Cloud Accounting

Do you hate creating invoices?

By January 26th, 2017 No Comments

Man sat behind a mountain of paperworkWe hear this a lot, and it’s probably the biggest paradox in business.

“I hate doing my invoicing.”

It’s daft – there is literally no other activity in your business that’s so directly linked to actual money in your pocket, but it is still an activity that most business owners dread.

Perhaps its the tedious nature of having to add in all the invoice line descriptions, or perhaps it’s the thought of opening Word, finding your old invoice, copying it, working out your invoice number, rewriting it, and then trying to remember what you’re billing for.

There is an easier way!

Modern accounting packages (we favour Xero, but most do this) allow you to create something called Inventory Items, which are, basically, pre-written descriptions of services and products that you can choose to auto-populate your invoices.

Imagine this. Jeff, the owner of Jeff’s Tyres asks for a website, a new logo (his old one was looking ‘tyred’), some letter-heads and help with setting up his social media accounts.

You used to have sit down and create these items by hand each time.

But with Xero, you have a list of commonly used ‘products/services’ that cover each of the these (hint: one of our clients uses ‘Consultancy’ as a product that allows her to cover anything that is not already set up as in Inventory Item).

This means creating invoices can literally (literally!) take under a minute.

If you already use Xero* then this is already available to you (if you are not sure how to use it, ask us).

If you’re not using Xero yet, then either ask your accountant for help, or become one of our clients, where not only do we pay for your Xero subscription, but we know pretty much everything there is to know about getting Xero to work for you.

*Good work – go out and buy yourself a Magnum right now. You deserve it.

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