Confused about Xero and think you need $50/mth to start?
Following on with our theme of cloud accounting this month we wanted to explain a little more about Xero plans.
We’ve had quite a few small business owners tell us recently they can’t get started with Xero as they can’t afford $50/mth from their business yet, and they are probably right. But you don’t need $50/mth to get started. That’s what we love about Xero.
If you subscribe through a Xero Partner (usually an Accountant or Bookkeeper) you can start on as little as $10/mth for a non-gst cashbook. Now this doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of the $50/mth Standard plan, it is what it says it is a ‘cashbook’. So no invoicing, payables, payroll, fixed assets ledger. But you can still set up bank feeds to gain your efficiencies and if you are using manual word/excel prepared invoices or another system such as Shopify or Kounta which takes care of all your invoicing and customer orders you can run the cashbook on its own (ie. No integration) and still gain many benefits.
The biggest challenge here is ensuring you use only business accounts for your transactions. Adjustments can be made for any outstanding Accounts Receivable or Payable at intervals that suit your business.
From the non-GST Cashbook you can move up to a GST Cashbook for $19/mth. At this point your business can likely afford that as you would be around the $75k turnover mark. And from there up to the standard versions as your business grows. All at the click of a few buttons.
What’s great is you can also move down plans with no issues and back up and the data ‘comes alive’ where you left off. So if for some reason you are putting your business on hold for 6 months you can just drop it down to the appropriate plan and you don’t lose any data.
We would encourage you to contact your advisor or accountant (or us here at Lemonade Beach if you haven’t got a current advisor) to discuss your needs. The efficiencies you gain from having up to date data at your fingertips is well worth the outlay and in most situations, especially at the cashbook level with a 1hr training session you can do most of the account work yourself in likely under 1hr a week.
