Contacts are key to any successful business. So it’s essential you record and manage your contacts in an organised and systematic way. Fortunately, Xero has you covered with its inbuilt contact feature. So if you are using Xero then make sure you are getting the most out of your Xero Contacts with these helpful tips.
Xero Contacts Home Page
Xero thinks your contacts are so important that they have given contacts a dedicated tab at the top of the dashboard. Clicking this will take you to the contacts home page. From here you have a full, searchable list of all contacts as well as tabs for customers, suppliers, archived, groups and smart lists. Tip – you can search for a contact in many different ways such as by name, email, or account number. You can create a new contact from here and you can also merge contacts by selecting at least two of them and then choosing merge.
Xero Contact Lists
Xero adds contacts to the customers and suppliers lists automatically based on if you have invoiced them or paid a bill to them. You can’t manually add a contact to these lists, which seems like a limitation that perhaps Xero will fix in the future. Archived is what it sounds like – if you no longer keep in touch with a contact then you can archive them. Groups are created manually by you. For example perhaps you invoice a set of clients monthly and a set of clients quarterly. You could create two groups of customers for this so you can easily review them. Smart lists are created by Xero and allow you to see a list of contacts with set criteria, such as those that have an outstanding invoice greater than 30 days.
Individual Contact Page
Clicking on a contact will take you to their individual contact page. From here you get an overview of the money spent or earned with them as well as a list of all transactions that have taken place with that contact. You can create a new invoice or bill directly from here and you can add documents, say a contract for example, to that contact record. You can perform the same tasks as you can from the home page such as merge, add to a group, or archive. If you click on edit on the right hand side then you can enter various information about your contact such as addresses, websites, telephone numbers and so on. You can also add default sales or purchase information such as the account code their transactions should be assigned to, their VAT settings or their invoice due date.
Next Steps
Are you are interested in a Xero bookkeeper that can not only help you handle your bookkeeping, but can also keep your contacts tidy and up to date? BiGRoC Accounting would be happy to help. Visit our Services page to find out more.
