Reclaim your time and streamline your bookkeeping process so you have more time to do what you do best, run your business.

Business owners are constantly juggling tasks from accounting and finance, to marketing and sales, to staffing and everyday tasks. To help you reclaim your time, our advisors have identified seven ways to help increase efficiency in your bookkeeping process.

Our top tips to help you get the most of Xero include:

1. Add repeating invoices or bills
Xero will then automatically create an invoice or bill for you based on the frequency you specify. Templates can be added by clicking the dropdown arrow on the “new” button in invoices or bills screen. You can also use placeholders if you want the invoice or bill to note a certain month, for example “Fees for services provided in May”.

2. Let Xero chase up customers for you
Invoice reminders can be created to automatically send customers reminders based on how far an invoice is past its due date. This can be completed by accessing Settings > General Settings > Invoice settings.

3. Set a credit limit for your customers
Set limits in Contacts > Customer name > Edit > Financial Details.

4. Use ABA files to pay wages and make a bulk supplier payment
This can decrease the time it takes to pay your suppliers and employees as well as reduce chances of an error when entering payments into internet banking.

5. Automatically code bank transactions
Xero utilises bank rules to automatically code a bank transaction based on given conditions. Bank rules can be created from the reconciliation page.

6. Use the inbuilt calculator to help avoid an entry error
This tool allows you to perform basic math functions directly in the quantity, unit price and discount fields.

7. Let Hubdoc do data entry
Hubdoc automatically extracts key information from every document and will then create a bill in Xero with the original supplier invoice attached. The bill can then be matched with the payment from the bank account in Xero. Hubdoc is now included in Starter, Standard and Premium Xero subscriptions.

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Investing time now to set up automated processing could save you long hours in future. You would know that Xero has many functions to help your business run smoother but with many options available, it can be a daunting task to research your options.That’s where we can help.

Our advisors can help research, facilitate or optimise solutions tailored to your needs. To learn more, please contact your Pilot advisor or phone (07) 3023 1300.