Time is everything to small business owners. Being able to reduce the time spent on data entry means you have time for way more important business things or perhaps some more time for you. The same applies for employees. The less time spent doing data entry means the more time available to help the business grow. 

Xero really has changed the time it takes to process transactions compared to the slow ways of manual entry we all used to have to do years ago. But most people don't know about the amazing shortcuts to speed up the process even further. 

Global Search

The new and improved search functionality in Xero is certainly a time saver. Without clicking any buttons you can quickly navigate to prepare an invoice, enter a bill, a quote, or a purchase order, even look up a contact, or go directly to all invoices, bills, quotes, purchase orders etc

This means way less clicks and a lot less time waiting to get from one page to the next. All you need to do is press / on your keyboard and your search bar opens up. If clicking is your thing you can also click the search icon on the top toolbar. 

Using any of the keyboard shortcuts below after / opens up the exact screen you are looking for. Ie press / I then click + Add new you will open a new invoice screen. 

You can start typing and search for contacts, invoices etc straight from this screen as well. Take a look at the video below. 

The + button

If you don't like to remember too many shortcut keys you will love the + icon in Xero. Straight from the top toolbar you can add a new invoice, bill, quote, purchase order or contact. Simply click the + button and select what you want to do. 

Shortcut Keys

There are also a heap of date entry shortcut keys to speed up the data entry process even further. 

You can get the full list here

And don't forget about the inbuilt calculator function. When you are entering a price you simple use the + - * or / keys as you normally would rather than needing to grab a calculator. 

What is your favourite shortcut in Xero?