Our first Point of Sale Partner – Vend
We’ve been working with some Point of Sale (POS) solutions and have now added this as a new category in our Solutions Directory of Network Partners.
Using a Point of Sale solution along with Xero is perfect for anyone running a retail business. Lots of retailers have stores in more than one location, so having your financial information online means you can access it from anywhere, anytime.
Our new Network Partner Vend, is a stunning new POS system, giving retailers an innovative way to run their retail stores. Vend works with the equipment you already use for your point-of-sale, including your barcode scanner, cash drawer and receipt printer. Vend helps you manage your inventory by making it possible to automatically re-order products based on specified stock levels. If you’ve got several stores, Vend has got you covered as it provides full support for multi-location stock control.
Take a look at this video introduction below:
Vend works seamlessly with Xero, so there’s no more manual double entry of sales data. Daily sales totals are automatically entered into Xero for reconciliation with your bank account, and you can even set up individual invoices and statements for customers who have an account with you. Have a look here to find out more about the Vend integration with Xero.
We’re really excited about the possibilities opening up for small businesses as more online solutions work together. Let us know what solutions you’d like Xero to connect on our UserVoice forum.
Video: See the upcoming changes to GST
In a few short weeks, every business in New Zealand will have to update their accounting system to handle the GST rate change.
The beauty of Xero is that we update the software for you. Automatically. For free.
People still using desktop accounting systems are facing steep fees, only to endure the frustration of installing and upgrading their system. Since you need to upgrade anyway, it’s the perfect reason to switch to Xero right now – and never go through another upgrade ever again.
Here’s a quick video that shows an overview of all the updates we’re doing for you.
You may notice a couple new things we added since our last update:
- File Now – it’s important to keep a record of the GST Return, as you filed it with IRD. To do that, simply press the File Now button when you’re happy with the numbers. Similar to publishing other reports, this records a snapshot of the return and associated reports within Xero, which matches up with the numbers you copied onto your GST form.
- Updating Bank Rules – we realise a lot of you are using Bank Rules. In fact, some of you have hundreds of them! That’s awesome. Expecting you to manually update them all would be pretty uncool. So, at the same time as updating the rates on your Chart of Accounts, Contacts, Price List Items and Repeating Transactions, we’re now doing the same thing for Bank Rules.
There’s a lot we’re doing to make the transition to 15% GST easy for you – if you’re interested, here’s a detailed explanation in the Help Centre of everything that’s happening.
Stay tuned for more updates from us over the next few weeks and be sure to check the IRD website for more information. If you’re an accountant we recommend you join us on 8 September for our dedicated GST webinar with guest presenter GST Advisory Panel Chair, Frank Owen.
Please talk with your friends and colleagues about the upcoming GST change. Ask them how they’re planning on handling it. If they’re not on Xero, let them know how easy it can be.
Read more about New Zealand
Making bookkeeping a true profession
It’d be nice to know the people doing your books (if not in-house) are credible, work to a recognised standard and you have some redress if something goes wrong.
In many countries such as Australia, bookkeeping is now recognised as a true profession. In New Zealand bookkeepers don’t have this status which is why we’re thrilled to hear about the newly established New Zealand Bookkeeping Association Inc (NZBAI) which represents suitably experienced and qualified bookkeepers. At Xero it’s important to be able to work with professional bodies as we develop Xero further and our customer pool widens.
One of the driving forces behind setting up NZBAI is Xero Partner and Trainer, Melanie Morris.
“With the shift in technology we aim to build the relationships between bookkeepers and accountants by providing collaboration on data and acting as interpreters between the client and accountant for the benefit of everyone.” Melanie Morris
Through NZBAI, bookkeepers can look forward to support across a broad range of issues including indemnity insurance. Education is also a strong focus and in time once standards are developed and approved, bookkeepers will be able to complete a certification process.
For small businesses that use bookkeeping services this will lead to better protection. Certification should make choosing a bookkeeper less hit and miss.
