One of the things customers love about Checkfront is how it combines several tools into one place—calendar, invoices, payments, and much more. Streamlining your business is what we’re all about; it’s stressful to have to worry about whether you’ve remembered to reconcile your new bookings with your calendar reminders, or recent payments with bank deposits. That’s why we love Xero.
Xero is an online accounting software, operating on a software-as-a-service basis just like Checkfront. Many of our customers are still using desktop accounting software; it’s been a standard for many years, and ranges from bare-bones Excel spreadsheets to more complex bookkeeping programs like Quickbooks. When you work with an accounting setup like this, you need to manually enter customer information both in your accounts and on the invoice in the accounting program. Keeping track of when invoices are sent and when payments are received can be a hassle, and it all creates a lot of paperwork. If you forget to enter details or accidentally do something twice, you may end up with a confusing imbalance at the end of the month and have to go through all of your invoices one by one to track down the mistake. Some business owners hire bookkeepers or have on-site employees to do this for them, because it consumes precious time and can be disastrous if you’re audited and there are mistakes in your accounts. Keeping accurate records is easy for some people, but it’s nearly impossible for others. Xero has made it so much easier to reconcile everything in multiple accounts.
Every sale we have here goes through Checkfront and so we’re able to reconcile everything easily and thoroughly in Xero
Xero does for accounting what Checkfront does for bookings. It puts your invoices and bookkeeping into the cloud, connecting it to the rest of your business. You can send digital invoices instantly, track payment status in real time, and store all of your information where it can be retrieved at any time. Instead of having to keep track of whether you’ve reconciled your cash flow with your accounts, your data is always up to date.
Why are we so excited about Xero? Because we use it ourselves, and have ensured that it integrates into Checkfront so that our customers can use it too. Since we introduced Xero add-on, we’ve been able to see how the software can transform a business. Costa Rica Rios offers a wide variety of tours, rentals, packages, and adventure trips to Costa Rica; they’ve been a Checkfront customer since 2012, and signed up for Xero about a year later. “The integration definitely factored into our choice,” says owner Jane Tyrrell. “We had other accounting software, but it was basic and time consuming, and hard to reconcile the invoices to banks to software. Xero has made it so much easier to reconcile everything in multiple accounts, and [has made for] more transparent accounting.”
How does Costa Rica Rios use Checkfront and Xero together? “Every sale we have here goes through Checkfront and so we’re able to reconcile everything easily and thoroughly in Xero,” Tyrrell says. Having everything online is a huge help for a business like hers, as she can access both Checkfront and Xero anywhere in the world.
“I am not an accountant, although we had one help us set it up, as we have a multifaceted business with several different bank accounts,” says Tyrrell. “Xero’s support is quick and excellent; …I still need help from time to time and I find them great.”
Martyn Driscoll, of HMS69 Party Boats, was already a Xero user when he signed up with Checkfront in 2012. “We used Sage for one year, and it was terrible sending files back and forth; …then when the bank fees were introduced, we knew we had to look for an alternative,” he says. Martyn uses three different Checkfront accounts but only one Xero account; all invoices go directly into Xero no matter where they originated, which helps with reconciling sales. “This frees up some time, and avoids any [unintentional] exporting/importing of data or possible duplications by our bookkeeper.” With Xero’s quick invoicing, the company is able to keep track of all their management accounts day by day, instead of trying to consolidate things each quarter or month. “Things are way more efficient now!” Martyn says.
To learn more about setting up Xero for online bookings with Checkfront see our Xero support guide.
For other add-ons available free to Checkfront customers see our integrations page.
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