Xero is making some pretty hefty changes to its software in the next week. What are they? How will they affect you? Watch this to find out!

Transcript:

Hi and welcome to another episode of BaranovTV, designed to demystify the world of accounts and tax and to help your business grow.

In this episode, I want to talk to you about software and, in particular, about Xero.

Xero software is used by 1.5 million, or more than 1.5 million subscribers across over 180 countries, and they’ve recently announced that they’re changing the navigational structure of the software.

With THAT number of subscribers, over THAT number of countries, it must be a pretty safe bet that they’ve done the kind of research that they’re saying that they have. The reason for making the changes is that they say that the new setup will make a significant difference in terms of speed and user-friendliness, if that’s a word, for users. So their changes are coming in the last week of November, so next week.

You can already see the new structure, although you won’t be able to actually use it, you can see it within the Demo Company, if you are a Xero user. So you can have a nose-around and have a look and see what they’re going to do.

These are the major changes that they’re making:

The first one, is that they’re grouping a lot of the tools. So you’re going to get, now, ‘Business’ grouping and ‘Accounting’ grouping for the tools.

1    The idea behind this is that the ‘Business’ grouping is for the type of tools that business users are into every day. They’re the ones that are in use constantly, things like invoices and quotes, bills and purchase orders and expense claims. They’ve also made another small change, which is with the ‘Inventory’ that used to be called, is now ‘Products and Services’. So those items are all in what they’re calling ‘Business’ tools now.

2    The other big change is the ‘Accounting’ group of tools. Those are really the sorts of things that we use for Xero clients. When we dial in, we usually go in to that area, and it’s where your bookkeeper will go. These tools include things like your reports, and access to bank accounts.

3    Also, in this area are any favourites that you may have set up. So, if you suddenly decide, suddenly realize that your favorites aren’t there, that’s where they’ll be – under the ‘Accounting’ tools listing. By default, there are some favorites that Xero set up automatically and these include your chart of accounts, find and recode, manual journals, and fixed assets. If there are favorites on there that you want to change, you can do that under the Favorites settings; that’s quite straightforward to do.

4    One of the other changes is the ‘Organisation’ menu, which is a new feature. You can access this by clicking on the organisation name, which will be on the top left of your screen, under the new navigation structure. This actually lists all of the high-level information about your business. So, your billing, your subscription, your organisation details, invoice and email settings, so they’re the really high-level areas and those are under your ‘Organisation’ menu.

5    You’ll also have a ‘User’ menu, where you can change your profile or your account information, and from here, you’d access Xero Education too.

The menus that you see and the items that appear in each of those menus will depend on your level of access. So, if you have users within your business that do expenses or invoices, they may not see all of the other menus on there. If you’re a full administrator user, then you’ll see everything.

So, what else do you need to know?

• Dashboards and Contacts are unchanged. You’ve got a Dashboard option on the main navigation and you’ve also got Contacts, as a main option, on there, as well. Those aren’t changed at all.
• You’ve also got an option under ‘Organisation’ which is ‘Do More With Xero‘ and that will link you through to all of the Apps that you can use with Xero too, so that’s where those will be.

Xero’s new Search function

There’s also a new search function which I think actually could be the saving of all of those times when you think ‘Oh, where is this?’ As a result, we’re going to email all of our client subscribers, the details of the new search function.

If you’re not a client but you’re interested to know more about the search function, just drop me an email to liz@baranovassociates.co.uk and I’ll happily pop that out on an email to you as well.

I think when you’re scratching your head, trying to find something that may have moved, having access to the new search function might be a really nice option. It might actually just make things quicker to get into the habit of using the search function to pop around within the system.

Have a look sooner, not later!

Obviously, there’s only a few days to go until the changes are automatically implemented – you don’t have a choice!  We would strongly recommend, if you’re a Xero user, popping in and having a look at the Demo Company.

As I say, you can look and see what’s where and you can find out more, just to familiarise yourself because one morning, you’re going to come into the office and things are going to look rather different! So it might be worth having, ten minutes, half an hour, even an hour, just have a good play around.

As ever, if you have any questions, if you’re unsure, Xero support are there for you and they’re going to be geared up towards being able to help. But obviously, also, pop us an email or give us a call; we’re here to help and we realise that Xero is a major function and a major feature of a lot of your businesses, so, if you get stuck, do get in touch.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you to go off and have a play with the demo company and I’ll see you all very soon.