How does Xero Accounting Software allow your business to go paperless and digital?

Going Digital

For a business, going paperless and digital is a process which companies utilize and adopt digital technologies such as cloud accounting or other forms of technology to improve business process flows and streamline business activity. Digitalization has become more important of late, this is due to the Covid19 pandemic where companies adopt remote working into their business processes and workflows.

Softcopy documents can be uploaded to the software

Xero accounting software has an inbuilt inbox to upload softcopy files in various formats such as PDF and Microsoft word document. Users are able to send over documents to the inbox using a unique email @xerofiles.com that is provided by Xero.

The softcopy documents which can be in the form of project drawings, contract agreements and other types can be attached to the invoice, quotation, bills and purchase order transactions. This ability to upload these important documents will facilitate paperless usage within the organization.

In traditional arrangements, companies are unable to upload softcopy documents to their accounting software transactions and will need to reply on document filing and indexing to locate documents related to each accounting transaction.

E-Invoicing capabilities

A company using Xero is able to register their UEN on the E-invoicing network and will be provided a Peppol ID. InvoiceNow which is a term for e-invoicing allows businesses to send and receive e-invoices directly from both parties, from a supplier and to a customer provided both are registered on the InvoiceNow network.

With this arrangement, no hardcopy invoice will be required to be printed out and emailed to customers. Benefits include automation of processes when incoming invoices from another accounting software such as ABSS accounting software are delivered to Xero. This will reduce the time spent on recording bills from hardcopy supplier invoices. Similiarly, invoices send by InvoiceNow using Xero will appear in customers accounting software records and this will result in faster payment of invoices.

InvoiceNow reduces the data entry errors from traditional supplier invoice recording as E-invoices do not require the employee doing the recording to manually record in the supplier invoice amount and details, this will be fully automated.

Integration with other applications such as bank feeds

Bank feeds in Xero allow bank transactions in UOB, OCBC, DBS and HSBC bank to direct feed in to Xero accounting software. During this process, the bank statement of the respective banks will be converted to a digital format without the employee having the need to refer to a hardcopy bank statement.

With this digital format of bank statement bring fed directly into xero, this allow the bank reconciliation to be done more easily and quickly.