Xero in on Xero; The New Layout

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If you have logged into Xero recently, you may have noticed that the navigation has recently changed. The purpose of of the changes is to better organize the menu options so that small business and accountants can easily get to the information they need. Accountants, bookkeepers, small business users, and new Xero users all provided relevant feedback that led to these changes. Let’s take a deep dive into the new navigation.

Logging into a Xero account brings us to the dashboard, which is unchanged from the current release. The dashboard still shows your bank accounts on the left hand side and the invoices and bills on the right hand side. At the top menus, you will see the major changes. There are two main menu options; Business and Accounting. Business contains the major functions a small business would utilize like invoices, bills, inventory (now called Products and Services), and expense claims.

There are now direct links in the menu for invoices, quotes, purchase orders, and bills as well as the Sales and Purchases overview links that existed in the old navigation. The layout of the menu separates out the sales and purchases functions in separate groupings so it is easier to navigate to the right area. Inventory is now called Products and services, as many Xero users used the inventory function not only for the sales of goods but also setting up specific service items that can be called upon easily when making an invoice.

The Accounting menu now holds the items most used by Accountants and Bookkeepers. These functions include bank accounts, reporting, and advanced features.

The bank accounts link takes you to the bank accounts screen, just as it did in the old navigations. Your “favorited” reports show up under this heading just as they did under the old Reports navigation. Clicking the star button next to the reports in the Reports menu will “favorite” these reports and add them to this navigation. The third item in this navigation is the Advanced menu. The Advanced menu now contains some of the items that used to be found in the Settings menu, as well as the items in the old Advisor menu navigation.

The Advanced navigation is broken down into two sections. The section on the left contains the Advisor tools like Find and Recode and Manual Journals, as well as the Fixed Asset menu that used to be in the Accounts menu under the old navigation. The items on the right are tools from the old Settings menu that compromised some of the more advanced settings like Chart of Accounts and Tracking Categories. Similarly to the old Settings navigation, you can star particular menu items that will then show up under the Accounting navigation as favorites.

The remainder of the old Settings menu items can be found by clicking on the upper left hand menu where your company’s name is and by clicking on Settings. Also in this navigation is the link for Files, which used to be the files icon on the right hand side of the old navigation.

This menu also links to some of the other Xero software add-ons like Projects and Workflow Max as well as the deep integration link with Gusto and the link to the App Marketplace. You can also change Xero organizations through this menu by clicking the Change Organization link.

The final major change is the “+” icon. Clicking on the “+” icon on the upper right side of the navigation bring down a drop down of easily accessible functions within Xero.

These functions not only include the functions that existed before, but also as a direct link to manual journals and spend, received and transfer money transactions.

Hopefully after utilizing Xero under the new navigation, you and your clients will find it easier to get to the sections of Xero they want to use in a quicker, more intuitive way and ultimately lead to a better user experience for everyone.

Author Bio: Joshua Lance is the founder and Managing Director of Lance CPA Group, a virtual CPA firm that focuses on providing accounting and consulting services to craft breweries and digital agencies. A licensed Certified Public Accountant and Chartered Global Management Accountant, Josh is also a family man who calls Chicago home.  Before venturing on his own with a mission to help small businesses, Josh spent his early career at a top-10 national public accounting firm before working at an ultra high net worth family office. Josh is also an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL teaching in the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and McCormick School of Engineering.  He enjoys making wine at home, cooking, traveling, and cheering on his favorite football and soccer teams. Josh was honored by being selected to the 2017 class of the AICPA Leadership Academy and was named as one of the 40 under 40 in 2017 and 2018 by CPA Practice Advisor.