Is the Grass Greener with Xero?

There are times as a QuickBooks ProAdvisor that you might want to entertain other options, either temporary or permanently.

Lynda Artesani and Sarah Prevost join the panel to discuss the differences between QBO and Xero for those that might be looking to add Xero to their suite of supported offerings.

Learn about Xero: https://xero5440.partnerlinks.io/80w3795vt0k0-nx0cim

CPE offered through Earmark. There is no Live CPE for this Webinar, however you can check out the Prior CPE eligible sessions here: https://bit.ly/QBPHCPE

QB Power Hour is a free, biweekly webinar series for accountants, ProAdvisors, CPAs, bookkeepers and QuickBooks consultants presented by Matthew "Spot" Fulton and Dan DeLong who are very passionate about the industry, QuickBooks and apps that integrate with QuickBooks.

Watch or listen to all of the QB Power Hours at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/blog 

Register for upcoming webinars at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/

00:00 Introduction to Earmark App and Course Enrollment
01:07 Welcome to QB Power Hour Webinar Series
01:42 Today's Topic: Is the Grass Greener at Xero?
02:31 Meet the Guest Speakers: Sarah Prevost and   Artesani
04:47 Discussion on QuickBooks and Xero
15:05 Intuit's Changes and Their Impact
25:28 Exploring Xero's Features and Support
36:02 Xero's Bank Feed and Reconciliation
38:02 Discussing Xero Payroll Capabilities
38:46 Reconciliation Process in Xero
41:04 Exploring Xero's User Interface
41:54 Bulk Work and Cash Coding in Xero
43:14 Mobile App Enhancements
43:34 Customizing Chart of Accounts
45:08 Financial Statements and Reporting
47:41 Time Tracking and Project Management
51:03 Find and Recode Tool
53:02 Xero Pricing and User Management
55:31 Xero App Store and Integrations
57:06 Certification and Training for Xero
58:59 Comparing Xero and QuickBooks
01:01:37 Merchant Services and Inventory Management
01:03:43 Final Thoughts and Closing Remarks

Episode Transcript

Dan DeLong (00:31):
Welcome everybody to another QB Power Hour.
Sorry for the, subjectconfusion.
But today's our, topic is, thegrass greener at Xero than QBO.
We were supposed to have,keyboard shortcuts and how they
how, we can increased efficiencywith, keyboard shortcuts and all

(00:53):
sorts of other shortcut types ofthings.
But unfortunately Matthew is,not able to join us today.
So we had to, pivot and we hadto pivot quickly.
So a lot of the, emails thatwent out with with the topic and
whatnot, unfortunately causedmore confusion, than as normal

(01:18):
we need two people to to takethe place of, Matthew.
So we have Sarah Prevost andLynda Artesani joining us here
today.
So let's go ahead and just dosome in introductions and we'll,
kick it off from here.
So my name is Dan De Long ownerof Danwidth and school of
Bookkeeping.

(01:38):
Worked at Intuit for nearly 18years at co-hosting today, also
at the workshop Wednesdays overat School Bookkeeping.
Also doing some feature deepdive guest hosting at the
unofficial QuickBooks AccountantPodcast.
Yeah, that's all about me.
So let's let's go ahead and tossall over to one of the best

(02:01):
eyewears in the accountingindustry.
Sarah and I think, are you stillmute?
Muted?
There we're

Sarah Prevost (02:08):
No, I'm unmuted.
Thank you so much, Dan.
I'll let you try these new oneson.
I just got,'cause my Okay.
Excellent.
Changed again.
So gotta get new ones.
I am the founder of VintageLabs, but more importantly, I'm
the co-founder of the ProperTrust where I get to share my
time and my journey with LyndaArtesani.
We are building a fabulous teamon that side and we're so solely

(02:30):
focused on the legal niche and Iam happy to talk about my love
for Xero.

Dan DeLong (02:38):
And alsLyndada,

Lynda Artesani (02:39):
I'm Lynda Artesani.
I also get to work with Sarah.
We have the Accountants Law lab,and then we also have the proper
trust as our business law Lab.
We just help others learn how todo what we do.
We had a big demand for it.
So it's been we just do a weeklymeeting, which is just amazing.
It's a lovely group of peopleand we interact and talk about

(03:00):
the challenges of legalaccounting.
But yeah, and I wrote a bookcalled Modernize Your Law Firm.
So for the attorneys basically abook for the attorneys.
And yes, as you see from my bio,I am an alumni member of the
Intuit Advisory Council.
I'm probably not Team Xero, butthat's the only hit you get.

Dan DeLong (03:19):
Alright.
And though I really appreciateyou both filling in on such
short notice.
And we were gonna have Sarahcome on sometime in June to talk
about this topic.
Just fast track that that's asquickly as possible.
Because we wanted to have thisdiscussion, and, see where, and

(03:48):
I think the best way to frameeverything is and we'll, talk
and unpack what the, triggeringevents that that are, occurring
here.
But as we have seen over thepast pa past few years, Intuit
has been driving the accountingcommunity to look elsewhere, I

(04:13):
guess is probably the nicest wayto put it.
And we were talking yesterdaywhere is the grass greener in
someplace else?
My, my, philosophy is really thegrass is greener where you water
it.
There are some.
When is the last, when is it thelast straw when you look at some

(04:36):
something else?
And so I wanted to have a a Xeroprofessional because my life has
been centered around QuickBook.
So it's very, there's sometrepidation and fear, with
learning something new.
And what is that green or what,how green is that grass when you

(04:59):
actually think about it.
Pretty blue.
It's blue.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's blue, right?

Sarah Prevost (05:05):
It's a c it's a vast sea of blue.

Dan DeLong (05:07):
So a little bit of the details about the webinar
series.
Every other Tuesday at noonEastern.
We do not have live CPE creditas Blake was saying on the,
intro video there.
But we do have follow up CPEcredit through earmark.
You can check out our channelthere on earmark and about five

(05:28):
to seven days after today'swebinar, that one will be
available for CPE credit aswell.
Oops.
Going back and there is a linkthere in the slides for our,
channel on earmark.
You can view all of the, all theprior ones.
So as we discussed this, topichere today if you have specific

(05:50):
questions for Lynda or Sarah orI, please put them in the q and
a because that's a lot easier tocatch them as they come in, and
if we need to answer them liveor if we need to follow up
that's a lot easier to do thatas well.
If you have general comments ofhey, the slides are wrong please

(06:11):
put them in the comments there.
And hopefully we can get to thatin the, chat those of you
watching on Facebook or YouTubeI will do my best to monitor
that over on my left here.
Yeah, I do have yeah and, on topof all this, I lost my
assistant.

(06:32):
Which was my son he is now, ohno, getting a full full-time job
and moving to Michigan.
So he is unable to be the thebehind the scenes guy for me
there.
So I looking for that all at thesame time.
And of course we have our our,power, our store.

(06:53):
What's on the agenda today?
So we're gonna be talking alittle bit about the state of
QuickBooks Pro advisor.
What's when is the last straw?
Lynda has a, wonderfulperspective on the silver
linings of all of these thingsand it's not all gloom and doom,
but we wanna talk about is Xeroany better?

(07:16):
Talk about some of the platformdifferences.
Sarah will go into the a demoaccount in inside of Xero and
we'll take a look at some of thethings that accountants and
bookkeepers are, really.
Focused on and, interested inand how those are, might be
different and some of the Xeropartner program differences.

(07:38):
Sarah, what do they call,ProAdvisors?
Is there a ProAdvisor equivalentfirm at Xero.

Sarah Prevost (07:45):
We're accountant advisors as is how we're
referred to, which I think is a,brilliant way to cross connect
all of it.
You're not very specific in,areas like it's just an
accountant advisor is.
That's generally what we are inpro advisors too, just right.
Yeah.
So just it's clear.
Clear.
Yeah.

