Sunflower Facilities Management Limited provide facilities management, maintenance and contract cleaning services to residential and commercial premises and use Xero for business accounting.
Background
The business operations of the company was managed on a daily basis by Trish Lockley using a combination of Word documents and Excel spreadsheets to record jobs, time and expenses and to raise and track sales invoices. It became clear, as the business operations grew, that the manual systems and spreadsheets placed an increasing administrative burden on the employees resulting in increased manual effort just to keep up-to-date with the workload.
Approach & Recommendations
Accware Limited met with the directors firstly to understand the business operations and then to see how we could help as the business continued to grow. The accounting requirements of the operation was fairly standard and could be controlled using a number of leading applications. However, with limited IT and personnel resources and a requirement for flexible working, a web based solution appeared to be the best option, but only if it could minimise and streamline the workflow.
Accware Limited recommended using Xero for business accounting, which would help reduce the manual effort in raising and controlling invoicing and completing the bank reconciliation and generating VAT Returns. In due course WorkflowMax would be considered for Job Costing.
Xero ticked many of the boxes for the directors who agreed to the migration of their manual systems to Xero with immediate effect. A Xero Chart of Accounts was set up and an opening trial balance entered at the agreed start date. Training was delivered both face to face and using the extensive online help and videos provided by the Xero Support Website to quickly get the businesses up and running.
Benefits of using Xero for Business Accounting
The benefits of using Xero can be summarised as:-
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- Simplified bank reconciliation with automated ‘feeds’ of data direct from your Bank.
- Professional looking invoices easily created, printed or emailed (through the Xero network).
- Effortless creation of quarterly VAT Returns.
- Multi-user access from any location there is an internet connection.
- Simplified accounting processes with customised and repeating invoicing.
- Real-time, flexible reporting so the Company’s financial data is now up-to-date with minimal effort.
- The benefits of Cloud computing, through a secure hosted application, regularly backed up by the hosting providers.
The Result
Trish Lockley – Managing Director said:
Xero is simply quite brilliant; using Xero has transformed the way we run our business. Our accounting processes are now much simpler and we’re always up-to-date with much less effort. Accware Limited and Berwyn in particular has made sure we’re right on top of the finances. It’s also good to know that Accware Limited can easily access our data to provide pro-active support at any time, particularly at VAT quarter ends, ensuring we’re always up-to-date. Accware and Xero are a great combination for smaller businesses looking for a simple and enjoyable way to keep on top of the business accounting and get a better view of how your business is performing.