It takes time to learn how to use Xero. Luckily, the interface comes with videos and articles to guide you through the process. It also offers a free comprehensive accounting guide that helps users to set up a Xero account.

Xero has a re-arrangeable dashboard with graphs labeled bank accounts, invoices not yet paid, bills to pay, and the total cash flow.

In the latest update, Xero added the sales overview with charts and graphs that break down invoices and estimates. While it only provides one invoice template, users can create more templates.

These include recurring invoices, automatic invoice reminders, and default payments for invoicing and payrolls.

The Xero-to-Xero feature allows easy sending and receiving invoices to and from other Xero users.

Businesses can create online quotes and convert them into invoices or purchase orders using the Xero software. One can also duplicate past quotes and add internal quotes. Interestingly, Xero uses the same templates for quotes.

Adding the client portal to the Xero software sets it apart from other accounting software. Here, customers can view, print, and pay invoices online. Moreover, existing and new clients can comment, accept or decline quotes online.

In the contact management feature, businesses add basic contact information, discounts, and tax raise for customers. They can also create contact groups, where one can target VIP clients or create a group for loyal customers. This feature also has a new smart list that helps users email all customers at once while offering promotional deals.

Businesses can link Xero to their bank accounts or manually import bank statements into the Xero app. This helps to categorize expenses and manage transactions. Xero has a smart categorization that remembers past transactions and automatically categorizes and updates new transactions by clicking the expense trucking button.

This feature is beneficial to established plan-only users. It includes additional features like expense claims, automatic receipt scans, and extra expense analytics. This means full expense management.

Xero creates a chart of accounts based on the organization plan and the type of business. One can manage fixed assets and choose between depreciation schedules such as declining balances and fixed rates. One can also enable current bills by attaching relevant documents to Xero.

Xero can write, customize and print checks to customers directly from the bank account.

Xero has an inventory where one can add products or services they sell. Additionally, one can add the product description, add attachments to items, track inventories and make adjustments. The advantage of tracking inventories with Xero is that it keeps tabs on the stock levels, average purchase amount, and the number of products quoted.

Xero offers comprehensive reports on profits, loss, sales and budgeting, and cash flow. These reports can be customized for easy access. The reports are 55 in total.

One can also create a budget manager report that ranges from 3 months to 6 months, or 1 year depending on the goal one wants to achieve. This budget can be accessed any time to evaluate growth and determine whether the goal is being met.

Other features include class tracking that can be classified into departments, locations, and teams, purchase orders that may detail delivery dates and supply orders, and packing that can be downloaded from Xero.