Who can help me with Xero when I need expert support?
You’re halfway through your month-end close when something stops making sense. Maybe a bank reconciliation won’t balance, a report looks wrong, or you can’t find a feature you swear used to be there. Sound familiar?
It happens to plenty of business owners, even those who’ve been using Xero for years.
The software’s brilliant, but it’s still software, and every set-up is a little different from the next. A bank rule that works perfectly for one business might cause chaos in another, simply because of how the accounts were configured in the first place.
So, when you hit a wall, where do you turn?
This blog looks at your options, from Xero’s own resources through to bringing in a specialist and why working with someone who knows the platform inside out can make all the difference.
Xero Central and the Xero help resources
When you get stuck in Xero, your first instinct might be to look for an answer yourself.
Xero Central has a huge library of help articles, where you can search for tips and troubleshoot your problems.
For simple, general questions, this can work well enough. If you’re wondering how to add a new bank account or change your invoice template, for example, you’ll likely find your answer in minutes.
However, the trouble starts with anything more specific to your business.
Xero’s generic advice doesn’t always translate to your account, your industry or the way you’ve configured things. You can lose an afternoon reading articles that almost answer your question, without ever quite getting there. What may look like a fix for a ‘missing transactions’ problem might have nothing to do with why yours are missing.
And, crucially, nobody’s looking at your Xero account. If the issue’s even slightly unusual, trying to find the answers by yourself rarely gets you to a proper fix. You could end up applying the wrong solution, hoping it fits, and creating a new problem in the process.
Your existing accountant
If you’ve got an accountant already, it’s natural to assume they’ll sort out any Xero issues for you. Sometimes they will. But not every accountant specialises in Xero.
Plenty of practices use several different accounting platforms across their client base, picking up whichever system the client happens to have. It means the depth of Xero knowledge can vary hugely from one accountant to the next. Some will know the platform well. Others might only log in a handful of times a year, when it’s time to prepare your accounts.
Many accountants are set up to handle your quarterly or year-end accounts, tax returns and compliance work, rather than sitting alongside you fixing a bank rule or untangling a payroll error. That’s a specific, hands-on kind of support. Your accountant might be excellent at what they do, while still not being the right person to call when Xero itself is the problem.
Why work with a Xero specialist like Progression Accountancy?
At Progression, Xero is all we do. We’re a Xero Gold Partner, and we hold certifications across Xero Payroll, migration, tax, cash flow and many other specialisms. Scott, our resident Xero expert, has been working with the platform since 2010 and has helped hundreds of UK businesses across all sorts of industries, from sole traders to growing companies with more complex needs.
That experience means we’ve likely seen your exact issue before, whatever it happens to be.
We’ve seen bank feeds behaving oddly, payroll journals that won’t post correctly, opening balances that don’t match and VAT that’s calculated incorrectly on a handful of transactions. We know where to look and how to fix it.
Perhaps most importantly, we don’t want to keep you dependent on us forever. Our approach is built around empowering you to run Xero confidently yourself. We’ll fix what’s broken, but we’ll also make sure you understand why it broke and how to stop it happening again. You get support when you need it, without ever losing control of your own accounts or feeling like you need to phone us every time you need to process an invoice.
We won’t baffle you with jargon, either. If we’re changing a setting or fixing an issue, we’ll explain what we’re doing and why, in plain English, so it actually sticks.
And while we’re based in Chesterfield, we work with businesses right across the UK, whether that’s in person or online. Distance has never been the barrier. Getting stuck without the right support is.
The importance of working with an experienced Xero Gold Partner
Not every Xero specialist holds the same level of expertise.
Gold Partner status is a good indicator of how well they know the platform.
We’re a Xero Gold Partner, which reflects our years of hands-on experience. It means you’re not paying someone to learn on the job or work things out from scratch alongside you.
It also means better access to Xero itself. As an established partner, we have closer lines of communication with Xero’s product and support teams. So, if something’s gone wrong at Xero’s end, we can usually get through to the right people faster than you could on your own.
