For those of you reading our Xero Tips for the first time we like to #banadmin at Growthwise. Which means we like to be as efficient as possible. We have been a paperless office for 6 years now and the savings for us have been enormous! As an example we have saved over $37,000 in postage expenses alone just by using electronic signatures.
So taking a look at being paperless for your business will not only save you time but also money.
Let's take a look at the process we recommend for all of our clients.
[email protected]
It all starts with an email address. We suggest you have [email protected] setup. It's really easy to do but if you are stuck give our resident geek Beau a call and he can help.
Once you have this email address setup you then alert ALL of your suppliers to email invoices and statements to this email address. You have 1 central place for everything. No more opening paper mail. No more scanning and filing the Invoices. No more paper filing if you are still using manual systems.
Once you have this setup you then have 2 choices for how you process these receipts.
Choice 1 - Manual Entry to Xero
Xero gives you the ability to attach files to everything which is amazing. You can attach plans or drawings to Invoices you send to Customers, attach supplier agreements to the supplier in Xero and attach the Invoice or Receipt to every Bill or Spend Money transaction you have.
No more searching through piles of paper when you need to find that source document, just click the search button in Xero and a PDF of the invoice will appear.
So how do you attach these files?
There are a few options. You could setup an automatic forward on all of the emails that go to your accounts@ email address. This means that all the Invoices and Statements from your suppliers will be stored in the files section of Xero for you. When you enter a Bill you just manually attach the PDF by clicking on the File button.
The other option is to attach the file straight from your Inbox when you are entering the bills or allocating your spend money.
But we really love our automation at Growthwise so we recommend setting up Shoeboxed to take care of this process even faster.
Choice 2 - Shoeboxed
Shoeboxed is a magical system that extracts the data from your Invoices and turns that into a Bill in Xero or attaches itself to your spend money transaction. What that means is you never have to type a Bill into Xero manually again. Once you have told Shoeboxed where to allocate each type of expense in Xero it will remember for the future.
If you have 100 Invoices from customers / month and it takes you 2min to enter the bill into Xero thats 3 + hours / month you have saved! Time for you to be doing things that will really help your business.
Small Paper Receipts
I know what you are thinking. What about fuel receipts, coffee, bunnings - the ones that are those little shiny paper things.
If you are using Shoeboxed you simply open the app, snap a photo of the receipt and the normal shoeboxed process continues.
If you are using Xero for your files you again simply open the app, snap a photo, attach it and type in the expense information and you are done.
No more wallets with receipts, no more receipts that fade in your car and no more lost receipts!
What next?
As always if you need help setting this up let one of the ninjas at Growthwise know.
