February 8th, 2012
Late last week was a veritable accounting geek fest at the Auckland Viaduct Events Centre. Beginning with the Developers conference, moving on to Xero Partners conference and ending with the Gala Awards dinner, it was a well organised, well run event. You could have a look see at about 20 of the products that integrate with Xero, to establish how they benefit your clients businesses. You could hear some impressive statistics about Xero and how far they have come. You could spend your downtime, talking with fellow accountants or bookeepers, Xero staff or Xero Network owners and staff. There was much wowing of us, with examples of features to come and Craig Walker, CTO for Xero, took it further by calling for a wishlist and coding some of the features in the afternoon sessions.
And I know, yes they do this to keep us all excited about Xero, to keep us all recommending Xero, but you see the thing is without this wow-ing, the excitment is still there. One of my favourite parts of each 6 – 8 weeks is scouring the Xero newsletter to see what is new and how it will benefit me and my clients. Sometimes I am just a bit “oh yeah” but at least every 2 to 3 release cycles, there is something they have done that significantly benefits us and makes our business lives better.
So for those of you out there, trying to decide if Xero will benefit your business, why don’t you contact us now to find out how easy it is to convert to Xero and how much easier it will make the running of your business.
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September 16th, 2011
So, we have a new client. Yay! Thanks website and facebook. The new client is fantastic, with fabulous people, and a great business. They needed a Management/Company Accountant, to provide ledger oversight, management and board reporting, compliance reporting and returns, process re-engineering and are handling most of their traditional bookkeeping responsibilities in house. So it is a great client for Astute Mode but there is an issue.
The issue is they use MYOB and as much as I have extolled the benefits and virtues of Xero it is not the right time for them to convert and so MYOB it is for now. I have been a Xero convert for 3 years. The reason being is that it is a great system. It is logical,well designed, well supported and constantly evolving for the better – better in ways we didn’t even realise we needed things to be better. So for me going back to using MYOB – a system I took an instant disliking to the first time I had to use it about 6 years ago – is awful.
MYOB is hard to use. You can only do one thing at once. I expect to be able to run a report, review it, investigate it all at once. In Xero you can. If you need to keep your Payables window open and run a Profit and Loss report you can. In MYOB reports take a long time to run and then just as long again to export to excel or print. This time uses up precious client resources for no real benefit. Reports should be instantaneous and easily able to be exported or printed should the need arise. In Xero they are.
In MYOB there is no such thing as Profit Centres or Cost Centres – meaning that if you want to split out your income and expenses into reportable and analysable Profit or Cost Centres, you have to set up duplicate/triplicate accounts in the Chart of Accounts and then build complex excel reports to see the desired Profit or Cost Centres, profitability. Or worse do manual calculations.
For example you have:
- Online Sales division
- Bricks & Mortar Sales division
- Wholesaling Division
In MYOB you need to have a Sales account for each of the above divisions and the associated Cost of Sales accounts for each of the above divisions. This bulks up your Chart of Accounts and makes effective reporting difficult to achieve.
However, Xero has tracking categories – which takes care of your Profit or Cost Centre requirements. The above example would see a Tracking Category in Xero called Division with each of the divisions you have as an option to select. This would mean you only need one Sales and Cost of Sales account and when booking this income and expense in Xero you categorise it using your tracking categories. This then facilitates by Division profit and loss reporting directly out of Xero. It is literally as easy as clicking a button.
Clicking a button people!! Not waiting for a report to run, waiting to export it, rechecking formula’s and manipulating data. You can run this report everyday if you like. As opposed to traditionally once a month, 2 weeks in arrears, which is usually the time you present reports using MYOB.
Xero also has the obvious benefit of being accessible to anyone, anywhere, as long as they have an internet connection. Sure with MYOB, I could take the file away with me. But then the bookkeeping couldn’t be done in the interim in my absence. To overcome this of course I can Remote Desktop in – which is also great but this creates many issues too. The most obvious of these is again efficiency of use of MYOB over Remote Desktop – things are definitely slower and take longer to run. The less obvious of this is security. As I am Remote Desktopping in, the work I do occurs on the desktop in real time and real pictures as if I was there doing it. How do I know, who is standing in front of that screen watching me run reports containing sensitive information that maybe this person otherwise wouldn’t be exposed to?
Xero is simply superior. Superior in each of the ways I have listed above and many more. The key with Xero is to get the most out of it you can. In order to do so you should take the time to sit down and think about what you want out of it and how you want it to benefit your business before you jump in. Of course it doesn’t need to be this way, but it will ensure you reap the benefits that Xero offers. Whilst I continue to grapple with the inefficiencies of MYOB and sing the praises of Xero to this client, if you have been wondering about what a well structured Xero can do for your business, contact us!
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August 3rd, 2011
Well Astute Mode – what does that mean? For me, the process of naming my business was a long and drawn out process, just ask my long suffering husband and another couple of great friends who I would skype, text or email at random times with the next greatest name option, almost demanding affirmation of the latest genius name I had come up with.
So why Astute Mode…. well because I wanted people to feel that when they engaged with our services they switched their business into Astute Mode.
So without an obvious connotation to what we actually do I thought it might be best to list in detail the services offered here at Astute Mode.
Here are some specifics about what we do here at Astute Mode:
- Small Business bookkeeping services
- Medium Business bookkeeping services
- Franchise – both Franchisor and Franchee bookkeeping services
- Xero Conversions and Xero Setups for all size businesses, focusing on optimising your business information for optimal decision making capabilities
- Management reporting for our clients businesses
- Financial reporting for our clients businesses
- Building budgets for businesses
- Payroll setup on iPayroll
- Payroll bureau for clients via iPayroll
- Workflow Max conversions and setup
- Unleashed Software (stock management) conversions and setup.
Of course there is more, but I will save that for another blog post.
Don’t forget to contact us, if you need help with any of the issues above.
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July 13th, 2011
Astute Mode is the result of a light bulb moment – the culmination of sporadic rumination around the type of work, work challenges and highlights that I wanted to experience and achieve. A one-time corporate career-orientated person, I was derailed by Motherhood. Accustomed to the “We Can Have It All” ditty often chanted by Gen X women reverberating loudly in my ears, facing the cold harsh reality of “Yes But At What Cost” was not something I was expecting to have to do. Keen to actually have it all but aware of the restrictions imposed on both motherhood and career by each other, I tried to find challenging and rewarding part-time work.
My many years of broad experience in corporate finance departments fueled the need to work in a challenging and accommodating work environment. The realisation that there must be others out there trying to achieve something similar led to my light bulb moment and the seeds of Astute Mode were sown.
As the home page for AstuteMode.com states, Astute Mode is an outsourced finance department offering services ranging from bookkeeping to management accounting, specialising in setup and operating cloud based services. Together with focusing on outstanding levels of client service, Astute Mode is also focused on providing challenging and accommodating work opportunities for those that might otherwise not have found one.
So this first post is a little introduction and welcome to Astute Mode’s blog. Have a look around our website and check back in here from time to time.
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