Xero regularly updates its platform, and HMRC’s requirements shift just as swiftly. We keep on top of these changes as a matter of course, so you’ll never be left to spot that something’s changed and work out what it means for your business.
You also get fewer surprises when you work with us. We can help you catch problems earlier, our advice will always reflect how Xero currently works, and you’ll always deal with someone who’s built a track record that many accountants can’t boast.
How our Xero training works
Our Xero training is bespoke and built around your business. Every session focuses on what you need. We offer two main ways to work with us.
Our online Power Hour sessions suit businesses that need something specific sorted quickly. That might be a walkthrough of the basics for someone new to Xero, a fix for one or two nagging problems, or a quarterly review and tidy-up before your accountant takes over. It’s ideal if you know exactly what’s wrong and just need someone to sort it without it taking up a full day of your time.
For anything more thorough, our day visits give you focused, hands-on, on-site support. These suit businesses that have been using Xero for a while without proper guidance, have persistent errors that need fixing, or are converting to Xero from another system and want everything set up correctly from the start. We can also help you connect and configure add-ons from the Xero App Store, so the tools you’re using work together properly.
Whichever route you choose, we can cover the full range of what Xero offers, including:
Initial set-up
Bank feeds and automation rules
Sales invoicing and payment collection
Bills, expenses and mileage tracking
Custom reporting and budgeting
If there’s a specific area causing you grief, chances are we’ve dealt with it before, more than once.
Training doesn’t have to be the end of our support, either. We offer follow-up sessions if questions crop up once you’re back at your desk. We’ll log into your Xero account together and work through whatever’s stumping you. Our pay-as-you-go support option means help’s available as and when you need it.
The benefits of Xero training
Our Xero training can pay for itself quickly. Once you properly understand how the system works, tasks that used to take hours often take minutes, and you’ll have more confidence in the numbers in front of you.
It can also change how you use your time day to day. Instead of working around problems or avoiding certain features altogether, you’ll feel more able to use Xero as it’s meant to be used, freeing you up to focus on running your business instead of fighting the software every time you sit down to do the books. The benefits include:
Fewer errors, because you know how to code and enter transactions correctly.
Faster bookkeeping, so admin takes less time out of your week.
Reports you can trust, because you understand what they’re showing you.
Fewer ad hoc calls to your accountant for basic day-to-day questions.
Better use of automation, so your repetitive tasks run themselves in the background.
More confidence around VAT and tax deadlines, with accurate figures maintained all year.
Smoother onboarding for new staff, using processes that are set up properly.
Better cash flow decisions, based on accurate, up-to-date figures.
Cleaner year-end accounts, with less tidying up before your accountant gets involved.
More time back each month, because Xero does a lot of the admin for you.
Getting the right help for your business
If you’ve got one specific problem to solve, or just want a walkthrough of the basics, an online power hour will likely do the job. If you’ve been struggling for a while, or you’re moving your accounts onto Xero for the first time, spending a full day working through your set-up properly will save you far more time in the long run than trying to patch things up piecemeal.
It helps to think about how long the problem’s been going on, and how many areas of Xero it touches. A single reconciliation issue or one confusing report is usually quick to fix. But if you’re finding new problems every time you log in, or you’ve never really trusted the numbers Xero shows you, that might point to something more fundamental in your account. Trying to fix that in a rush often means treating the symptom rather than the cause, and the same issue tends to resurface a few weeks later.
It’s also worth being honest about how confident you feel using Xero day-to-day. If you’re generally comfortable but keep getting stuck on one or two things, an online session will get you back on track quickly. If you’ve been avoiding parts of the system altogether, or getting a colleague to handle anything beyond the basics, a full day working through everything together with Scott will do far more for your confidence than another quick fix.
And if you’re not sure which suits you best, get in touch to describe what’s going on and we’ll point you towards the right option.
Either way, the goal is the same. We’re here to help you get your Xero working properly and give you the confidence to keep it that way.
Happy Xero-ing folks!