Cloud Accounting

Invoicing in less than 10 seconds

By January 31st, 2017 No Comments

grandadRemember when your Grandad used to say, ‘Time is Money’?

At the time, I bet you thought it was load of rubbish, but as your business grows and you get busier, you realise that time really is one of the most valuable resources you (don’t) have.

We love time-saving shortcuts here, and we also love Xero.

So today, we talk about both.

Editing Contacts

When you’re creating invoices in Xero, you can set up defaults for contacts, so that every invoice for that contact is pre-filled with useful defaults, such as:

  • Vat treatment
  • Default account* (e.g. ‘Consultancy’, or ‘Website Work’)
  • Bank details (for Batch payments)
  • Invoice settings (how many day’s credit does each contact have?)
  • Xero network key (if a customer uses Xero, this allows you to send invoices directly into their Xero package)

So, to see how this might work in the real world, let’s use a fictional agency, called Will’s Web Design Studio.

Meet Will, the Web Developer

Will has a client who he manages the website for. This means that about 90% of the time, when Will is invoicing this client, it falls under the ‘Website Maintainence’ account code*.

So, Will sets up this client on Xero, and goes to client settings (Contacts–>edit), and sets up the following defaults:

  • People – he adds the Managing Director, the Content Manager, and the Financial Director as contacts. (He chooses to send the invoices to only the MD & FD)
  • Account settings – he chooses ‘Website Maintenance’ as the default account
  • He adds the right VAT settings so that each invoice automatically works out the right VAT amount
  • This client gets an 11% discount on each invoice, as they are very loyal, so this is added here too
  • This client has 30 days to pay, so he adds that here too.
  • This client has Xero too, so he adds the client’s Xero network key, (this allows Will to automatically send invoices directly to his client’s Xero application.)

This takes him a few minutes up-front, but now every single time he wants to create an invoice for this client, it takes a matter of seconds, as most of the information is already filled in!

This means Will can spend less time doing the boring stuff, like invoicing, and more time doing the exciting stuff.

*Accounts are just ways of separating out your income – usually for reporting purposes. For example, you may have one account for consultancy, one for speaking, one for web development and one for hosting. By ensuring income & expenses are attributed to the right account you can do all kinds of cool reporting, like instantly see which of the services you offer are profitable.

 

Photo courtesy of Harry Thomas

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