Becoming Profitable

The Xero Journey for your Creative Agency: From Sales Lead to Cash in Bank

By January 24th, 2017 No Comments

financialdirector-300x225Rod Drury, Xero CEO and Founder, explained at Xerocon recently that “Accounting Software” was always a temporary category for where they are headed as a software solution.

Xero’s vision is to be THE software solution for small business. Finances are an integral part of your business but they are not the whole picture. You have leads to manage, jobs to manage and then finance.

When we say we are moving our clients to the cloud, we mean it. Not just your finances but your sales pipeline and workflow too. Combining this with the financial capabilities of Xero, small businesses – particularly digital creatives – are genuinely running their businesses on the cloud with an all integrated platform.

Our clients are beginning to see the integration Xero can have in your entire “customer journey”– from getting the first sales lead to seeing the cash appear in your bank on a monthly basis.

We now have digital creative clients using:

  • Workflow Max (CRM and Job Management)
  • Xero (Finance)
  • Receipt Bank (Purchase Invoices and Receipt processing)
  • Satago (Credit control)
  • GoCardless (Direct Debit and payment collection)

Let’s look at why this matters.

Xero is Not Just Accounting Software

The ‘old school’ way of looking at accounting software was to use it to record invoices and generate profit and loss reports.  It also helped you determine how much your business had to pay in taxes.

But Xero is not just about viewing your accounts online. As experts in accountancy for digital creatives, we would argue that Xero is THE software solution for your creative agency.

One of the (many) areas Xero has gotten really right is the add-ons department.  Xero itself does the accounting side, yes – and it’s beautiful accounting software. But the (well over 400) add-ons to the Xero product mean that you can integrate it with everything you do for clients, even before they are a client yet.

Here’s how:

Your Business Journey.with Xero

Leads and Prospects

Before a contact even becomes a client, you can mange those leads via Workflow Max, tracking all those sales potentials and issuing quotes for creative projects. You can look at things like:

  • Overview of the status of leads
  • Find out which of your team is bringing in more business, and reward them.
  • Leads per month
  • Leads won per month (conversion percentages)
  • Create quote templates within Xero
  • Send out quotes faster
  • Get back to prospective leads faster
  • Win work faster
  • Automatically store everything, so that when they become a client, you’ve got all your communications at your fingertips.

Client & Project Work

Before you know it, you’re on with the stuff that matters – the work! With Workflow Max, Xero can act as your CRM, ensuring those client projects are kept on track. You can also use various plugins from other CRM systems like SalesForce and InfusionSoft too!

With this element, you can learn more about:

  • What projects or jobs are costing you the most money
  • Which are the most profitable
  • Any projects for which you are under-billing
  • Where your (and your team’s) time really goes

For internal processes, use Xero and Workflow Max to track jobs, manage documents and ensure all your costs align. And with add-ons for time tracking software like Harvest, you’ll be able to coordinate staff hours and issue invoices accordingly.

Getting Paid

When work is completed and your satisfied clients are ready to pay, they’ll already have received an automatic bill from Xero. All you need to do is use an add-on like GoCardless to take payments online. And naturally, they’ll reconcile direct with Xero.

All these add-ons help you to:

  • Automate email reminders
  • Get paid faster
  • Send payment demand letters directly from the app
  • Chase unpaid debts automatically (without hours of extra time, or the embarrassment of bringing it up in a client project update)

You can also organise all the paperwork better using ReceiptBank (another Xero add-on).  This means you can:

  • Take a snapshot of a receipt instantly – so it doesn’t matter if you have the paper or not
  • Track expenses per client, or per job
  • Integrate with Dropbox, and other add ons
  • Never have to perform dull data entry ever again

Sounds simple? It really is.

Less Time on Accounting and More Time For Creativity

All this means less time on accounting and more time on creative. Or relaxing. You’ll have plenty of work coming in – organised and managed to a T – that you’ll probably just find yourself chilling on a beach somewhere.

Why wouldn’t you want to free up office space, free up time, and keep your hands free for more creative projects?

Get in touch with us today, and you’ll soon be patting yourself on the back for switching to Xero!

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