Accounting software

[Feldspar]

It's very to learn as you go - setting it up etc is the best way to learn to use it all imo

Nest works well with Xero and there are wizards and short videos to help you learn as you go

For 20 or so £ a month just go for it - if in a couple of months it's not working for you then you really haven't lost much trying !

I did try and get it set up on our simplest business which I control. There wasn't quite the urgency then and it was just before harvest. Will have another go. The problem is for the main farming business it will really mean a big transfer of responsibility because my father will basically have to cease to deal with payroll and accounts due to being fairly hopeless with computers.

 

[Clive]

Keep in mind that you might want a few Xero addons to improve some aspects depending on your business - they usually cost extra and are developed by 3rd parties

Look at asset guru for example re your question re asset management - Xero has inbuilt ability but often an addon makes it better

Basically you customise it to your use as every business is different

 

[Boysground]

My understanding is a still a bit limited in this area, so I apologise if this is a a silly question, but did you then have to enter your list of assets in by hand in order to get things like property and machinery depreciation costs?

I started he assets from the point they were at the year start. TBH im not that good at that part of the software so not sure i am doing it the best way.
I had a quick look on the help pages and found this , hope it helps https://help.xero.com/uk/FixedAssets-CalculateDVDepreciation-UK

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[Boysground]

So would it be much more difficult to set up a scheme through NEST manually and then go to Xero at a later date? Just thinking that I have to get on with things, and learning a whole new software package might be a bit much to bite off unless it made the subsequent auto-enrolment bit a lot easier.

@Clive said the same I would have.

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[Feldspar]

I started he assets from the point they were at the year start. TBH im not that good at that part of the software so not sure i am doing it the best way.
I had a quick look on the help pages and found this , hope it helps https://help.xero.com/uk/FixedAssets-CalculateDVDepreciation-UK

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Thanks. Have just been looking through the Xero website. I presume that you can't actually use Xero or any add-on to make payments. I assume this must be done through your banking software.

Also, when you have payments linked to invoices, do you immediately classify them into categories. For example, if you have a bill from your local dealer for spares, can you allocate that into fixed costs and then spares and repairs? What about if you have a bill which has some items on it which should go into property repairs, and some that should go into machinery repairs; can you then divide part of the amount paid into different cost categories?

 

[Clive]

Thanks. Have just been looking through the Xero website. I presume that you can't actually use Xero or any add-on to make payments. I assume this must be done through your banking software.

Also, when you have payments linked to invoices, do you immediately classify them into categories. For example, if you have a bill from your local dealer for spares, can you allocate that into fixed costs and then spares and repairs? What about if you have a bill which has some items on it which should go into property repairs, and some that should go into machinery repairs; can you then divide part of the amount paid into different cost categories?

each line of the invoice gets allocated against a heading code and then can be further split to an individual asset or inventory if you want

 

[Feldspar]

each line of the invoice gets allocated against a heading code and then can be further split to an individual asset or inventory if you want

Is it clever enough to be able to read pdf invoices and extract the numbers and supplier info from them without having to type in manually?

 

[Clive]

Is it clever enough to be able to read pdf invoices and extract the numbers and supplier info from them without having to type in manually?

afraid not quite that smart ! - you can attach the pdf etc to the invoice you create however for future reference and less reliance on paper filing systems, there is a phone app thats handy and I often use it to scan receipts for expense accounts or invoices to file

but other xero users can swap a "key" with you so their invoices come direct into your instance as drafts and you send yours to them - quite a lot use Xero now so I get a number like this every month which saves time

 

[Boysground]

Is it clever enough to be able to read pdf invoices and extract the numbers and supplier info from them without having to type in manually?

I have only recently started uploading the PDF to xero. This has made life much easier, although I am considering either a bigger or second screen for my computer just to make it better to read an invoice and input it at the same time. I dont think xero will read a PDF yet, although I have been working out Self Billing Invoices and I think it will read a .csv file if it is created in the correct way. I did see something on the help system but didnt use it in the end.