Dan DeLong (08:07):
And to be quite honest, I think that the term
ProAdvisor is they don't use theword pro anymore, yeah.
Yeah.
At least as far as a version ofQuickBooks is concerned

Sarah Prevost (08:21):
Yeah.

Dan DeLong (08:21):
All right.
So before we get into ourfireside chat without fire with.
I want to talk a little bitabout tags because, and, this is
a, double-edged sword, right?
We, talked about it a coupleweeks ago on the update webinar
about what is happening withtags and true to form Intuit as

(08:46):
reversed their position, right?
Just to keep us all on our toes,right?
We were talking about tags aregoing to be read only May 16th.
So in three days, at the earlypart of the month they reverse
their position on that.
And this is all due to feedbackthat they've received.

(09:09):
So that's the silver lining inall of this is that Intuit is
not obtuse to to hearingfeedback and reversing their
position.
It's unfortunate that theydidn't take this feedback prior
to making all of theseannouncements and changes.
However at least.
They did make a, positive changeor re reversal of this, change.

(09:34):
Because tags are not going toread only on May, 16th,

Lynda Artesani (09:39):
but are they gonna kick it, the can down the
road and do it in September oris it just off the table now?

Dan DeLong (09:44):
I do not know.

Lynda Artesani (09:45):
Okay.
I figured they were gonna kick

Dan DeLong (09:47):
the can

Lynda Artesani (09:48):
down the robot.
I don't know either, but Ididn't use too much.
I,

Dan DeLong (09:51):
should have put on the, yeah, I should have put on
the slide as of May 13th, 24 or2025.
I don't even know what year it'sbut

Sarah Prevost (10:01):
This making, this thing's making me itchy, just
looking at this like

Dan DeLong (10:07):
Dave Chappelle reference there for for, yeah.
But the dropdown this overlining here is also the dropdown
custom field that was added to,to help with this migration of
tags to custom fields.
That functionality In allversions is is going to remain.

(10:28):
So, you got something out ofthis as, as far as that new
functionality.
And this is only affectingexisting users of tags.
So new customers that especiallyafter that 16th day, they'll
never see tags.
But the, challenge was, ofcourse, is that the profit and

(10:51):
loss by tags, reports and thosetypes of things that were being
the cool part of tags, was not,they really didn't have a, good
option for those, people thatwere using it in that manner.
So that's why the existingcustomers who were using tags
will still continue to tag theirtransactions and use use tags in

(11:17):
that manner.
So kudos for, for Intuit, forreversing that decision.
But shame on them for evenbringing it up in the first
place.

Lynda Artesani (11:28):
Yeah.
And they, I didn't realize thatthey actually added the custom
fields all the way back to theledger program, the lowest of
low tiers so that you get one.
But you get the drop down, youget one custom field, but under
the other the lower tieredskews, you just don't you didn't
have custom fields, so this isinteresting that they added it,
I agree with be I think Beccaand the thing, they'll probably

(11:50):
take it away at some point, butthey're just not gonna pull the
rug out from underneath you,even though a lot of you already
went through, like she did andstarted to clean up the data,
they were using tags yeah.

Sarah Prevost (12:02):
It's nice to know that, okay, it's still in
existence, but the new files, soyou have a delineation.
Yeah.
Sometimes you

Lynda Artesani (12:09):
file and you're like, yeah.
If it's not in the new one,Sarah, then I would say it's
probably gonna go away at somepoint.
Exactly.

Dan DeLong (12:14):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I, wouldn't put your, all ofyour stock in that, right?
Yeah.
I wanna use that.
But hopefully,

Sarah Prevost (12:21):
yeah.
My,

Dan DeLong (12:21):
my hope is that they'll have a better,
end-to-end experience for thosepeople that are using tags for
the profit loss by tag report.
So that it would actually beuseful.
Or ultimately you have thisprofit and loss by custom field,
which is yeah.
What it's going into.

(12:42):
But

Lynda Artesani (12:43):
we shall see we actually had a, funny cl
potential client come to us.
I dunno if they became a client,it was a while ago, but tags had
just come out and they figuredout how not to get into
QuickBooks advanced with lawyersbecause you need the chart of
accounts and they used tags andthey showed me this whole
workflow.
And I can remember just lookingat it going, that's really cool,
but they don't show up on anybalance sheet items.

(13:04):
And you need that with thelawyers and that poor person's
face.
'cause they thought they had itall figured out how to not have
to pay for advanced.
And it didn't work.
It didn't work at all.

Dan DeLong (13:14):
You could hear the Price is Right?
Yeah.
Noise in the background.

Sarah Prevost (13:18):
Yeah.

Dan DeLong (13:19):
Sad days.

Sarah Prevost (13:20):
I agree that with Roanna and, Ted, they were
saying like, they should haveput a survey out first.
They should have put worried atfirst, but typical fashion,
we're gonna be beta testers inevery way possible.

Lynda Artesani (13:33):
Yes.
Miss Xero, you be quiet now.

Sarah Prevost (13:36):
It's not, obviously I have multi-platform
that happened for a long time,yeah.

Dan DeLong (13:42):
So we're gonna, we're gonna kinda set the stage
here about how things have howdid we get here, right?
Like the, talking head song howdid we get here, right?
This is not my beautifulProAdvisor program.
So there's been quite a fewchanges in the ProAdvisor
community from, Intuit, right?

(14:03):
There's the desktop degradationsthe slow March to to.
Whatever the future holds.
We don't this is allspeculation.
We don't have dates, times or,numbers.
We're all experiencing this justas, you are as far as when

(14:23):
you're a desktop coming from thedesktop world and then cloud
with the cloud, accounting withQBO coming into the, play here,
some of the things that we knowand love as a, as accountants
and bookkeepers the Intuitonline payroll for accountants
has gone away.

(14:44):
The enhanced payroll foraccountants, new subscriptions
has gone away and significantlyincreased the price of the said
services.
And then the heavy marketing inthe product which is a polite
way to talk about QuickBooklive.
Are they a competitor or arethey, a complimentary service,

(15:10):
not a free service, but acompliment to, the service
offering that you like.
So there's a lot of people thatare holding on to some of those
old things, and, mindsets.
Different CEOs had differentdifferent options.
Sarah,, could you talk you, talkabout, you, you are a

(15:32):
multi-platform type ofindividual.
You had, you starting QuickBookdesktop, right?

Sarah Prevost (15:38):
My, my start was in desktop.
And I should add a clarifyingthing'cause everyone's made
comments about this.
It's interesting.
Intuit uses for accountants Isaid an accountant advisor.
It is called a Xero partneradvisor, just for clarification.
But it is interesting how itinterchanges and there's this
hangup of this terminology.
Understandably so withcertification levels in

(16:01):
different states and so forth.
But being sta having started myjourney, like a lot of people on
desktop, loved it, wasn'tinterested looked at online and
thought, oh my God, rememberStacy Kildal this giving us all
this stuff.
And I'm like, I can't evenimagine this thing online.
What does that mean?
I remember the security was thenumber one the number one thing,

(16:24):
for everyone.
Oh, is it secure?
Are you sure?
Can we do this?
And then the app systems becamea, a, Thing.
And that's how I journeyedmyself into that.
But when I went to business formyself, I really felt that why
is it just one platform?
There's this other platform andthese types of, not everyone

(16:49):
understood QuickBooks.
And so it was nice to offer asecondary platform that really
just was intuitive to my mind aswell, a little bit faster of an
adoption and easier to speak towith the client.
So that's where my mind went toand I thought this is pretty
neat.
It's cool.
Something cool and different iswhat I was thinking.

(17:11):
Cool.
Like your glasses, right?
No, I'm kidding.

