• It's time to change your BNZ Bank Feed

    | Categories: Bank Feeds , Business Banking , New Zealand , Xero

    Blog by Fuel Accountants

      Xero is changing the way that it connects to BNZ for its bank feeds.  You need to make a one-time change to ensure that your Xero bank feed continues uninterrupted.  While this change doesn't have to happen until late August, it's best to get this done now. Before you begin you do need to use the Business Banking online product from BNZ.  If you only log in using your personal banking access number then you should contact BNZ right away to get setup with Business Banking online.  If you don't know that you have business banking, then you're probably using personal…

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  • 5 Xero Mistakes Business Owners Make and How To Avoid Them

    | Categories: Bookkeeping , Xero

    Blog by Fuel Accountants

    If you've just started working with Xero, it is normal to make a few mistakes while you’re learning. We see mistakes that are quite common - and unfortunately costly - so you should be aware of them if you want to get the most out of Xero’s powerful cloud accounting...

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  • Best Practices for using Xero

    | Categories: Bookkeeping , Xero

    We have lots of clients who do their own bookkeeping in Xero. Here are our Best Practices for managing your own bookkeeping:

    • Keep your personal transactions out of the business bank account.  If you need to spend on something personal transfer funds to your personal account and pay from there!  The transfer to yourself (and any personal spending you do include) is Drawings/Shareholder Loan.
    • Add your expenses as Bills or Spend money as you incur them.  This will avoid missing things.  Use Xero’s Email to Files or Email to Bills feature to get documents into the queue, or for more powerful features talk to us about Receipt Bank.

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  • Follow-up flags in Xero

    | Categories: Xero

    Xero does not have any tagging or flagging system that would allow you to identify a transaction that has been coded but still needs some follow-up action or investigation.  However, you can simulate this using Tracking Categories. Xero provide two Tracking Categories that can be operated independently of each other.  Most Xero ledgers only use one or none of these two options.  If your ledger is already using both then you can’t use this approach, but for the other 99.9% – here’s how to create a flagging system.  It will only allow you to assign one flag per line, but that…

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  • Creating Buyer Created Tax Invoices in Xero

    | Categories: Xero

    A “Buyer Created Tax Invoice” (sometimes referred to in other countries as a “Recipient Created Tax Invoice” or “RCTI”) is an invoice for sales tax purposes that is created by the purchaser of the goods rather than the seller of the goods. This is common in many industries especially where the purchaser has to assess the quality, quantity or price of the goods after they are delivered.

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  • Why my small business switched to Xero

    | Categories: Small Business , Bookkeeping , Xero

    This article is re-posted from the xero.com blog.
    I’m not a huge fan of the Super Bowl, but I love seeing the ads. They’re always the highlight of the whole event for a lot of people. This year there was a great ad by BMW that showed a clip of two TODAY show hosts from 1994 who was reading an email address out loud. It was obviously the first time they’d done so. They didn’t know how to pronounce an ‘@’. This led to the perplexing duo questioning “what is the internet anyway?”

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  • Recent Changes in Xero

    | Categories: Xero

    The last eighteen months has seen some HUGE changes in Xero—our preferred online accounting system. Let’s run down just a few of the significant ones:
    Files
    About 18 months ago Xero added the ability to attach files to any transaction. You can email files in to a designated “inbox” and then move them to existing transactions or initiate a new transaction and have them attached automatically. In our office, and with many of our clients, we now scan all incoming bills and upload them to Xero. We don’t keep the originals anymore!
    Purchase Orders

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  • Handling Retail Sales in Xero

    | Categories: Xero

    IMPORTANT: This post is specific to New Zealand. If you are not a New Zealand business/taxpayer then it is probably not applicable to you.

    So you have a retail outlet and are using Xero to manage your accounting. Great start. But in retail you have a number of settlement issues. There are sales on account, customers may pay on account over the counter, EFTPOS (debit cards) and various credit cards may settle on different days and some settle gross and some settle net of commissions. How do you handle all this?
    First, let me recommend that you consider using a Point of Sale system that integrates with Xero. We use Vend, and highly recommend it. Vend has a Register Close function that will handle the balancing of each register and post the appropriate totals to Xero. If you would like to look at implementing Vend please let us know – we are Vend partners and can help you evaluate, implement and integrate properly with Xero.

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  • Offsetting Receivables Invoices and Payables Bills in Xero

    | Categories: Receivables , Xero

    Blog by Fuel Accountants

    There are plenty of times when you need to be able to offset Receivable Invoices against Payable Bills. This is usually the case when you working on “trade” with someone (no cash changes hands, but you each do work of equal value to each other – you still need to account for the HST and income tax on these transactions) or where you allow a customer to offset an amount you owe them from their bill.

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  • Fixing Common Bank Reconciliation Problems in Xero

    | Categories: Bank Reconciliation , Xero

    Blog by Fuel Accountants

    The Bank Reconcile screen is one of my favourite places in Xero. It was, and still is, what makes Xero a clear leader over the other cloud-based accounting systems. If used properly it puts an end to unnecessary data entry and reconciliations. But there is always a catch – if used properly! It is possible to be unreconciled even if you no more entries in the reconcile screen or if the Statement Balance equals the Balance in Xero.

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  • Working with Petty Cash in Xero

    | Categories: Xero

    Blog by Fuel Accountants

    Most businesses deal with Petty Cash at some stage. For the sake of clarity here I will define “Petty Cash” to refer to managing disbursements from a central pool of cash. The following are not meant to be addressed in this article as they are covered elsewhere:

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  • Reimbursing yourself for out of pocket expenses

    | Categories: Xero

    Blog by Fuel Accountants

    As a business owner it’s not uncommon for you to have to pay business expenses from your personal funds. While we have previously written about the importance of keeping business and personal transactions separate we also know that in reality it happens. Whether it’s some cash spending from your wallet, using a personal credit card, or office expenses on the same receipt as domestic expenses, you need to be able to get these items into Xero (or other accounting system) so that you can claim back the HST and get the appropriate tax deduction for them.

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  • Fixing Bank Reconciliation “Out of Balance” problems in Xero

    | Categories: Bank Reconciliation , Xero

    Blog by Fuel Accountants

    Xero is a highly complex accounting environment. While the developers have worked wonders to make it simple and user friendly, this approach often masks the fact that it is a complicated accounting system under the hood! The bank reconciliation process in Xero, if provided with correct data and intelligent user interaction, should result in a perfect bank reconciliation where everything balances as expected. But the reality is that this does not always happen.

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  • Repeating Journals in Xero

    | Categories: Xero

    Blog by Fuel Accountants

    UPDATE

    Xero has now implemented Repeating Manual Journals. The actually reached out to us for feedback because of this article. We’ve kept this article here just so that we can gloat – although it is no longer necessary!!

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  • What’s coming in Xero

    | Categories: Xero

    Blog by Fuel Accountants

    I was at the Xero Conference yesterday. It is exciting to see the trajectory they are on. Here are some of the features that are coming to the Xero core product soon(ish):

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