This article is an extract from the book 'Everything you need to know about Xero Practice Manager'
Get a copy for your desk at www.linkedpractice.com
This section focuses on how to set up annual engagements using XPM. All annual jobs will be created using the recurring job function within XPM, which you can find by going to ‘Jobs > Jobs’, then navigating to the ‘Recurring’ tab. On the left-hand side you’ll see ‘New Recurring Job’. This is where you will be creating all of your annual jobs.
We want to set up recurring jobs for both time-charge agreements and fixed-price agreements. This makes the creation of jobs at the start of each financial year as seamless as possible. To set up a recurring job, XPM needs to know what tasks to add to the job when it is created. This is done by adding a job template to the recurring job, so when the job is created it will automatically populate the tasks under the job based on the template it was assigned.
Setting up time-charge agreements
Now that we have covered job templates, let’s look at how we set up time-charge agreements in XPM, then we will look at fixed-price agreements. We will start with time-charge agreements because they are a bit easier.
When setting up time-charge agreements, the first thing we need to understand is that these engagements are for 12 months – from the first day of the financial year, to the last day of the financial year. When we set them up in XPM, however, we want to set them up so they are created two months before the start of the financial year. The reason for this is we want two months before the start of the financial year to do our scheduling of the work.
If all jobs were created on the first day of the financial year, we would have nothing scheduled for the year, and it would be a mad rush to get everything allocated so our team can start their work. If we rollover two months earlier, however, we can take our time over the two last months of the financial year getting all the tasks allocated to the relevant people and scheduled in the relevant months.
This is one clear benefit of using Practice Ignition. The start date of the job when created in XPM will be two months before the start of the financial year. Whereas in Practice Ignition, we can create our jobs two months earlier, but set the actual start dates to be the first day of the financial year. This just makes things a bit tidier, eg. if our financial year start date was the 1st of April, the start date on our XPM jobs will be the 1st of February. Whereas Practice Ignition will allow us to create the job on the 1st of February, but set the start date of the job to be the 1st of April.
To set up a time-charge agreement recurring job, here are the steps:
- Recurrence: 12 months
- Next Date: 2 months before the start of the financial year you want the jobs created for
- End Date: No end date
- Client: Choose relevant client
- Contact: Not necessary
- Template: Choose relevant job template
- Name: {year} Annual Engagement.
- The {year} will be the year the job is created. If you are in 2020 and want to create a job for 2021, you can put {year+1) in the job name placeholder. Use your judgement on what the right {year} to use is.
- Description: You can leave this blank, or put a description of the engagement
- Client Order Number: Leave this blank
- Budget: Enter the expected fee for the annual job
- State: 1.0 To Be Scheduled
- Duration: 14 months
- Account Manager: The partner who holds the relationship with the client
- Job Manager: The main accountant who will be managing the work on the job
- Staff: Do not select any staff. It becomes problematic as staff come and go within your practice. We add them later.
- Hit ‘Save’.
It is worth having a good think about what your next date should be. If you don’t have a job set up for the current financial year, you can set the next date to be in the past, so a job is created when you save the recurring job. If you have already set up a job manually, you would want to set the next date to be two months before the start of the next financial year.
Enjoy this article? Buy the book.
Need help setting up, fixing up, or getting up to speed on Xero Practice Manager?
We can help at www.linkedpractice.com
Comments
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.