Dan DeLong (17:13):
Yes.
It sounds I got some feedbackhere that you're a little hard
to hear.
I don't know if you can bump up.

Sarah Prevost (17:23):
Here's my mic.
Oh, wow.
Oh, very sexy.
Oh, that was, I know, right?

Dan DeLong (17:29):
That was Sarah after hours there.
Whoops.

Sarah Prevost (17:34):
Yeah.

Dan DeLong (17:34):
All right.
So I wanna toss it over to Lyndahere, because she has a
wonderful way of putting thingsinto perspective that it's not
all gloom and doom as far assome of these things.
And so you wanna talk a littlebit about your perspective
Lynda?

Lynda Artesani (17:49):
Yeah I've only been QuickBooks I was desktop or
originally and then moved toonline.
Sarah said, I did follow Stacy,but when it first came out, it
wasn't very good, and I was alittle bit on the fence about
it, but the, idea that you couldalways log in from anywhere was
very, appealing.
We were using like LogMeIn onthe desktop back then and the
payroll.
The payroll with QuickBooks thatenhanced payroll was just the

(18:12):
bomb.
It was the best payroll ever anddesktop.
And we moved to online.
And I think with onlineobviously been using it for a
very long time and I was in theera of the ProAdvisors.
We, were beloved.
We were the source to sellonline to our clients.
I still remember how I did it.
I took.

(18:32):
All of my clients that were indesktop and said, this is where
I'm going.
We're moving to online.
I had already done my own filefor six months or so and I liked
it and I like, this is how we'redoing it.
I stopped doing hourly billingat the same time, brought them
all over and told'em that theydidn't like it.
I had found somebody locallythat would do desktop'cause
sometimes you went to theiroffice back then and everybody

(18:55):
came with me and it workedreally well.
But I think things have shiftedbecause of a lot of things that
they're doing.
Even just when they brought upthat business view.
And I can remember going, whyare you making things confusing?
Because now I gotta say to theclient.
You, this is how you do it.
And then they go, I don't havethat button, and I have to
explain that you're in thebusiness view and I'm in the

(19:17):
accountant view.
And then they backtracked onthat too.
And we've had some blank pageson QuickBooks.
It does feel like we're beingbeta tested like Sarah
described.
But I never really wanted tolearn.
Xero.
I did jump into it temporarilyto see if I could expand my
business, and, do it that way.
And it, I just, I didn't carefor it.

(19:38):
I didn't like the bank feed waythe bank feed was done there.
I didn't, there was other thingsI didn't like about the reports
were lacking.
This is going back now, this isgoing back.
I don't even know how many yearsago.
It was way back.
It was when, whatever year thisis Sarah, when Xero just started
to dip their foot in the USmarket.
And I wanna

Sarah Prevost (19:56):
see you were probably mentioning this to me.
I feel like you were around2018.

Lynda Artesani (20:00):
Yeah, it was way back.
Yeah, but not that far back.
But I remember I tried it.
'cause the one thing I didreally like about it was the the
look of it.
I love the blue and the colorand Intuit's QuickBooks Online
is, I think they're working onthat because it's very light
gray.
And I think that it, the, theirswas much better on the eye eyes,
the ui.
But there was so many pieces ofit that I just I don't like it.

(20:23):
And then I had a bad experiencewith becoming a Xero advisor.
I did all the tests, whichwasn't that hard, and got
certified.
And I thought the clients weregonna come to me and they were
like, no, you're gonna get 10 onyour own and then we'll give you
some.
And I'm like you didn't tell methat in the beginning.
I wouldn't have wasted my time.
So that's where that all landed.
But then since then we've workedthrough being together and

(20:45):
working and we have clients onit.
So I've, not as sour to sellgrapes to it, but I think with,
when it comes to QuickBooks andthe ProAdvisor program it's a
tool, it's a software.
We use it it's really the onlysoftware that's out there that
fits the clients that we callmid-market.
And we have small mid-market andwe have medium, mid mar,

(21:06):
mid-market, and we really hangin the medium, but sometimes we
have smaller ones.
And we've been testing thewaters with trying Xero, because
I always think of Xero as likeequal to essentials.
And I think that when you lookat it, it's actually gotten to
the point now where they've beeninvesting into it, that it's not
it, can now serve a biggerclient base.

(21:27):
We've got a very large client onthere that has a lot of
transactions and I compare it tomaybe the.
The, one of the QuickBooksadvanced clients that we have
that's very similar, industry.
And I, even yesterday I wasworking on a client's file and
it was like every time I clickedon a bank feed transaction to
download it, I had to wait forthe circle to spin.
And you don't wanna have thatexperience at all.

(21:49):
And I don't, we don't have thatwith the Xero one, and it's the
same size and components to it.
So that kind of makes me leantowards Xero.
But then I just know QuickBooks,it's very deeply integrated, has
so many bells and whistles.
Because that's how they builtit.
And there are things that arelacking, but you, if you haven't

(22:09):
looked at it in a while, youprobably should come back to
look at it.
If I was 45 years old right now,or 35 years old working in my
business, what you're notdefinitely do it, oh no, I'm
not.
I would definitely look into twoplatforms because this way I'm,
I've got options for my client.
'cause when you tell a clientit's 200 and whatever dollars a

(22:30):
month for the software and it'sin, in that smaller space
attorney, that's really hard forthem to ex how we need this
tool.
They don't even care aboutQuickBooks.
They want the end result fortaxes, but they don't really
care how we get there.
So when we can come to them withanother option, it does fit
certain clients and it's not asexpensive.

(22:50):
So it's a good option and it'snot hard to learn.
So if QuickBooks and you're goodat software, it's not a hard
learning curve.
But you're gonna get past thatbank feed thing.

Sarah Prevost (23:00):
Sorry, Sarah.
It's the same.
I mean if you look at it, whatwe saw on the screen at QBO,
they're change the bank feeds.
It's the same thing.
We always talk about this.
They're gonna yes, they aboutand try new things and see if we
like it and the revert back.
But I, happen to agree, Lynda,like you're saying, and what Ted
even it, it's, it is mindboggling to me.

(23:22):
And I think that's how Iapproached it.
Why is it a one size fits all?
And then why am I puttingeverything in one basket, which
is where I always felt Dan.
And what you were bringing upearlier is where the statuses of
where we are, it's been a hardroad with Intuit of late we were
that.
That trusted space.
We were those ca coveted peoplefor a while, and it, meant a

(23:47):
lot.
And I'm not saying it doesn't,it still means a lot to have a
partner in this,

Lynda Artesani (23:52):
in these wonderful people.
There's wonderful people atIntuit that are, they really do
still feel that way about us,but sometimes the messaging from
the top comes out and it doesn'tsit well.
It does feel like they'reencroaching in your into your
work where they're trying to putthe ads.
You don't have those in Xero,you don't have the constant

(24:13):
advertisements.
Even if you shut that off in,into, in QuickBooks, it's still
there.
So I think that's a big plus.
Jean Jeannie Cook asked if it'sa good match for the
construction in industry, and Iknow you have multiple clients,
so

Sarah Prevost (24:26):
Yeah, I don't have any, I would say possibly a
light trade.
I don't have anyone in therethat's construction heavy.
I think the weight of aconstruction.
Entity and I don't know reallyall the apps I'd have to look
at.
They have a large ecosystem ofapps.
But Ted's saying, oh yes, andTed's answering Katie.

(24:51):
Yeah

Dan DeLong (24:52):
Ted was one of the first, first, first employees of
Xero.
So yeah.
Appreciate him being being thereto help.
So to help us out with thetechnical stuff.

Sarah Prevost (25:05):
It I've, I have I've met him one time in person,
but yes I, know of Ted.
It's wonderful.
And yes, Ted's right there is areally beautiful dashboard for
accountants in there.
There's a lot of learningopportunities in there, just
like what we have.
It's no different than what wehave in the advisor space that
we have now with Green.

