Why cloud accounting makes you a better business
Here’s the spoiler…
- It reduces stress !
- It provides live accounting
- It saves you hours – or even days – per year (in one of our recent pitches we heard a client say that processing their invoices takes them 6 full days a month! – We’re confident with digital transformation we can drop that by 4-5 days!)
- Core financial data at your fingertips
- Transforms your business planning capabilities
Way back (like way, way back before smart phones and apps) I remember people talking about this new thing called the internet and ’email’. Theres a brilliant clip from a morning American ‘Today’ show :
Tech changes and as businesses, we have to move with it.
Just like back in 1994, when we all started getting AOL and Yahoo email addresses to be like the cool kids, 20 years later, “the cloud” became a thing.
And with the advancement of apps, smartphones and internet & wifi infrastructure running your business on the cloud in every way is now common place.
Now, none of this is new, cloud accounting has been around for years. But for many businesses, we’re still operating in spreadsheets and manual processes.
The accounting challenge for small businesses
The challenge, is often that for many businesses making significant changes from old to new systems, applications, processes is a huge headache, a massive task and a mountain that within the business, “we just can’t take that on right now”
The beauty is, thats where helpful, more modern accounting firms come in. We can take your 1980s paper and excel processes and turn them into digital amazing systems for the future, often giving you hours a week back in your life and business.
Sounds too good to be true right?
Xero the hero
(yes, I just said that)
Xero is a digital accounting tool specifically built in the cloud and focussed on helping small – medium sized businesses. Its simple, easy to use and incredibly powerful.
Custom reports help you to dive deep into the metrics and figures that matter to your business.
The Xero app store has shed loads of integrations and cloud connections that join up all the moving parts that matter to you in your business.
Here at Shapes we only use Xero. A lot of accounting firms use multiple apps perhaps to get the business in, but we focus on what we’re good at, and also, whats the best out there… ????
Apps with benefits
I’m always stressed about my business ops & finances – how can cloud & digital accounting actually reduce that stress?
Businesses using old systems or spreadsheets to manage and forecast figures are restricted and can only look as far as the data has been updated – and/or is accurate.
With Xero and cloud accounting you can dive deeper and get the insights you need behind the data. “You can understand how revenue is generated, break down costs over time, and see what activities are contributing to the top line.” ~ Charles Orton-Jones, Raconteur
So much of the work that you used to do on spreadsheets becomes automated, accessible at the click of a button or a view of a report. You can view live information on your business, and plan with real numbers.
Hold on… it’s not just Xero!
It’s not just Xero that can transform your business. We use Go Cardless for payments and set up all our clients on recurring payment plans, meaning we don’t need to chase for payments, and can plan better for the future too around guaranteed cashflow.
We also use PLEO for our team cards – meaning anyone can easily purchase things required for their role, without the need for petty cash tins and constant receipts getting lost.
Even better – GoCardless and PLEO map directly into Xero for payments, invoices, receipt capturing – its all one big data love fest, but works amazingly.
