Which Xero training is best for business owners in Bristol?

23 Jul

Bristol’s small business scene is booming, from the creative studios in Stokes Croft to the tech firms clustered around Temple Quay. A good number of them use Xero for their accounts. Fewer have had proper training on it.

Many Xero users are self-taught. They’ve watched a couple of YouTube videos, muddled through bank reconciliation and worked out invoicing by trial and error.

It gets the job done, mostly.

But trying to work through things yourself usually comes with the nagging feeling that Xero could be doing more, if only someone showed you how. So, if you own a small business in Bristol and you’re weighing up which type of Xero training is worth your time and money, here’s what you need to know.

The different ways to learn Xero

When you’re looking for Xero training in Bristol, there are a few routes open to you.

Xero Central, Xero’s online help and training centre, covers the basics. And there’s no shortage of free tutorials on YouTube if you search for what you need.

Then there’s bespoke training from a Xero specialist, delivered either in person or online.

Each has its place, but they’re not equal.

The free resources are fine for picking up general tips.

Bespoke training is where you get answers built around your business, not someone else’s.

Searching Google or Xero Central is the obvious first step when you’re stuck. The trouble is, generic advice rarely matches your exact situation. You’ll find articles explaining how bank rules work in principle, but not why yours keep miscoding a particular supplier. You’ll find a tutorial on setting up payroll, but nothing about what went wrong when you switched mid-tax year and it didn’t carry all your historical accounts across.

You can spend hours looking for information about your specific Xero setup and never find it.

There’s also a risk of picking up bad habits. Workarounds that seem to solve your immediate problem can cause bigger issues further down the line, particularly around VAT coding, payroll and reporting. By the time you notice, they’ve often been baked into months of data, which all needs unpicking.

None of this makes you a poor bookkeeper. It just means that Xero is a powerful, yet complex, piece of software and working out the right way to use it for your business isn’t always obvious.

Bespoke Xero training from a specialist accountant

Xero has far more depth to it than most business owners ever get round to using. Beyond the basics of invoicing and bank reconciliation, it can automate your recurring payments, send reminders, track project profitability, manage multi-currency transactions and produce detailed management reports that break down performance by department, location or product line.

It can also connect to over a thousand third-party apps, covering everything from inventory management to ecommerce. Most businesses use only a fraction of what’s available, simply because nobody’s shown them the rest.

Bespoke Xero training starts with your business, your Xero account, your industry and your frustrations. There’s no set script to work through. It follows whatever’s going on in your accounts.

A good session might cover getting your setup right from the ground up, sorting out your bank feeds and rules that keep misbehaving, building reports that show you what you need to know, getting payroll connected properly, or working out which features and add-ons would save you time rather than add complexity.

By the end, you’ll have a better working knowledge of how Xero should run for your business, so you can handle the day-to-day yourself with confidence.

In-person vs online training

At Progression Accountancy, we offer bespoke Xero training in two main formats, online and in-person. The right pick for you will depend on where you’re starting from.

Our day visits are a signature onsite session, typically running from around 10am to 3pm with a break in the middle. They’re perfect if you’ve been using Xero for a while without proper support, have errors or issues that need fixing, or are converting to Xero from another system. Having someone in the room, working through your Xero on your screen, tends to surface problems that would otherwise stay hidden. It also means we can move at whatever pace suits you and your team, stopping to answer questions as they come up.

Our Power Hour sessions run online for one to two hours and suit more focused needs. They’re ideal if you’re new to Xero and want a walkthrough of the basics, you’ve got one or two specific issues that need sorting, or you need a year-end review and tidy-up before your accounts are due.

Because these sessions are shorter and more targeted, they work well if you’ve got a specific question in mind, or if you just want the flexibility of fitting training around a busy diary without setting aside a full day.

Neither format is better than the other. It depends on how much ground you need to cover and how hands-on you want the session to be.

Do you need a Bristol-based Xero trainer?

Given the keyword that brought you here, it’s a fair question. But because Xero is cloud-based, location matters far less than you’d think.

Whether we’re working through your Xero on a screen share or sitting alongside you in person, we’re looking at the same live data either way. There’s no difference in what we can see, fix or teach you, regardless of whether we’re in the room or logged in remotely.

At Progression, we can work with businesses across Bristol and the rest of the UK, in person or online, without it making a difference to the quality of support you get.

We’ve worked with hundreds of businesses like yours since 2010, across dozens of industries, so we’ve likely already come across whatever’s tripping you up. That’s the kind of experience that gets you real answers, whether we’re sat next to you or connecting online.

So, if you’ve been holding off on booking Xero training because you couldn’t find anyone local, that needn’t be the deciding factor. Getting the right expertise for your business is what matters most, and we offer that in spades.

What our Xero training covers

Depending on your needs, our Xero training can include:

Xero setup, including financial settings, invoicing and opening balances
Bank feeds and bank rules
Sales and payment collection
Bills, expenses and mileage tracking
Xero Payroll setup and processing
Custom reporting and budgeting
Reviewing which Xero add-ons would suit your business

We build each session around what you want to achieve, so you’re not sitting through content that’s irrelevant to how your business works.

Why work with a Xero specialist?

Plenty of accountants offer support for Xero as one of several systems they work with. There’s nothing wrong with that. But when you work with an accountant who’s 100% focused on Xero, you get a different level of expertise.

At Progression, that’s Scott. He’s a chartered certified accountant (FCCA), a Xero Gold Partner and holds certifications across Xero payroll, migration, tax, cash flow and many more. He’s worked with hundreds of businesses across pretty much every industry you can think of. That depth of experience means he’s usually seen your exact problem before, whether that’s a messy migration from Sage, a payroll setup gone wrong, or reports that never quite balance.

A general accountant, however good, is unlikely to have that same breadth of Xero-specific expertise as Scott, simply because Xero isn’t the only system they use day to day.

Choosing the right Xero training for your Bristol business

If you’re weighing up your options, start by being honest about where you’re stuck.

Whether you’re new to Xero, or you’ve been limping along with the same errors for a couple of years, we can tailor our Xero training around your needs.

Whatever stage you’re at, we aim to leave you more confident with your accounts, not just more informed for an afternoon. That’s the real test of whether our training is worth doing. So, if you’d like to talk through which option fits your business best, get in touch and we’ll help you work out the right route forward.