(25:25):
It's just laid out slightlydifferent.

Dan DeLong (25:28):
Yeah I think, in general if you come in, if
you're coming into this and you,both are in the.
Are focused on the legal nicheFor anything dealing with with,
legal industry, you guys have itcovered there.
But I think there, there arethings in, in, in both platforms

(25:53):
that are gonna have pros andcons.

Sarah Prevost (25:56):
Yes.
But

Dan DeLong (25:57):
In, when you find a, specific industry, and that
you're, looking to service aspecific industry you're,
ultimately gonna find those,specific workflows are gonna not
reside in your general ledgerAccounting package.
You're you might have theshallow end of the pool Yeah.

(26:20):
Being addressed by those things,but you're, LA largely gonna see
other apps or applications thatwhere those specialized
workflows end up living.
And both platforms.
Typically are gonna have a,large ecosystem to be able to do
that.
It, you were saying, Sarah the,app ecosystem for Xero is in the

(26:45):
hundreds, right?
It's

Sarah Prevost (26:47):
Like, what?
400 And I don't, I'd have to golook right now.
I don't know the exact number,but it's high.
And I do have a fan.
Jeff is my fan.
I'm gonna take him.

Lynda Artesani (27:00):
Do you, can converting from on QuickBooks
online to Xero?
Is that even a thing?
I know I've talked Yeah,Matthew's done it.
Yeah, I've done it.
I've known that.
But I don't know, is it easy todo or I've done

Sarah Prevost (27:09):
it.
There are ways to do it.
Honestly, though I, feel like,Lynda, you and I have re
rethought this in a lot of ways.
When we're, we look at A-A-C-B-Ofile and say, do we want to
clean this up or convert this?
Like we have a desktop fileright now.
It's so messy.
Just start fresh.
Yeah.
Sometimes the starting fresh andthen having the historical data
in a way that you can pull itout for whatever audit purpose,

(27:32):
reasons and so forth.
That has seemed to be the,better model.
Sometimes you don't want 20years of history rolling into
something.
I have done it.
There are tools out there to doit.
I don't know where they standbecause I'm less apt to do that
style any longer.
Yeah.
'cause

Lynda Artesani (27:50):
of the cost value and the value.
So is it a value to this is howwe sit with our clients.
Is it a value for us to takeyour.
PC law program is just its ownthing and pull it out.
Take the CSV import, that's alot of money.
We're talking like thousands andth 40,000,$50,000.
Or do we take the balance sheet,start new, import the customers

(28:12):
and vendors and just pull thatin.
And then you refer back to PClaw and you need to go look at
old stuff.
Yeah.
Or if you just rebuild a yearthere's lots of options and
that's usually the easiest,cleanest way to do it than to
reinvent the wheel.
And it's just expensive for theclient.
Yeah.

Dan DeLong (28:27):
Yeah.
It's it ultimately boils down tois the juice worth the squeeze?

Sarah Prevost (28:31):
Yes, exactly.
I like that.

Dan DeLong (28:35):
Somebody is going to be disclosed.

Lynda Artesani (28:41):
Does Xero have a reseller program, Sarah?
I see that's a question heretoo.

Sarah Prevost (28:45):
There are different programs.
There's, you get, so what you doget is you get an advisor, you
actually get a partner advisorand that's different.
Dan and I were chatting beforethis and talking about every
time if you ever noticed, ifyou, I, if you sign up a new
client once in a while you'llget this random, Hey, I'm your
sales partner channel from QBL.

(29:06):
I'm like who the heck are you?
I don't need your help rightnow.
But you actually, I get anadvisor.
So when I need support with aclient file, if I need a support
with a demo because I wanna showthe differences or work out, hey
I've got.
I'll use Jeanie's example.
I've got a, trades a,construction person.
This is what they look likecurrently, and they, we wanna

(29:29):
look at Xero.
Is it possible we'll talkthrough that?
They'll support me through that.
There's things that they'll doto help me with the client.
So I never, in fact, a lot oftimes a client will ask me a
question and I'll kick it out tomy advisor.
I actually have a partner that Ican communicate with.
The support has been amazing forme.

(29:51):
I, know that it's different.
We always wanna pick up thephone and call into it.
I don't like doing that.
I, the scheduled calls are nice.
A lot of times I'll put in acase ticket with Xero and I'll
say, Hey, this is gettingcomplicated.
Can you gimme a call?
They call I've been at I'm, Ishould disclose, I've been a
part of the Xero Partnercouncil.

(30:13):
It just came off.
And so I've been in their officein Denver.
I've been in their offices whereI can see that they have support
right there.
Like people are working,answering calls, helping.
And

Dan DeLong (30:28):
Somebody asked if is, the support US based, or is
it worldwide or global?

Sarah Prevost (30:34):
I'm, presuming I've not, I presume it's gotta
be worldwide because there areworldwide markets.
I've gotten I've never asked,I've never thought about it.
Mean everybody I've ever workedwith has been super helpful to
be honest.
And I, but do you have to

Lynda Artesani (30:50):
wait?
Do you have to wait, Sarah?
'cause it's Australia, we, youhave to wait for

Sarah Prevost (30:53):
response time, but you can see on your case
ticket, it actually tells youthis person will respond, or
this has been picked up.
You'll get a response in 15minutes.
It'll tell you that.
So you get some tentacles tolike, what's happening.
I.
I'll say, though, I don't haveto write support often.

(31:13):
So this is the thing, there'sthe difference, right?
Any doing meth gets you a gold

Lynda Artesani (31:18):
star?

Sarah Prevost (31:21):
Yeah, but they're I Jamal, it's right.
They're, very good.
They've been, in fact, I've beenin places where a client's
employee has locked themselvesout.
I write on behalf of theemployee.
I fully know what's gonnahappen.
I disclose that.
I let them know how to reach theindividual because they can see
the information based on theiruser criteria profile.

(31:42):
And they bound me out of thatcase.
And they start a new case andthey do, they meet, they've done
it for me, and the owner hasbeen traveling, had no idea that
their employee was locked out ata store where they have to sell
and record sales and so forth.
And I'm in the background just.
Humming along.

Dan DeLong (32:01):
Do they have like accountant users in QBO?
Like where, you have somespecial functionality or, you
uses user feature functions thatyou would have as an
accountant's?

Sarah Prevost (32:12):
Yes.
And you can control that too foryour own team.
So I have my team, what Iinclude my team on on a file.
I can have special rolescriteria that I want that team
to do.
Similar with, an owner couldinvite their team.
We just had a change for oneclient where she only wanted.

(32:33):
The sales side for all the,managers.
So we just have sales side andit precludes them from, similar
to what Lyn and I do with bankinformation.
Or report information.
Thank you Ted for adding that.
They, I knew he was gonna,

Lynda Artesani (32:49):
but the user roles, Sarah, are not as good
as, let's just say advanced.
I mean talking different pricepoints, but you have more
ability for client user roleswith QuickBooks than you do with
Xero.
You have more

Sarah Prevost (33:02):
precisely, yeah, we have.
'cause if you think aboutadvance though, we're looking
at, it was built in a customuser role centric space.
Yeah.
When we're talking about justan, a typical ledger and you've,
you're have a, like certainaspects.
Yes.
You don't have to have yourstaff seeing a whole total
thing.
You could have cutoffs andpieces to it.
Yeah.

(33:23):
And, if you think about it andsomebody brought this up and
thank you for bringing up.
Xero is focused on the deepinner, deeper integrations with
different platforms.
So Carbon is a deeperintegration.
Yeah.
Carbon

Lynda Artesani (33:36):
I know is a big one now, right?
It's new.

