1. Setting up your organisation

To get your investment properties started in Xero there are a few simple things you need to set up first.

• Enter your company details including your Company name and GST number (if applicable) into the Organisation Settings screen.
• Set up your invoices by uploading your logo and entering your contact details in the Invoice Settings screen.
• Invite any other people you wish to access the financial data for your company eg. your accountant.

• Set up your Chart of Accounts in Xero by importing your existing Chart of Accounts or use the Property Investors' Chart of Accounts Template attached here for you.

  Download: Property Investor Chart of Accounts (CSV)

  Download the Property Investors' Chart of Accounts template (CSV file) to your computer. You can then upload it into Xero to replace the default Chart of Accounts set. It is important that it remains a CSV file and isn’t changed into an XLS or any other file type.

2. Adding in your bank details

Xero can automatically import your bank statements overnight. Each morning you can quickly process the new transactions, including rents received and expenses incurred.

• Add your bank account(s) including your bank account number.
• Set up your automatic bank feeds so that all your rent payments will be brought in daily. Xero provides you with a form that you send in, which gives authority to enable the bank feeds.
• Enter your bank account balance in the Set Starting Balances screen. The balance you should enter is the closing balance as at the day before you start using Xero.

3. Setting up one investment property or all of your investment properties in Xero

• This can be done in one simple step using Tracking. This allows you to attribute your income and costs to specific properties. It's a good idea to use the Tracking option from the beginning so you can easily add new properties as your portfolio grows.

4. Making it easier to record your rents

• Set up your rent schedule to record rental payments due. This can be done easily in Xero using our Repeating Transactions function. You will immediately be able to see when a rent has become due.

5. Make it easier to record your bills

• Set up your rates, mortgage payments or any other payments due. This can be done easily in Xero using the Repeating Transactions function. You will be able to see when a payment is due - making sure you have enough funds to cover all your outgoing payments.

6. Reviewing your property portfolio

When rent is received for a particular property and you want to review the rent received and any costs associated with that property you can:

• Run an individual Profit and Loss, showing the income received and the expenses paid.
• Log on and view your data anytime, anywhere.
• Give your accountant access, so they can make sure the transactions are correctly recorded.

Even if you are six months or a year behind you can still easily set up your property business in Xero with our bank import repeating transactions and memorisation options.

• Simply import in all your bank statements for your catch up period.
• Set up your weekly / monthly rent payments as repeating transactions for each property. The start date for these transactions should be the date of the oldest bank transaction to be reconciled.
• Automatically approve this invoice - it will then create invoices for all of your historical rents due.
• All other transactions need to be classified once, after that Xero will remember your prior classifications for you. All you will need to do is click ok.

These are the normal activities you would do each day in Xero.

• Each morning you can log in to Xero where you can see any rental payments received, you can then allocate this directly to your repeating rental invoice, most of these can be reconciled with a single click.
• Record any expenses or disbursements made on behalf of your clients using Spend Money(s) and Tracking to associate expenses to a specific property.
• Reconcile any payments made to your clients against money spent from your bank account.
• Check for any rental payments that are overdue. You can see this information on your dashboard.

Keeping your property portfolio up to date

Thinking of purchasing a new investment property?

You can easily add any additional property purchased into Xero by using Tracking. This allows you to track the performance of each of your properties, giving you more clarity for the decisions you need to make.

By sharing your business' data with your accountant you can get help to make any decisions on growing your property portfolio.

You can also invite your mortgage manager to help speed up your approval process.