Before Xero, what did you use?

Excel.

What problems did you have with your old accounting system?

We are a young company, and our business has grown rapidly over the past two years. Our team is distributed geographically and the partners in our firm wear many hats.

Among other things, each of the partners invoices the clients they are responsible for managing as often as twice per month. Using Excel severely limited our ability to share the responsibilities of managing income and expenses, and Excel lacks support for typical accounting workflows such as creating and approving invoices and reconciling transactions.

How did these problems affect your business?

Weʼre busy folks. Performing basic accounting tasks consumed substantial amounts of personal time, and the delay between closing a project cycle and invoicing a client was unnecessarily long, which affected our cash flow.

What made you decide to use Xero? Did you try out any other solutions?

I have implemented financial systems for other small consulting firms in the past, including NetSuite and Quickbooks Online. Neither of these match the elegance and capability of Xero at the price point offered.

What was your experience when switching and getting started with Xero?

Quite pleasant. I found it easy to import contacts, price list items and get our first bank statement added and reconciled.

How has Xero improved your business?

• Better and more predictable cash flow. We are able to invoice our customers faster and therefore we get paid faster.
• Happier staff. We are able to pay our contractors as soon as our clientʼs payments are reconciled, and our firmsʼ partners can invoice the company directly through Xero.
• We save time and have less stress with Xero.

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