Sarah Prevost (33:38):
Yeah, there's Gusto.
What's nice about the Gusto oneis you could be in the file,
click and I've shown this to theowners and they're like, oh my
God, I could do that.
You go in, you go into thepayroll module thing that says
payroll, click in.
It takes you right to gusto anybill, any journal entry that
you've brought in that has alittle quick link that takes you
out.
And the reason why.

Lynda Artesani (33:59):
They don't have that in QuickBooks, it's'cause
they want you in QuickBookspayroll.
They want you in there clickingon your gusto and then it pops
into QuickBooks.

Sarah Prevost (34:06):
On my, time with council, one of the biggest
change, and it was a very fastmoving change, is they heard the
community saying, you don't haveenough bank connections.
They ramped that up wicked fast.
So they have a lot more bankconnections now.
So that's, pretty cool.

(34:27):
And one thing that they havethat I absolutely love, and this
is awesome, you can take a PDFof a bank statement and toss it
into the product and it willimport it for you.
So if your bank doesn't connect,you have the option of doing
that without having to convertor do external things.
It's just pop it in and move italong.

(34:47):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So

Dan DeLong (34:48):
I think most people are concerned and are mostly
curious about.
The bank feed reconciliation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That sort of thing.
Could you do you mind sharingyour Absolutely.
Yeah.
Your screen and we'll let's takea look, because I think that's
the first impression that peoplewill, get is okay, how do I

(35:09):
convert my QuickBooks Bank feedknowledge into the Xero bank
feed knowledge?
Yeah.
So that's, because that's where,a lot of people, the magic
happens.

Sarah Prevost (35:20):
The magic happens.
And I think the biggest thing tothe caveat too is if you think
about it, the, path of Xero was,it was built in these other
countries that don't have asmany banks as us.
If you think of how many bankswe have in our.
Our nation, like it's our UnitedStates is crazy, right?
It's built for six banks, so youdidn't need this extra thing and

(35:41):
the US market needs it.
So I'll go ahead and share.

Lynda Artesani (35:45):
Vivian actually said she likes the fact that
Xero's bank balance is thecumulative bank, BA bank feed
info, rather than the currentbank balance, which how many
times anybody here that'slistening has gotten a call from
a client that says something'swrong.
My balance doesn't equal thebank.
You're messed up.
You didn't do your books right,and then you're like, whoa, wait
a minute.
You're looking at the bankbalance and the QuickBooks

(36:06):
balance.
You get a lot of checksoutstanding, but you don't, they
call you up and they startyelling at you and they don't
understand that there's adifference between the two
balances.
I bet there's a lot of peoplewho have had that lovely
conversation.

Sarah Prevost (36:18):
Oh yeah.
No, it's, we've had it so manytimes.
Many times.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you all can see my screencorrect.
Yes ma'am.
Great.
Okay.
I'll just pop into, this is yourdashboard.
You can edit and move stuffaround on your dashboard so you
can show things that you wantto, you don't have to have
everything displayed.

(36:40):
I do Lynda and I love this.
We love that.
Yeah, it's cool.
It's a watch list.
There's a way to go.
It's good for the client too,cash in and out.
Just simple.
It's just very like, we weresaying, it's very easy.
So let's just go into reconcile.

Lynda Artesani (36:53):
Does Xero do payroll?
It's always outsourced payroll,right?
There's no Xero.
They,

Sarah Prevost (36:58):
yeah, they, in the past they had that for a
little bit.
Didn't really move as well.
It wasn't available in all thestates.
Every state is so hard.
Payroll is hard.
It's hard.
Yeah.
But so their partner they, theyhave.
Can Paychex, a DP, all of thosecan come in.
Their deepest integration iswith Gusto and it works really

(37:18):
well.
'cause I'm a huge, Lynda knowsthis.
We're huge Gusto firm.
So I've been using Gusto for awhile similar to what we see
currently in our bank feeds inQBO.
It fits matched.
It has a green, so it has somesort of denotation.
You can add bank rules and soforth.
This, I'm gonna skip ahead andgo to what Dan is asking about,

(37:42):
which is the reconcile period.
This is the newest thing thatthey've built.
I, happily have been a part ofthis.
In conversation at council.
So you have, I'm starting fresh.
This is a demo file, so justtake it as it is.
It'll tell us what'soutstanding.
So it looks like something'sjust been hanging out up here

(38:03):
for a while.
I had a hundred dollars tostart.
I've got a negative balance.
It auto checks everything I canclose the period.
Okay, great.
There's my period.
Let's go into what was the norm.
What we also used to see people,I think were always confused by
this, what I call the registerhow to look at this.

(38:27):
And it's organized by date.
It can tell you what'sunreconciled, what's reconciled.
But for the sake ofconversation, let's go into, I
just reconciled April and Iwanna make a change to this.
Let's just say that I'm gonna,just for ease, I'm gonna do this

(38:48):
and hit update.
It can't because it's locked,because it's in the reconciled
period, so it protects the data.
So that is right.
It just

Dan DeLong (38:58):
doesn't give you a warning like, like QuickBooks
are you sure you can do this?
But,

Sarah Prevost (39:05):
Yeah.
But there is if you go back inand you found this error and it
needs to be fixed, you can goback in and obviously unlock it,
edit this period, it'll unlockthe period and allow you to do
this.
But let's create the nextperiod.
It already populated myinformation, it populated my
opening statement balance likewe normally see in others.

(39:28):
I'm gonna put in Xero.
I'm just gonna go to theseventh.
'cause sometimes we do thoseoffice, is that similar

Dan DeLong (39:35):
to the close date?
Yeah.
Or is it just for that registeraccount?

Sarah Prevost (39:41):
It's for the, I would do the, close date, the
regular banking statement, closedate.
I'm just sometimes you do a softreconcile to see where you're
at, see where things are.
You want to check it out, makesure everything's in right.
I'm just, do see how nice the

Lynda Artesani (39:56):
UI is here, though?
The red just stands out unlessyou're color lined.
The red stands out.
And the blue, it's very nice onthe eyes.

Sarah Prevost (40:04):
So it's telling me like, Hey, you've got some
stuff in here, but guess what?
You've got things to code.
You can't do this.
So I would have to go back and,oh, look at that.
Look at all this stuff.
I have to code.
It's basically telling me, go doyour work in a nice

Lynda Artesani (40:20):
way.

Sarah Prevost (40:21):
Yeah.

Dan DeLong (40:22):
The

Sarah Prevost (40:22):
other, big benefit,

Dan DeLong (40:23):
it's very similar to I'm, looking at

Sarah Prevost (40:28):
Yeah.

Dan DeLong (40:28):
Putting in, putting it through my QuickBooks lens.

Sarah Prevost (40:31):
Yeah,

Dan DeLong (40:31):
Because that's, that is my frame of reference.
Yeah.
Is very similar to like desktopwhere the bank feed was left and
right as opposed to.
Up and down.

Sarah Prevost (40:43):
Yeah.
Yeah.
There you go.
The one feature, I can do acleanup so fast due to this,
thing called cash coding.

Lynda Artesani (40:51):
She does do it fast too.
I can't, I've watched her, I'mlike, I'm so lost.
What you just did, Sarah.

Sarah Prevost (40:57):
Yeah, I've done, it was a small file, but Lynda
and I had to do something realquick and I literally took, it
was 12 months for, I think itwas a checking, savings and a
credit card.
I think it was Lynda and I wasable to do it in about seven
hours total.
I

Lynda Artesani (41:12):
know you popped in and I'm like, ah, I can't
even follow you here.

Sarah Prevost (41:16):
Yeah.
But the beauty of this tool, isthat you can organize it and you
can basically mass, if I come injust grab all these, oops, I did
that wrong with my keyboard.
Sorry, I'm trying to

Lynda Artesani (41:29):
See's getting a lot of love in the chat.
I can tell you that.

