Xero in on Xero; Invoices

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You just quit your job. You finally took that leap of faith. The decision you’ve been grappling with for some time now - whether or not to go out on your own and pursue your passion - has been made.

As you navigate through the exciting landscape of entrepreneurship, you start to realize that there is a lot to do. From sales, to marketing, to HR - everything falls on your shoulders; and on top of it all, there’s actual work to get done.

Last but not least, you have expenses. There are business expenses and personal ones too. You need to get paid, and quickly!

In this day and age, with so many tech tools out there solving invoicing and payment pain-points, getting paid should be an afterthought. That being said, having a streamlined solution that connects all the dots - everything from sending an invoice to providing an easy, one-click solution to customers for payment to marking invoices as paid and having them neatly reconciled for accounting purposes - is no easy task.

As co-founder of ConnectCPA, a tech-enabled online accounting firm, I have seen a number of solutions. There are some great invoicing tools and some great payment tools. There are also some fantastic combined invoicing and payment capturing apps too. This is sufficient for many business owners and freelancers. The accounting and reconciliation component is not something they would naturally think about. Might as well “let the accountant deal with it at tax time.”

Not having all these separate components tie directly to your client's accounting could be cause for concern. Business owners require up-to-date information in order to make business decisions in a timely manner - and they rely on their balance sheet and income statement, among other things, to ensure these decisions are intelligent ones.

What Xero has designed within their platform to tackle the invoicing and payment problem should bring a big smile to business owners everywhere. Many other invoicing and payment apps force you into using one of their payment gateways. Xero, on the other hand, lets business owners choose. Whether it’s PayPal, Stripe or a custom gateway, connecting it to a Xero invoice is simple.

After a few clicks and a minor setup, you can send invoices with a ‘payment’ link.

When customers receive your invoice, they will be able to click on a link and enter their payment details. Once payment has been made, the invoice is marked as paid, providing you with a transaction ID, for quick and easy reconciliations.

Where Xero has really executed well is on their Stripe integration. There are millions of Stripe users worldwide, and without getting into the mechanics of the Stripe payment process, there were always multiple steps in reconciling Stripe transactions. If you have been there before, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about!

Xero has taken the pain out of Stripe reconciliations by automatically matching your paid invoice to your batch Stripe bank deposit while simultaneously allocating Stripe fees to correct categories. It truly is a beautiful process.

Your client need to get paid? There are lots of awesome apps out there. Your client need to get paid and want a seamless process? Try Xero’s invoicing and payment services capabilities.

XPT: While Stripe is the easiest integration to accept payments, there are more payment vendors to choose from. If you have other needs, check out the marketplace for all of the integrations. Inside of Xero, you can access the direct integrations from general settings > invoice settings. It looks like this:

Author Bio: Lior Zehtser is co-founder of ConnectCPA LLP - a leading cloud-based accounting firm in Canada. Lior is a CPA, ex-Big 4 and tech-obsessed. ConnectCPA’s mission is to help their clients streamline their accounting function and achieve meaningful growth.