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[theboytheboy]

Is it clever enough to be able to read pdf invoices and extract the numbers and supplier info from them without having to type in manually?

I believe you would need an add on like "receipt bank".

 

[JJT]

Thanks. Have just been looking through the Xero website. I presume that you can't actually use Xero or any add-on to make payments. I assume this must be done through your banking software.

Also, when you have payments linked to invoices, do you immediately classify them into categories. For example, if you have a bill from your local dealer for spares, can you allocate that into fixed costs and then spares and repairs? What about if you have a bill which has some items on it which should go into property repairs, and some that should go into machinery repairs; can you then divide part of the amount paid into different cost categories?

When we had a quick look at it, it looked like you could create bacs payments that you then could export to your bank website. Which is what we do now with farmplan. However if you could get a bank feed into zero it would be easier to do the payments from bank site

 

[Feldspar]

afraid not quite that smart ! - you can attach the pdf etc to the invoice you create however for future reference and less reliance on paper filing systems, there is a phone app thats handy and I often use it to scan receipts for expense accounts or invoices to file

but other xero users can swap a "key" with you so their invoices come direct into your instance as drafts and you send yours to them - quite a lot use Xero now so I get a number like this every month which saves time

So, if you get a paper invoice in the post, do you scan it in and then bin the paper copy?

I have a friend who works for Savills and they apparently have a very expensive bit of software that can look at fairly unstructured information and make a very good guess at decoding the information into numerical data as well as deciding where it should be classified. I think in time that will come to everyone so that we don't have has much manual inputting.

 

[Boysground]

I tend to file paper invoices and just put the email ones on xero. The number of email invoices is increasing so rapidly it wont be long before that is all of them.

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[JJT]

Does anyone know if farmflo has planet software built in for fert requirements?

 

[Feldspar]

I believe you would need an add on like "receipt bank".

Looking at Receipt Bank it seems like it would do fuel invoices quite nicely, but I wonder if I can look at a pdf invoice from someone like Agrii and work out what is going on.

 

[Boysground]

When we had a quick look at it, it looked like you could create bacs payments that you then could export to your bank website. Which is what we do now with farmplan. However if you could get a bank feed into zero it would be easier to do the payments from bank site

I use the faster payments system, this way each payment has its own line on the statement. So I create the payment on the bank website. Then enter its details in Xero if the invoice was emailed this then gets attached to the entry. When the bank feed is updated xero will recognise the payment and it will be green on the screen. Hit ok and its reconciled.

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[Boysground]

Does anyone know if farmflo has planet software built in for fert requirements?

Last time I looked it didnt. Has to be there for me to even consider it.

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[Clive]

So, if you get a paper invoice in the post, do you scan it in and then bin the paper copy?

I have a friend who works for Savills and they apparently have a very expensive bit of software that can look at fairly unstructured information and make a very good guess at decoding the information into numerical data as well as deciding where it should be classified. I think in time that will come to everyone so that we don't have has much manual inputting.

I don't bin the paper (just in case !) but I don't worry about super organised filing systems as its ordered in Xero

Character recognition will probably come to Xero - there may even already be an add on for it, never looked as I dont think that kind of tech is good enough to trust just yet really

 

[Clive]

Does anyone know if farmflo has planet software built in for fert requirements?

not yet I think

I know the guys developing it though and they have a LOT of new stuff coming, if they do 50% of what they have told me they plan it will be the best out there by a margin IMO

 

[Feldspar]

Have just had a word with our accountants. They say that a lot of their clients currently use Farmplan, but that a number are moving over to Xero. One feature that they said is very useful in the Farmplan software is the ability to separate harvest accounts from year end accounts (I think, although I must admit I didn't entirely understand every bit of terminology down the phone) -- i.e. to be able to allocate invoices and receipts to one harvest or another. They weren't sure if Xero is able to do this. Does anyone know if it can?