Salesforce Xero Integration
Outsourcing our bookkeeping has always worked well for our business as it has enabled us to grow without the burden of managing a finance department. As our company grew however we were finding it more difficult to understand what sales invoices had been paid. The more our invoicing grew the bigger the problem became and we were spending on bookkeeping. It was clear that we needed to change the process so the sales team and the finance team had better visibility, quicker and that it was scalable with the business.
Davinia Fermi, DFMA – www.makeupacademy.co.uk
Business Name: DFMA
Commencement Date: June 2017
Nature of Job: Data Manipulation, Salesforce to Xero Import
Systems Used: Salesforce and Xero
- Business growing in size and different CRM and accounting solutions
- Manual processing of sales invoicing in Xero from Salesforce orders
- Sales team could not see what monies were owed by customers
- As business grows so did the outsourcing cost
- Query resolution between sales and finance was very time consuming and took both departments away from what they should be doing
- No additional accounting or Credit Control resource available
Referral from accountant who understood the needs of the business but lacked the inhouse knowledge to implement a solution. Upon review of the company’s current sales and invoicing process it was obvious that the current systems would not cope with the continued sales growth without continuing to increase the human resource. Tension was beginning to mount between sales and finance due to delays and problems in communication. This was highlighted as a key area to discuss with the client. At the meeting, this issue was discussed, including the fact that the company needed to change processes. It was decided at this stage that we could implement a solution that avoided the need to change either the CRM or accounting systems.
To assist the company in addressing these key issues, we worked alongside the client and their outsourced finance department to understand the key processes and responsibilities in place. These sessions helped to help identify whether the objectives and systems were aligned. The key outcomes of these sessions were:
- Needed to ensure that sales were doing sales
- Manual interventions and duplication of data input was created meaning additional workload and possible errors
- Imperative that the sales team could see the sales data on a customer without having access to the finance system
- Removing the need for replication of data in both systems was key to creating a tension free scalable solution.
- Sales data captured could generate the sales invoice without it being sent to the finance department for processing. This would mean less work and less queries.
- Neither department had significant free time to project manage and implement the changes
Because of these issues, we then completed thorough research of the options available and worked with the client and outsourcers to review these. We then went through a process of testing, selection, implementation and training.
- Ability to issue sales invoices direct from Salesforce and sync with Xero
- Improved cash collections and debtor days whilst not increasing bookkeeping or credit control resource
- View sales receipts against customer record in Salesforce
- See outstanding customer balance in Salesforce
- Automated email reminders can be emailed from Xero
- Reduce bookkeeping and sales teams input into the process whilst making it quicker to issue an invoice