Sarah Prevost (41:34):
Let's just say I'm gonna drop all these in.
So just travel maybe.
Okay.
All right, so I gotta pop allthese in.
Good.
Save and reconcile.
Those are off my plate.
Okay, now I'm down to the nextfive are done.
Okay, let's move on.
And you're doing bulk work likethis and you've got repetitive
names.
You can organize it by payeedescription.
You can apply if you've gotyour, rules.

(41:55):
Oh look, seven eleven's in here.
Okay, let's go do seven 11.
You got your rules right?
Okay.
So just go ahead and apply thatrule.
Thank you very much.
You don't have to do anything.
Goodbye.
See you later.
The mobile app.
I was Xeroero conference lastyear and the mobile app just got
a huge enhancement.
So I was doing a client's filewhile listening to the seminar.

(42:16):
It was just, it's a small file,just whipping it out, cleaning
it up, and it was veryintuitive.
If you haven't checked out themobile app, it's pretty neat.
Be honest.

Lynda Artesani (42:25):
Can you show Sarah how you, because the other
thing I didn't like about Xerois the fact that the chart of
accounts is very, flat and youhave a way of making it not be
flat.
'cause I like the sub-accountsand the collapsibility.

Sarah Prevost (42:38):
Client wants extra details.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Can you show, I think this iswhere my buddy Jeff might come
in and like this, and he mightbe saying this too, is what's
nice about this is, so I'll gointo what you're asking for
Lynda, and I'll say, edit mylayout and let's just decide
that these guys need to begrouped together.

(43:00):
And we'll just have a blog groupupdate that.
Blah.
I just, oops, let me go back.
Sorry.
Let's get some more things inhere.
I'm gonna just group thesetogether.
And so now this is a layout.

(43:22):
Let's just say that.
We wanna group another sectiontogether.
So I tend to group these,

Lynda Artesani (43:29):
like insurance and things like that, right?
You're, yeah.
Big things that are professionalservices or whatever.

Sarah Prevost (43:35):
Yeah.
Things that you and you can seeit on a preview.
Sorry I, always forget, this isfairly new tool that I love.
So here's blah, here's my newthere's nothing booked into
this, so let's just go grabsomething that's booked in.
Let's go look at that preview.
Before I hit update my layout, Ican take a look to see how is
this looking?
How do I like it?

(43:55):
Nice.
I like how fast

Lynda Artesani (43:57):
loads too.

Sarah Prevost (43:58):
It's fast.
Yeah.

Lynda Artesani (43:59):
Now, when it comes to financial statements,
Richard has, can Xero dofinancial statements like the
statement writer.
I know financial statements areweird in Xero.
I don't know the statementwriter.
Yeah, I don't know.
Statements.

Dan DeLong (44:13):
Yeah that's a, desktop.

Lynda Artesani (44:15):
Oh, the old one

Sarah Prevost (44:16):
from the long time.
Yeah.
Yeah.

Dan DeLong (44:19):
Can I think that's what he Or, can you do managed
reports or management

Sarah Prevost (44:23):
reports?
Yeah.
There's managed exactly.
I'll show you some.
There's a saved report.

Lynda Artesani (44:26):
Yeah.
There's a way of saving reports.
There's

Sarah Prevost (44:28):
different ways to do this.
You can have your publishedcustom draft you can export.
I always export straight out toGoogle Sheets a lot of times
myself.
PDF style, PDF, that's a wholeother thing.
There's like a whole bunch ofstuff, but let's go to what he's
asking about.
So let's leave this for asecond.
And I do wanna highlight anotherfeature too that, that I really

(44:54):
like and Oh, that's acommercial.
This is a popup.
This is nice.
This is more about, hey, this isan update we did in the product.
See, so I like this different,

Lynda Artesani (45:02):
than the commercial, right?

Sarah Prevost (45:03):
Yeah.
It's not a commercial, it'sintroducing trial balance by
date range.
So that's a new product thing.
So Dan, I think I wanna go tolet's just play around in, some
of these and just let's do theexecutive summary for a second.

Lynda Artesani (45:21):
So it's already a preloaded template.

Dan DeLong (45:22):
Yeah.
'cause I loaded, I think withthe with, the exception of banks
reports is probably gonna be thenext yeah.
Next hit list of things thataccountants and bookkeepers are
gonna be mostly concerned with.
In their, general.

Sarah Prevost (45:38):
I have another tip, and I might get a TED
approval on this one is the findand recode our reclassification
tool that we have in QBO.
It's really robust in thisparticular software.
It's amazing.
I can do things pretty quickinside the software and I like
it.
But this is this is one of thereports.
This is pretty neat.

(45:59):
It, I used this when I washaving a conversation with a
client and they're like, are yousure we're up?
And I was like, I said okay,let's take a look.
And these were way up and theywere by yeah, like 200%.
And I had to show them like oh,our average invoices, that,
that's how many invoices wecreate.
And this is a Clio to Xeroconversion.

(46:20):
So this data was coming in froma software and this was
reporting it for me.
It was beautiful.
Let's go.

Lynda Artesani (46:27):
It's easy for the client too, when you see the
up and the down arrows that,yeah.
Sarah, do you know if does, Xerohave time tracking?
At all, or you have to get thatwith your, so your payroll,

Sarah Prevost (46:39):
there is a, I don't know if it's right here.
Time entries.
All projects on these demofiles.
It's always hard to know.
Staff permission, staff costrates.
It's in the project.
So the project is a adder thatyou can add.

Lynda Artesani (46:55):
That was a question somebody asked too,
because that's the other thingis that when you buy Xero, you
add on the pieces that you likeand then you pay extra for it.
But that was another one.
You have projects and Yeah,track by project.

Sarah Prevost (47:08):
What was really nice, I will say Christie
Monaghan, dear friend of mine,we were on council together and
we're talking, she's really tiin nonprofits.
That's where her background, shewas construction nonprofits.
Anyways, we were talking aboutthis and we did a test model on
the demo file.
And it was actually really cool.
She's oh, I could use this fornonprofits very easily.

(47:31):
So can you cost code?
Look.
Here.
Yeah.
You can't cost code,

Lynda Artesani (47:39):
like adding the client name to let's just say
advanced client cost'causethat's lawyer.
Lawyer stuff.
Yeah.
Can you lawyer speak?

Sarah Prevost (47:48):
Yeah.
But

Lynda Artesani (47:48):
if you're doing job costing, basically,

Sarah Prevost (47:50):
oh, those are expense claims.
Yeah.
So when you're entering a cost,let me go back over here.
And mind you, we spend a lot oftimes in professional services
and we actually work in other,

Lynda Artesani (48:06):
industries.

Sarah Prevost (48:07):
Industries.
So Lynda and I, a lot of thatstuff doesn't pertain in the
ledger for us, however, righthere, so they've got their
Hubdoc thing, as you saw.
You can hubdoc's

Lynda Artesani (48:18):
included, right?

Sarah Prevost (48:20):
On the middle tier.
So that's, a win.

Lynda Artesani (48:26):
That's worth, the whatever you extra pay
because it's a good way to pullin receipts and, save the ton of
time.

Sarah Prevost (48:35):
I'll just put this into the first thing.
Look right here.
Assign expenses to customer orproject right here.
So you can assign it, you cantell it what project, which I
thought I saw this.
Yeah.
Assign.
So it's inside of there and I'veassigned the expense there.
So

Lynda Artesani (48:53):
new spend money isn't adding an expense.

Sarah Prevost (48:57):
It's adding an expense in.
It's versatile.
You can do it the with the, billor an expense account or the,
you can do a bill.
Very similar to what we're usedto.
So again, just different

Lynda Artesani (49:07):
terminology.

