In February 2022, some of the Alto team attended the Xero Roadshow on the Gold Coast. As well as connecting with their professional peers, they used the opportunity to learn about what is happening with Xero and the business economy as well as new apps that are available in market which could be useful for our clients.

The key takeaways from the team were:

• Xero are continuing to invest in making their reports more meaningful and easy to drill down into the detail making it easier for clients to understand their figures.
• Xero payroll audit processes are becoming more superior with the history on any changes made within the employee cards, and further tracking who and when posted the payruns
• As a business owner – you need to offer flexible working for your team as much as possible, with 83% of those surveyed, saying they valued flexible working arrangements.
• Concerningly, over the last couple of years is 1 in 4 clients are cashflow negative more months than they are positive meaning understanding cashflow is more important than ever.
• E-invoicing increasing in popularity – sends encrypted information directly from Xero to the customers accounting software – so will be automatically entered as an outstanding bill for them. Must register to be able to receive these.

App partners:

• EzzyBills-   (competing with Hubdoc and Dext) – collects all the information including the invoice detail and extrapolates into the same detail whether it be a single line item or multiple line item.  Further it also brings in item codes if they have been set up in Xero and coding to the cost centres (again if this has been set up in Xero).  You still have the ability to change the cost centre if you wish. Further, with receipts, easy to capture on a mobile device and once processed in EzzyBills, sends through to Xero as spend money to the correct account in which the payment come from, allowing for the easy match when reconciling the bank. Integrating with Outlook you can set up a folder for EzzyBills and move your accounts payable emails to this folder and it will automatically sync into EzzyBills.

• Planday – Automatic integration with the modern awards to ensure all pay rates are correct and current and staff rostering showing you a labour cost for each day. You can also set a percentage of revenue as your target and then seeing if your labour costs for that day exceeded the target or not.  Also simple dashboard for rostering allowing you to move staff shifts, and for the staff to be able to put in their availability or take on additional shifts.  Seamless integration with Xero payroll. While this is big in Europe it is only new in Australia but will be one to watch for the future.

• WorkGuru – stock control / job costing suited to the construction industry.  Quoting, progress claims, inventory control, purchasing, CRM and asset management are all integrated. Ability to enter timesheets into this system so that you have an understanding of total costs for the job, and then the timesheets push through into Xero to complete the payroll process.  Customer invoicing is generated from here and then pushed into Xero.

• XeroMe – fee mobile app for Xero which allows employees to enter their time sheets, submit leave, record break times and add notes – empowering to manage work admin on their phones.

• Waddle – Xero linked cash flow funding that provides flexible finance to allow you to access a line of credit up to 85% of the value of your oustanding invoices. Only applies for invoices for job completion and must have at least $10,000 in unpaid invoices. Uses Xero data to determine eligibility and repayment is drawn when customers actually pay their invoices. Useful for customers with longer payment terms.

How Can Alto Help?

Contact Alto if you would like to discuss options for apps or software that can enhance your performance or save you time in administrative tasks.  We can help review your requirements, determine the best program for you and support you in it’s implementation to get you the best outcomes.

Author: Tanya Holtham