Xero made easy for eCommerce
Running an e-commerce business comes with a really long list of responsibilities. Product control, shipping, marketing, the list goes on! If you’re using Xero the good news is you can have all your numbers managed neatly and easily. My new clients are always astounded when they see how simply we can manage it for them so I thought why not spill the tea so you can implement some of this in your biz!
Use Your Dashboard
If the reporting overwhelms you, stick with the dashboard! It’s an actual dream to navigate and gives you a really easy to digest snapshot of a lot of important areas. This can be customised to suit your preferences when it comes to metrics of course but as a guide, your dashboard includes:
Your ‘Account Watchlist’. This is a handy little summary on your Dashboard (or homescreen) of the accounts that are important to you, so you can see straight away how much you’ve spent this month or this year, or even your sales!
Here we can see as soon as we login how much our sales are this month $9,022 and wages for the month $6,700. No report running here! You can choose any accounts you like to put in this list.
Bank balances and the items you need to process (reconcile), plus you can see if you balance or not, if there is one number chances are pretty high you do ✅, if there is two numbers ❌, you have some work to do!
You can even reorder your dashboard so you see the important figures first. Or hide things you don’t want to look at!
And, if the numbers are too hard to read you can switch the look and feel to include colour-coded graphs and more in the Business Snapshot.
Don’t forget – these numbers are only as accurate as the info you’re putting in. So if you’re coding to the wrong account or bucket, the data Xero gives you will be wrong. If your transactions aren’t all reconciled/entered, they won’t be included in these figures either.
Inventory & Sales Management
No complicated integrations here recording the ins and out of your products, we leave that to your powerful sales platform. That’s what Shopify, Neto, TradeGecko, WooCommerce and the like are designed for and it’s a dream.
While integrations are possible with all of these platforms – just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. More often than not, we DON’T integrate. It creates extra work managing clearing accounts, matching invoices in Xero etc. We’re here to streamline things, not add to the workload.
So my suggestion to you, if you’re looking after your own Xero (unless you’re a whizz with having the CORRECT account codes set up in Xero, and can MAP them with unwavering accuracy and BALANCE those numbers like a true bean counter) leave them unconnected and as the funds hit your account – code them directly to sales.
If you have a real need to have them integrated, please get help from someone to have it setup and squeaky clean for you. Because we do have our little entourage of clients that we have integrated to Xero – because numbers is our jam in we have that setup just perfectly for them.
Email Templates
Working smarter is the only way when you’re running a small business. While you *can* send tax invoices upon request from Xero – we want your sales platform to do the heavy lifting for you.
Jump into either your email confirmation settings and have it include all the info you need on the tax invoice, so when the client receives the order confirmation – all the details are there. They don’t need to chase you for an invoice. Or some have app addons that generate and send the invoice for you.
What do I mean?
Well, Shopify is the perfect example. It only sends order confirmations. But if you tweak your email template inside Shopify to include all your biz details, your ABN and any relevant tax (if you’re registered), you’re covered! This is one of the first things we do when we take on a new Shopify client.
Hot Tip – if you’re registered for GST, make sure you have it ticked to include taxes on shipping, as this is a separate setting that is nearly always missed.
Need more help?
You’re in luck because I speak fluent Shopify and my native tongue is Xero!
I’m an official Xero Certified Retail + eCommerce Specialist which means I’m basically a numbers ninja when it comes to:
- Shopify + Xero Integration
- Cashflow
- Payroll
- Expense Management
- Bank Reconciliations
- BAS/IAS
- Reporting + more!
Over the years, I’ve developed a real love of working with female-led eCommerce businesses. Not only do I quite enjoy online shopping and pretty things, making numbers work for you lights me up.
If you need a little love from a Bookkeeper who truly understands your business, I’m a click away.
