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What do you get when you put a bunch of number crunchers in a room together with our favourite cloud software provider? The Xero Roadshow Melbourne 2014 of course!

I attended the Xero Roadshow in Melbourne 2 weeks ago now and I am only just getting around to writing up my review of the day.

First Xero Roadshow

I hadn’t attended the Roadshow last year so this was my first time – I was a bit nervous, a bit apprehensive – not sure what to expect or what I would gain.  Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised.  Most of you already know my love for the Xero program, and it was nice to be surrounded by a few hundred others who felt the same – granted we were all at various stages of our business journeys. But that is what is great about the program – it caters for everyone.

What I Realised

One of the huge takeaways that I got from the day was that business owners, in this current technologically advanced world, need access to their data 24/7, and they need that data to be accurate and up to date.  This is one of the advantages of Xero – real time data available anytime, anywhere on any device.  You can check your bank rec on your phone on the train, on your tablet whilst in the doctors waiting room, or on your laptop at home – and every update is synced automatically across all devices.  There’s no waiting until month’s end to know what you have spent for the month; there’s no waiting until year’s end to work out what your profit might be (or worse – that you have worked your butt off all year and made a loss). There is no downtime whilst data files are saved to USB and swapped with your accountant or bookkeeper. Productivity increases due to the streamlined functions available.

Real time data is invaluable – and if you are not using this for your business, you are missing out on vital information.  How can you make educated business decisions without knowing your current spending, your current budget, your anticipated sales for the month ?

Help Streamline Your Business

What I also loved about the day was the ability to talk to various add on partners. These programs partner with the Xero program to help your business even more. Whether it be support with HR policies, procedures and payroll, to job costing and project management. With over 300 partner programs, there may just be something out there to help streamline your business. Yes – these add on partners cost extra – and so this is where you need to weigh up your time to do these tasks yourself, with the benefit of having a system/program do it for you. As my clients are small business owners, most don’t have a HR team – so I can now see the value in such an add-on program to provide such support, systems, and policies.

Updates

With updates going on behind the scenes every 2-3 weeks, the work that goes on that we don’t see is amazing. If you’re not already, I suggest you get on board the Xero bandwagon. You won’t regret it.

It’s a Business Investment

Think of your Xero subscription as an investment in your business’ financial information. A subscription will cost less per day than a cup of coffee. So what are you waiting for?

Healthy Business Finances can help you setup a new data file, oversee a current data file, or do a conversion from MYOB or quickbooks.