Sarah Prevost (49:08):
Yeah, Terminology.
It's translate.
The other thing too is thesetracking.
If you are working with brokersreal estate brokers, offices, I
use this in, I have so many ofthese regions.
I have regions by sale.
I have regions by the individualwho sold.
I've got a whole section ofthings and I can build all these

(49:28):
out.
It's easy for me to use this.
And once you save.
We'll just put it on the eastside.
I'm on the east side inPortland.
So let's just do that.
You save it, it's got it inhere.
You can quickly go view it.
Hey, I liked that so much.
I'm just gonna go ahead and copyit.
Do it again.
If it was paid by a check andyou wanna reference a check

(49:51):
number, you can note that there.
So I wanna, I do wanna take youall to, what's called the find
and recode, and this is like ourreclass tool that we have.
And you can set up criteria ofwhat it is, like if what, if you

(50:11):
wanna find a recode on acontact, which you cannot do.
So let's do that, Abby Wells andlet's search to see if we got,
nothing in there.
I gotta find one WillowProperties.
Okay.
I just did this.
Willow Properties and guesswhat?
I am not keen on on the name.

(50:35):
Oh, let me go back.
I'm sorry.
Let me show you all this thatyou saw that you can Recode
Source or with Emmanuel Journalright from here.
These are the features.
I can change the contact name ifI need to.
What if Abby Wells or the WillowProperties was spelled wrong?
And I just wanna get it allfixed.
I can change the account whereit sits, that if it had a tax

(50:57):
rate.

Lynda Artesani (50:58):
Yeah.
So you can change it right herein this screen.
You don't have to,

Sarah Prevost (51:02):
yeah.

Lynda Artesani (51:02):
Go.
Wow.
That's cool.

Sarah Prevost (51:03):
Yeah, and you can have your regions, so all your
class trackings, which is ourregion like are.
Market tr I'm, trying to thinkof the word I'm escaping me
today.
But anyways we can do that aswell.
So we can do all of these andthen review, cancel, move on or
whichever, whatever you wannado.
So this find and recode is, youcan do it by enter tax.

(51:26):
It's criteria is amazing.
This is, this tool has saved me.
When I have found like, oh mygosh, you guys just threw all of
Amazon into ask.
I'm just gonna go, it's notoffice supplies.
I thought it was and it's 5million Amazon's marketplace
web, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, I'm gonna change thecontact name.
I'm gonna clean that up.
I'm gonna change where it'sgonna go, and off I move.

(51:48):
And yeah.
I know it's not office supplies,Lynda.
No.

Dan DeLong (51:53):
So you had Sarah, you had or I think it was Lynda
actually said that Xero was in,in line with, quickBooks Online
Essentials or, plus, dependingon the flavor.
What, is the, the version,ecosystem of, Xero?

(52:16):
When you're looking at, what,flavors do they have and, who
might be a good fit for one overthe other?

Sarah Prevost (52:26):
I tend to utilize, there's a different
variety.
I can say I've got my, what wecall writeups, Lynda and I have
these writeup clients and yearend stuff where they're
literally just at the end of theyear.
So I'll go in and have'em on aledger.
So essentially like a cashbookledger or ledger, which

Lynda Artesani (52:46):
they had ledger way before QuickBooks had
Ledger.

Sarah Prevost (52:49):
Yeah.
Yeah.

Lynda Artesani (52:51):
And it was, it's fairly inexpensive, isn't it?
The ledger one.

Sarah Prevost (52:54):
Oh there's, ones that are just for us advisors
too.

Lynda Artesani (52:57):
Which is what QuickBooks is.
Same thing.
Yeah.

Sarah Prevost (53:00):
So let me bring over the pricing, Dan and, bring
that in too.
Yeah.
Two bucks.
Yeah.
On sale everyone's got the sale.
I, typically rest in growing.
I have a little bit in not verymany.
In fact, I should look again andsee who's in establishment, but

Lynda Artesani (53:22):
it's really not two bucks, it's just 20.
Because it, that's a littledeceptive there

Sarah Prevost (53:28):
But look, at what's considered, but still 20,
you still get in early.
If you're not a high volume.
Yeah.
Which I have a few of thesefolks that are in other apps,
they don't have a lot of thingsthat they're doing.
They're bringing in the data.
I.
This works perfectly for them.
A photographer that's not reallyspinning out bills through here.
Let's say that they use adifferent app or they're just

(53:50):
dedicated subcontractor for onegroup.

Lynda Artesani (53:53):
Somebody said, you get as many users as you
want too.
Is there no extra charge forusers or you don't have to bump
up?

Sarah Prevost (53:59):
Yeah, exactly.
I don't have, okay, that'sinteresting

Lynda Artesani (54:02):
too.

Sarah Prevost (54:03):
I don't you, sorry, my, now my mouse has Dan,
is there

Lynda Artesani (54:07):
an Amazon app that connects?
'cause somebody wrote that,Rebecca Becca wrote that
connecting the Amazon app andQBO is necessary for her and
what she does.
Is there one in, in, I'd have

Sarah Prevost (54:20):
to look in the ecosystem.
That's a great question.
There are, so right here,explore the Xero app store.
You can go in there and QBOcould go in and take a look.
Again, there are ways to makeapps connect that in this AI
space of ours that you could.

(54:41):
Do at a low code through make orZapier or those types of things
and not squish in all this datathat's unnecessary.
If it's built a certain way youcould build it a different way.
So

Dan DeLong (54:54):
Yeah, because there's always that works with

Sarah Prevost (54:57):
Uhhuh, whatever,

Dan DeLong (54:58):
right?
Yeah.
Works with QuickBooks, workswith, Xero.
Yeah.
Where the devil is always in thedetails.
And you can Exactly,

Sarah Prevost (55:06):
yeah.

Dan DeLong (55:06):
You can be the angel and and make your own details
through, some other manner,right?
Yeah.

Lynda Artesani (55:13):
Yeah.
And even have a compare buttonthere, you can go on.
They do.
Versus QuickBooks.
Yeah.
I'm sure it's slanted in acertain way, but Yeah.

Sarah Prevost (55:21):
They've got they, can show you what you're, yeah
what you're buying.

Lynda Artesani (55:26):
It's the same.

Sarah Prevost (55:27):
So just giving you an idea of what this looks
like.
So it.
You could go onto this and, lookat the, different versions,

Dan DeLong (55:38):
now as a, QuickBooks Pro advisor or a Xero accounting
partner.
Yeah.
What kind of likecertifications, training.
Do, does, somebody, have yeah.
Looking to get familiar withJira?
Yeah.

Sarah Prevost (55:54):
So they have this I, actually really appreciate
it.
So getting certified, obviouslylike QuickBooks, you, it takes a
bit longer for you to getcertified on the front end.
You have these very relatablecertification videos with some
tests, questions, and it's veryintuitive.
Learning, researching is supereasy.

(56:16):
You make sure

Lynda Artesani (56:17):
I heard from the ladies that the recert was just.
Silly.
It's very easy.
It's not but it's on.

Sarah Prevost (56:23):
But if you think about it, Lynda it's, on

Lynda Artesani (56:25):
the new stuff.

