How much does it cost to hire an accountant for a small business?

Even in your average small business (1-3 employees, less than $500k turnover) there will be a broad range of options for accounting and finance including getting specialise setup, tax structuring advice, finance systems and processes together with the everyday bookkeeping and accounting functions.

Is an accountant needed for a small business?

An accountant can offer comprehensive startup and ongoing small business advice, while making sure tax compliance is prepared and filed with the relevant authorities on time.

What is the role of an accountant in a small business?

Being a business owner can be a tough job, and it’s good to have a trusted advisor to lean on in times of complexity or uncertainty. An accountant will be able to help you navigate your business through these times, and help keep compliant with relevant tax authorities.

Xero is an integrated accounting platform that can complete all small business invoicing, receipts, bank transactions and reporting for the IRD. Being cloud based means your advisers can have access to your information in real time.

Is Xero Accounting any good?

Xero is a great tool for small businesses as it gives you real time access to the financial data of your business - information we couldn’t imagine being in business without.

Using Power BI for Data Driven Insights

Power BI provides interactive visualisations with self-service business intelligence capabilities, where end users can create reports and dashboards by themselves, without having to depend on any information technology staff or database administrator.

We think this is a great idea for startups using Xero that have teams in separate locations and varying access to the underlying financial information. Dashboards are easily setup and users can login to check dashboards that are updated in real time (once per day). A great feature of Power BI is the multitude of other data that you can connect (SaaS & App metrics, Google Analytics + Adwords etc)

Other tools can also be used to create IFTTT/Zapier type reminders where action is required - say for instance a debtor is wildly overdue.

Microsoft and Xero are big on small business. Together, they're a match made in the cloud. With powerful visualisations of your business data, Microsoft Power BI and Xero help push your business further. Microsoft Power BI brings your Xero data to life. A standard subscription of Power BI is free, and is all you need to get going.

For help in setting this dashboard up for your startup please use the form below:

Using Power BI for Data Driven Insights

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