By Geoff Hattam, Hattam Reeves McCarthy, Accountants, Adelaide.

Now that you’ve mastered the basics of Xero for your business, it’s time to turn it up a notch to improve your Xero experience and really gain some efficiencies, allowing you to spend more time on what really matters to your business. We asked a selection of our best users for their number one tip and share these with you now.

Tip 1 – Make sure you get up your bank rules “humming”

This is where a huge amount of time can be saved, getting Xero to automatically recognise the regular transactions on your imported bank statements

Tip 2 – Always run your GST reconciliation report

An invaluable tool when preparing your Business Activity Statement – it contains a summary of all of your GST transactions and allows you to check for any errors. You should also check that your liability is correctly displayed in your Balance Sheet

Tip 3 –Save your Xero credentials in your browser

Sick of entering your username/email address every time you use Xero?  Save the following address as a bookmark – https://login.xero.com/?username=YOURNAME@INTERNETPROVIDER.COM.AU obviously replacing the upper case characters with your email address.

Tip 4 – View multiple pages at the same time

Rather than clicking back and forth between various pages, open up multiple page/tabs at the same time using the follow commands

Internet Explorer
a. Log into Xero
b. Right click on the tab
c. Duplicate tab, or Ctrl+K

Google Chrome
a. Log into Xero
b Right click on the tab
c. Duplicate

Tip 5 – Reconcile your bank transactions on a daily basis

Keeping your file up to date at all times makes sense, your information is always up to date allowing you to run your business better, and it is much easier to tackle a small task regularly, rather than letting it build up.

Tip 6 –Want to use the same invoice over and over?

To copy an invoice, open the original, simply select Invoice Options>Copy. Any changes can now be made. This can be used for quick entry of similar invoices.