Read more about New Zealand
Knitting for Xero
When I’m not tweeting for Xero I unwind with a couple of needles and a ball of wool. I like to make sure the next generation of Xeroes is committed to our brand, so have knitted in Xero colors for new babies that arrive for our team.
I’ve made a few things now, usually all from the same pattern only deviating slightly from blue and white to add an orange stripe or button to leave my mark!
Except for the very first thing I knitted. This was for Hamish’s son way back in Xero’s early days when we had pink in our brand (his father does wear pink so I figured it was OK!).
Since then I’ve stuck to blue and white and in the last 3 and a half years have knitted up 8 things!
Last week I had the rare opportunity to see my latest knitting being modeled, Owen’s daughter Sophie came to visit the office in her new Xero cardigan – what a cutie!
Read more about Fun
Stand on the shoulders of giants
For several years running, Xero has been a sponsor of Summer of Tech, where university students get matched up with tech companies looking for interns. The program has grown over the years, and now includes design students, as well as comp-sci and engineering students.
While the program helps us cherry pick rising talent, we also hope to offer some inspiration for a whole new generation of students entering the work force.
In my final year of university, I did an internship at a place called General Magic. It was an amazing experience, kickstarting my career and giving me an extremely valuable insider’s view of what it’s like to be part of a high flying start-up.
As I’ve been reviewing some of this year’s design interns, I thought it’s worth sharing some basics I look for in candidates: Continue reading ›
Be the first to try Letstrade
There are lots of exciting new online applications being developed to help small businesses. This is a continuation of the ‘best of breed’ model [we discussed earlier] where small businesses are given access to very sophisticated but easy to use business applications. They get to choose a tailored range of online solutions to fit their needs, rather than having to buy an expensive, old-fashioned desktop system that doesn’t quite fit the bill.
We’re enjoying working with Letstrade as they launch their new Sales Order Processing solution. This is a powerful sales, procurement and inventory solution for small to medium sized businesses. It suits a wide range of businesses including wholesalers, importers/exporters and franchises. The people behind Letstrade are ERP experts with a long history in this space. It’s great to see them take that experience and do some new fun things on the web, like ‘Trade Crumbs’.
Letstrade is in the final stages of development and inviting Xero customers to try it out for free during the beta period. We think Letstrade is a fantastic solution for any business that needs to account for stock movements and it integrates with Xero so you don’t need to worry about the hassle of re-entering data from one solution to another.
Have a look at this video overview:
This is another of the new generation of sophisticated solutions being released that connect with Xero. Exciting times!
Xero Answers updated
Xero Answers, the community site for Xero Personal, has been running a couple of months now and the questions are piling up – thanks everyone for helping build it into a valuable resource.
Along the way we’ve had some good suggestions from those using it, and we’ve noticed lots of similar questions being asked, so we’ve fine-tuned a few things to help you get more out of the site. Perhaps this will encourage those of you who haven’t jumped in to answer or share ideas about being smart with money, to give it a go.
Next time you visit Xero Answers you might notice the following changes or new things:
- More topics!
Most questions were ending up in the ‘Using Xero Personal’ category and with almost 200 questions in the site now we could see some clear groups of questions emerging so we’ve added these as new topics. Also makes it a bit easier to browse if you’re interested in the range of questions being asked on a particular topic. - New ‘Recently Answered’ tab
Too many good follow-up answers and suggestions from you on earlier questions weren’t being seen by other users on the site so we’ve added this list of questions that have had an answer added recently. - Browsing through questions
Browse the whole list of questions by clicking the ‘More’ button at the bottom of the questions on the home page or drill into a topic and page through questions from there. - Search
We’ve smartened up the search that goes on behind the ‘Ask’ button when you’ve entered your question or keywords. We found that lots of similar questions were being posted on the site because search results weren’t returning closely matched words and phrases. Now when you search you’ll hopefully get better results as well as some suggested pages from the Xero Personal Help Centre.
Don’t forget to upload a picture to your profile (use the ‘My public profile’ link at the top right of the screen when logged in) – as more of you are able to answer other people’s questions it will be nice to see who’s helping out!
