Unfortunately the use of Contacts in Xero is an area we see being under utilised.
We see people with Multiple of the same contact setup (with a slight variation in the name). This means you can't keep track of how much you are invoicing each Customer per year or how much you are spending with a certain supplier.
We see supplier information not setup so you can't use Batch Payments or Billable Expenses.
We see supplier information missing so you can't have the account pop up automatically when you are putting a bill into the system.
We see suppliers not setup correctly making taxable payment summary reports a nightmare to complete.
We see email addresses missing so you have to type these in to send Invoices, Quotes or Purchase Orders.
We see people with paper notes about their suppliers all over the office instead of notes attached in Xero.
We see key information like Contracts with Suppliers and Terms lost in mounds of paperwork when they can be stored as a file against the Contact.
We see people having to google phone numbers and addresses for contacts when they could be easily stored against the contact.
All of the above mean you or your team spend unnecessary time doing admin tasks (#banadmin) and also mean you can't get the information on your customers and suppliers you need to make any decisions.
The video below gives you a fantastic overview of what you can do with contacts in Xero
Action Items
- Review the Contacts you currently have
- Merge any duplicates
- Archive any Customers and Suppliers you no longer deal with
- Export your contact list as a csv and enter ALL information. Note you can do this just by editing the Customer and Supplier in Xero as well if you don't have enough information.
- Import the updated Contact List back into Xero
- Upload any Contracts, Terms of Supply, Personal Guarantees etc to your Suppliers and Customers.
- Create Contact Groups so you can segment similar Customers and Suppliers together (you can then invoice an entire contact group!)
- Add any notes that are important to that contact or supplier
Now depending on how big your contact list is the above will take some time. But it's certainly worth it in the long run to have ALL vital information in one easily searchable spot, not to mention the ability to look at your data and make decisions based on facts.