once they've proven or disproven the theory we'll replicate in our other strategic markets; UK, US & Australia.

More here Modern Practice.

Gary Turner
Managing Director, Xero
@garyturner

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FT
By FirstTab
21st Mar 2011 18:18

Quick Answers

Thanks for the quick answers Gray. The cash option is ideal for some of my clients. Price of £9 is reasonable. Considering the amount of time that will be saved in chasing and inputting.

The key bit for this would be the bank feeds for the banks my clients use. Barclays, Santander and Coop are the ones I am looking for. Clients with these bank accounts are suited to Xero cash book option.

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By jored89
14th Mar 2014 07:16

Love this blog
I'm new just starting just one client so Far
Jo

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