How Small Businesses Use Xero App Remotely?
How are some of small biz (in other parts of the world besides Hong Kong) making good use of Xero?
CASE#1: How Eat My Lunch’s Iaan Buchanan Uses Receipt Bank?
Eat My Lunch Owner and Director, Iaan Buchanan, talked about how his company has been helping children and the apps that he uses for his business.
“Eat My Lunch is a social enterprise. We buy lunch and get it delivered to a workplace.”
“Every lunch you buy means we can give a lunch to a Kiwi kid who would otherwise go without.”
“It’s a little gesture that’s had a great impact for so many Kiwi kids. With a good lunch in their tummies, the kids do better in so many ways from helping them focus on learning to simply just putting a smile on their faces.”
“In the first 13 months, we have made over 400,000 lunches.”
“The kids receive a lunch that looks and tastes like it’s home made. It includes three items, usually a wholegrain sandwich with a protein and salad filling, a healthy snack (eg.veggie sticks, yogurt or fruit) and a treat (biscuit, popcorn or pretzel) all inside a brown paper bag. All lunches, yours and theirs, are freshly made and delivered the same day.”
“In our first week we expected to make 50 lunches a day, and that’s what we’ve made.”
“In the second week and third week, we made 200 lunches and 400 lunches per day. This quick expansion really caught us off guard.”
Receipt Bank and Xero
“I used to do everything manually that includes paying all the bills.”
“There are a lot of suppliers, and the bills need to be manually punched.”
“It used to take me hours and hours of time.”
“Now we have Receipt Bank. All the invoices are coming in electronically. I can authorize payments. I can batch download like 50 transactions at a time. I can save hours of my time.”
“Instead I can spend this time actually thinking how we can grow the business, how we are going to add values, what the strategies are going to be, and how we are going to manage people better.”
CASE #2: Run a Brewery Business with the Best Apps
Shae Inglin, owner of Ferment Drink Repeat, a brewery in San Francisco.
App number 1: Yahoo Mail
“With my Yahoo Mail app, I don’t have to be connected on my computer anymore, and can receive emails on my mobile phone (which is in my hand).
“Being able to do anything on the go is important. My husband and I run a 3-people business operation. With the apps on my mobile phone, I can always check my emails and respond to messages.”
App number 2: Multiple social media apps
“Because of where we’re located in the city, we need to draw business from the far side of the city. Social media does just that for me.”
App number 3: Xero
“I use Xero daily to check my bank account. We’re small business and we always are concerned with our bottomline to ensure we have enough capital to pay bills.”
“I use Xero to do all the little things. I spend 15 minutes a day and can get so much accomplished with my accounting skill.”
App number 4: Clover
“I also use Clover app which integrates with Xero.”
“Clover is cloud-based, letting me check my sales number anytime.”
CASE #3: My accountant works on Xero. I’m doing the quotes and invoicing.
Let’s reveal how Candice Benge, the owner of Benge Fabrik, uses a few apps to improve her business and make her job more fun!
Her business is to make beautiful things (including curtains, pillows, etc) for her customers.
App number 1: Xero
Candice starts using Xero as she needs to deal with bookkeeping (invoicing/billing) of her business.
“When I was first looking for an accountant I was nervous thinking they don’t work with people who use Xero”.
“The good news is my accountant has no problem with Xero at all!”
“This is good news for me because for taxes I don’t trust myself, even Xero makes it really easy. I always need another person (i.e. accountant) making sure I’m doing it right”.
“My accountant works on Xero. I’m doing the quotes and invoicing”.
“I started my business but doesn’t want to sit in office and work all day. I use apps to do just that”.
“I can minimize my time writing invoices, by copying and pasting to re-use invoices I created in the past.”
“I don’t go to the bank, as I can deposit on my mobile phone.”
“Xero makes it easy to do all these!”
“I love Xero because it makes me confident that I can run my business on my own. I don’t need full business infrastructure or people which college degrees to tell me how to do it.”
App number 2: Nextbus
“The first time I moved to San Francisco, I never knew how long it would take me to somewhere. Then I started using Nextbus.”
App number 3: Thumbtack
“I don’t have to make cold calls to clients anymore, because Thumbtack does that for me.”