Don’t be shy – this is a place for you to create a great resource for ideas and information about Xero Personal – we’d love to see you! http://answers.xero.com/
DonorTec partners with Xero
We’re often asked if we support a certain cause or charity. We don’t as such, but we do support the nonprofit sector by providing a discount on subscriptions to Xero. Not only do we value what they’re doing, but we also think Xero can make it much easier to do the books for many of these organisations.
Late last year we partnered with TechSoup to provide Xero at a discount to the nonprofit sector in New Zealand and we’re now pleased to announce that this arrangement has been extended to Australia through the DonorTec program. This is provided by Connecting Up Australia, the local partner of US based TechSoup Global, which is a worldwide network of individuals and organisations that believe technology is a powerful enabler for social change.
Connecting Up Australia manages the technology donation program from companies such as Microsoft and Cisco for the benefit of qualified nonprofit organisations around Australia. Xero is now part of the line up of leading technology products and resources being offered to the nonprofit and charity sector.
In Australia the nonprofit and charity sector includes in excess of 700,000 organisations. Connecting Up CEO Doug Jacquier says over the past three years, the DonorTec program has saved Australian charities and nonprofits more than $80 million on their IT costs.
“We are constantly being asked about adding quality accounting products to the offerings available via DonorTec. So, after pioneering our relationship with Xero via TechSoup New Zealand, we are delighted to now be able to offer uniquely discounted Xero online accounting services in Australia via the DonorTec program. With a rapidly growing customer base in small business, we recommend Australian nonprofits take a serious look at Xero when next assessing their accounting needs.”
Eligible organisations registered with DonorTec just need to login to DonorTec and click the Xero sign-up link to get a 25% discount on their first organisation subscription.
Read more about Australia
NZICA recognises Xero professional development
We’ve been working closely with the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants (NZICA) to determine how Xero can deliver even more benefit and value to NZICA members.
We’re pleased to announce that Xero’s Partner Certification classroom course now qualifies for 5.5 hours NZICA Continuing Professional Development. NZICA is also in the process of assessing our Re-Certification – both of these are key steps to becoming a Xero Partner and maintaining Partner status.
This recognition by NZICA validates the calibre of our training – not only the course content, which is a thorough overview of Xero functionality for accountants in practice, but also the quality of our delivery.
We have a great team of qualified trainers on board like Melanie Morris, Donna Wylie and Mike Hadwin – all of whom are technical experts in Xero and passionate about ensuring great learning outcomes.
”The Xero training course I attended was conducted in a professional manner, with clarity, and attention to learners’ needs. NZICA CPD looks for an adaptive, active learning style in training presentations and Xero offers this”, says Joe Grayland, NZICA’s Director of Professional Development.
All NZICA members are entitled to a 20% discount when they undertake Xero Partner Certification and Re-Certification (classroom) courses. You can find a course near to you and register here.
Read more about New Zealand
Xero and GeoOp
It’s been exciting to work with the team behind innovative mobile workforce management system GeoOp. These guys are really pushing the boundaries with the mobile version of their software.
GeoOp (Geographic Operations) is our latest Network Partner and works as a job dispatch system for small to medium sized businesses that have mobile workforces. If you are a tradesperson, vehicle driver, in the IT services industry or have people on the road then GeoOp is perfect for you.
GeoOp brings the same instant clarity to your operations that Xero does for your business performance and profitability. It allows you to instantly get a broad overview of all your jobs and mobile staff, or with a few clicks of the mouse you can drill down and see in real time exact details – something that normally takes days to filter back to the office.
GeoOp’s integration with Xero allows you to send job information, either for individual jobs or as batch invoices, so you can easily invoice your customers in Xero. The entire process takes less than a minute, saving you time and the hassle of re-entering your data from one system into another. Your administration team can send out an invoice to your client as soon as the job has been completed.
For more about Xero and GeoOp and how to get started have a look here, or watch the video below for an overview of GeoOp.
Read more about Mobile