Sarah Prevost (56:26):
It's on the new stuff.
It's on the relevant stuff.
It's, very bite sized.
Honestly, do we honestly havetime to get certified?
No.
I don't

Lynda Artesani (56:34):
want them spending hours on it as

Sarah Prevost (56:37):
clocked in.
But yes it, it's.
To say silly, that's fine.
But I really say like it's moreintuitive because it's more here
and now.
And it's honoring our time asbusy business owners.
And I think that's the reallykey, essential

Lynda Artesani (56:56):
and, certifying is important because
re-certifying is important.
If you've gotten acertification, for sure it's
important, but recertifying,'cause you want to, I learn
something every time I do arecertification.
As much as I grumble abouthaving to do it you don't,
unless you're watching every inthe Know webinar with Intuit,
you're not gonna know everysingle thing that's happening.
And it's good that you're ableto get certified on what's going

(57:18):
on and keep your certifications.
It's important even if it's withIntuit we had a good I built my
business on the ProAdvisors andthe leads coming in, I guess
advanced certified, which is nowlevel two.
And I built my business off ofthat.
And then that has changed aswell where.
Most of the leads I get, I don'ttrust that they're not some kind
of a spam.

(57:41):
That's not a source.
You don't only wanna have onesource of leads anyway.
That's not recommended, but forsure I don't, that's not how I
would build my business today.

Dan DeLong (57:50):
It seems Sarah, that where Xero is today, as far as
like the core functionality isespecially when there's real
world implications like moneygoing out, have.
A partnership with, what, Iguess would, be like a gold

(58:12):
standard, right?
Like a connection to Yeah.
To bill.com or go you mentionedGusto for payroll.
Yeah.
Doesn't mean that you arepigeonholed into only using that
as a, solution.
Yeah.
But they already have a, way tobe able to do those things.
Whereas looking at apples andapples comparison of, QuickBooks

(58:34):
Online versus Xero today, Intuithas taken it, taken on those
tasks themselves for thepreferred Yeah.
Method of being able to do thosethings.
Whereas Xero is, they'repartnered with Bill for, bill
payment.
They're partnered with Gusto forpayroll.

(58:56):
Yeah.
Those initial things.
Would you say that's a kind a, afair comparison right now?

Sarah Prevost (59:01):
Absolutely.
And, what they're also doing is,you've got, I'm in the sales
module.
You've got the different kind ofworkflows, I guess you could
say.
And they've built this way.
This has not changed in a while.
I know the invoicing haschanged, but they do, like
you're saying, they have stripehere, but you can use other
platforms.
I've tested out a few differentones I'm using one, I use Stripe

(59:24):
and I use Helium.
I can have two different paymentpla I turn'em on or off
depending on the cost versionsof what I need.
But yes, Dan, to your point, youhave multiple ways of working
with this, program where, you'renot, I don't feel like they're
honoring us as advisors, sothey're honoring us in that

(59:45):
space of Hey, we're, we see, a.
Small business do better whenthey have an advisor attached to
their file and getting thisguidance they're not in it to,
compete with that space.
That I feel like right now is alittle bit of a conundrum that
we're in with Intuit.
It's Hey, we've got live.
Oh, but you know what?

(01:00:06):
You as a, an accountant or aaccounting firm, you can you,
could also use live too.
Or you could do this, or I'mlike, wait, yeah.
You use selling me.

Lynda Artesani (01:00:15):
Yeah.
Question and answering.
You, have your clients call usto a how are they gonna even
know anything?
And the thing about the questionand answering is they can only
stay in the lane of QuickBooks.
They can't, our clients wouldwanna know, how do I do this in
Clio?
That's not helpful.
That service.
Sarah Merchant Services withcustomers, how does that work
with Xero?

Sarah Prevost (01:00:33):
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
So I like right here it does sayStripe.
You can attach, PayPal, you canattach, there's multiples in the
background.
You can attach, like I said,health sum.
There's multiples that you canattach in to have this work on
your invoicing.
It will also work with Stripe istheir leader, just because

(01:00:56):
that's the, one that they deeplyintegrated with.
They used to have Square that'sno longer.
I've only dabbled with a few, tobe honest with you.
I do and I'll put the name in ifyou'd like.
Health, H-E-L-C-I-M.
I do like that.
Particular one.
I have a client that's heavily,in Square, like really three

(01:01:22):
different locations, threedifferent EINs.
And we have a whole workflowthat we do.
And it's a store, so we haveproduct, we have inventory not
very heavy inventory, I shouldsay, but so we didn't really
cover that.
But we've got products andservices as well that's similar
to our products and services inthe sense of, you've got income,

(01:01:49):
you've got expenses.
They could be,

Dan DeLong (01:01:51):
yes.
It's more of a, I buy stuff andI sell stuff type of inventory.
There's not like a,

Sarah Prevost (01:01:57):
yeah, a

Dan DeLong (01:01:57):
management of I'm gonna build stuff out of this
raw material, or I'm gonna putit in a certain place so I can
find it later.
The advanced inventory you wouldsay essentially it it's, on par
with, what what they can doinside of QuickBooks on online.

(01:02:17):
But we are actually at the topof the hour already know.

Lynda Artesani (01:02:22):
Okay.
I'm Sarah.
Keep going.
I'm

Dan DeLong (01:02:24):
kidding.
I'm sorry about that everyone.
We could have an extended power.
Power, but, thank you.
I wanna keep keep people onyeah.
Time.
Be respectful of people's time.
Yeah.
I appreciate you all joining ushere today.
We obviously didn't have anypoll questions because we
couldn't figure out how to doall that in such short amount of

(01:02:45):
time period.
But really I, I think havingthis, discussion is.
Starting point for some folksYeah.
As you guys are, mostly in the,legal space and having those
additional niche industries.
Yeah.
But it looks from what youcould, show in just such a short

(01:03:07):
amount of time, I think,framework is, on par between the
two.
There are clearly, navigationaldifferences and a, learning
curve in, in picking upsomething new.
But if you are in an industrythat has multiple apps where you

(01:03:28):
have a tech stack of some sort,you will likely find that those
applications do, do, synchronizewith, both platforms.
Yeah.
And my wife finds that veryfunny.
If you heard that in thebackground.
Apologize.
I always try.

Sarah Prevost (01:03:46):
It's a beautiful software is what I refer to.
'cause I find it to be.
I just it's a beautiful softwareto work.
Do they have a support group?
Sarah?
Xero.
There's like a whole community.
There is.
Is it on LinkedIn?
You can do LinkedIn, but insidethe oh, in the community.
Okay.
In the community.
There's your answer, Kathy.
Yeah.
But thank you everybody.
Yeah.
And if you do I'm sure Dan willhave some sort of link referral

(01:04:11):
thing that we could helpnavigate you to.
If you just wanna let folks knowat Xero that you've learned from
Dan's webinar here with us,that's, yes.
I appreciate that you allowed meto share this today.
I think it's, always been mylittle gem rockstar in my head
of tools.

Dan DeLong (01:04:28):
It was very busy chat.
You're a little gem, and that'snot a short joke, but you are
one of the, one of the greatestpeople that I know in the
accountant community.
And I really appreciate youjoining us today Sarah to be
able to share what you do knowabout about this platform.

(01:04:51):
Yeah.
Hopefully the folks that thatjoined us today, learn something
new.
And maybe if it comes to thatlast straw where, okay, that's
it.
There, there is, there, thereis, there are other things,
other options out there.
And there are other communities.
But again, the grass is greenerwhere you where, it's gonna get

(01:05:16):
watered and exactly.
Putting those things all intoperspective.
May, not be the last straw,while you're still working on
it.
I appreciate you both joiningus.
Any, final thoughts before weclose out today?

Lynda Artesani (01:05:33):
No,

Sarah Prevost (01:05:33):
thank you.
I

Lynda Artesani (01:05:34):
don't think so, but yay.
You a good job.
This was

Sarah Prevost (01:05:37):
fun.
Thanks for having my businesspartner with me too.

Lynda Artesani (01:05:40):
Yeah.
I get to be Matthew for a day,yay.

Dan DeLong (01:05:43):
Alright, we appreciate you everybody joining
us today, and we'll see you nexttime in a couple weeks.
Could power.
Have a great day everybody.

Lynda Artesani (01:05:51):
Bye everybody.