We’ve been using Xero and WorkflowMax for a month now. So it seems a good time to start hearing from some of the team about how things are looking from their point of view.

So this begins a series of sorts. There’s no particular rules, timeline or end-date in sight, save one thing – whenever we do this, we’ll ask our contributor the same set of 6 questions. I guess maybe we should give it a cheesy name of some kind – ‘Pick Up Six ‘or ‘Six and Out’ or something. Then again…

It’s appropriate then that the first person we should hear from is our product champion. Very early on in the journey, FGS suggested that we nominate a product champion – the go-to person who will get to know the applications inside out and help us get everything set up. It was sage advice.

Recently retired facility used to customise a profit and loss statement in our old software.

That person for us was Claire Barber, one of our senior accountants. Claire is a CPA with extensive experience at management level. But even more importantly, she’s the only person in the practice who has even come close to understanding our old report writing system. If you haven’t picked up on this earlier, writing or editing a report in our previous system was a task somewhat akin to cracking the Enigma Code. Ideally you’d need a team of experts working around the clock, 7 days a week to really get a vague handle on it. And even then, like the recipe for Coca-Cola, there’s probably only a handful of people in the world who truly understand it completely. But Claire came as close as any single mortal possibly could to making sense of it, so with those credentials, she was the natural choice.

Claire jumped into it boots and all and has made the entire process a lot easier for us. She liaises regularly with Xero and FGS on all sorts of matters to make sure that the rest of our team have what they need to function. Under her watch we’ve already completed an entire job in Xero, although her focus so far has been mainly internal – things like getting our practice file set up, arranging our bank feeds and charts of accounts, establishing a system for managing our new Xero clients and working out how to generate statutory financial reports. So from her perspective, how’s it going?

1. What do you love about Xero/WFM so far?   The ease of the software. The help menu and support has been great too.
2. Is there anything you hate?  I don’t hate anything but one limitation is with fixed assets and not being able to pool.
3. Can you see it making a difference to the way you work?   Yes it will definitely provide more timely reports for clients with daily feeds and help create efficiencies on jobs.
4. If you could only make one enhancement request what would it be and why?   I would have suggested being able to import opening balances into a Xero ledger as an enhancement however this has been done via the most recent upgrade so I am very happy about this.
5. Is there a moment on the journey so far that stands out for you?  There have been only minor hurdles along the way and each time Xero support has been able to help out so the transition is running smoothly which is always good.
6. Overall, if you had to choose, old system or new system?   New system for sure.