As Xero scales up (and down) its cloud accounting solution for business across Perth and Australia it is exciting to see that Xero has recently released their new “Ultimate Plan”
What is the Ultimate Plan?
The Xero Ultimate Plan is the most comprehensive plan available to the families who own businsses. It includes Xero’s core accounting features (Xero Premium 5) plus advanced analytics, employee management for 10 staff, expenses and projects for 5 staff and multi-currency.
How much does Xero Ultimate cost?
At the time of writing the cost is $110 AUD a month.
What is Xero Advanced Analytics?
Xero Advanced Analytics, or Analytics Plus is a tool to help you project your cashflow and measure your financial performance against your goals.
In particular the program can:
1. Project your bank balance in 7, 30, 60 or 90 days to help you identify potential cashflow shortfalls or cashflow surplus so you can arrange for new bank funding or put excess funds on term deposit.
2. Use the recurring transactions (like payroll or lease payments) to see how your immediate short term cashflow will be impacted.
3. Manually add new transactions and see the financial impact to your business and bottom line.
What about other Xero forecasting programs?
The use of forecasting tools like Futrli or Calxa is still the primary tools we recommend for clients that are undertaking forecasting for bank, government, management or investor reporting. The use of Xero Advanced is great for a quick snapshot and the goal setting and strategic approach that Futrli or Calxa offer to a business owner cannot be underestimated.
Of course these programs can link directly to your Xero file to give you a seamless and single source of data.
What is multi-currency?
As Westcourt is part of Geneva Group International we have many clients who do business in other currencies – including the US Dollar, Pound Sterling or Singapore Dollars. With Xero multi-currency you can send invoices, quotes and purchase orders in over 160 different currencies.
Further, foreign exchange transactions in Xero are updated hourly giving owners the ability to understand a single set of reports on the global business operations in one currency.
What is Xero projects?
Xero projects allows a business owner to track time to a job and the costs spent on that job. The costs can include trade, purchases or consultants that are all connected to a job.
Further, projects allows owners to quote work by estimating time and expenses on a job and building that into a project. That can then be sent to a customer and form the basis of a sale. And with Xero projects you can then start tracking against your quote to anticipate potential cost overruns or project variations.
Further, Xero projects can be linked to Xero payroll so that the payroll function can be seamlessly linked to the project and job costing for a customer.
Are there other options?
The cloud accounting software market has a large range of potential suppliers. And no one supplier will suit every business owner or their family. And a program that will suit the power and scale of say, BHP, will clearly not be relevant for a local or national business with say, 50 staff.
What is certain is that Xero are one of the leaders in cloud accounting software providers. And it is why we love Xero so much. And it is also why we, as a practice, are agile and happy to work with families and understand their needs and software solutions. It is about the best software solution for the family business – not us.
How do I start with all of this?
Xero is a particulary incredible program. However, like anything the set-up of the program, tailored to your needs is critical. If the program is not tailored, linked and properly connected across different platforms the data you will look at will be dirty and simply of no benefit to anybody.
Westcourt is Xero Gold Champion Partner – and more to the point – we use Xero extensively across our client base and we are genuinely interested in how Xero can work for you. So if you want to start, and if you want to collaborate on how Xero should be used in our business – give us a call. Our commitment to a single market with upfront pricing makes us a natural choice for families who own businesses leverage their cloud software solutions for their business.
