We at CFO Techstack are so excited to be moving into a new phase of what we’re able to offer our audience. CFO Techstack is brought to you by Mayday. We serve larger businesses that typically have an in-house finance team. They are seeking what we call ‘ERP-eace of mind’: the knowledge of how they can scale with Xero plus its ecosystem, without needing to make the "horrible and hectic" move to an ERP system.
Last year, we launched CFO Techstack with one question in mind: "How can we be most useful to our target customer?" It all started with the 14-part webinar series, 'Building an Enterprise-Level System with Xero', we hosted last September. The goal was to assist in-house finance teams in scaling into their growth phase with Xero. From there, CFO Techstack has grown into a content and community hub helping finance leaders to build best-in-class tech stacks. Our weekly newsletter and events have received fantastic feedback, and we have exciting developments in store, including today’s big announcement.
Inspired by the Xero Partner Advisory Council (XPAC), a forum for engaging with and getting insights from their accounting and bookkeeping partner community, we created the Finance Leader Advisory Council (FLAC), the in-house finance leader equivalent. The mission of the FLAC is to empower through knowledge sharing, focusing on unlocking the scaling potential of Xero and its ecosystem, while enabling Xero and its ecosystem to gain a deeper understanding and better cater to the evolving needs of larger businesses.
Introducing our FLAC
Without further ado, here is our representative body for larger Xero users:
Last week saw us get together for the first time; we couldn’t be more delighted with the rich discussion and insights that came out of it. We were thrilled to also be joined by Alex von Schirmeister, Xero UK and EMEA MD, and Michael Green, Xero UK and EMEA GM of Partnerships.
"Huge thanks to CFO Techstack for putting this lunch together and having us here. You have contributed thought leadership above and beyond, and I'm learning so much from being here and meeting these finance leaders who are growing with Xero." — Alex von Schirmeister, Xero
Key points that came out of the session were…
1) Transaction limits
We know transaction limits can be a point of confusion for many larger Xero users; this came up time and again in our ‘Building an Enterprise-Level System with Xero’ series, with the workaround to use aggregated postings.
During the discussion, there was such an eagerness from the FLAC to understand what are the guidelines and what is the hard truth.
2) Tracking categories
This was voiced as a key limitation. Larger Xero users are capping out on tracking categories.
Xero has a limit of two active tracking categories. Amongst other things, this has implications for the level of analysis you can do in reporting tools that plug into Xero.
There were some ingenious solutions that the FLAC shared to do with making your Chart of Accounts incredibly granular or thinking about how you might amalgamate two tracking categories into one.
3) Multi-entity on Xero
We discussed the user experience for multi-entity businesses on Xero. Particularly the inability to have more than one Xero organisation open at a time, with the workaround to open another in a different browser like Safari or use an incognito window.
And many more! The discussion could have gone on for hours and hours, there’s so much here. These points were so particularly rich that we’ll be deep-diving into them in their own future CFO Techstack newsletters.
The future of the FLAC
This was the first instalment of the FLAC, and what an instalment it was! The FLAC will be meeting quarterly to keep on bridging the awareness gap between what’s possible with Xero and its ecosystem, and how Xero and its ecosystem can better serve its larger businesses. Now, moving forward, the FLAC is your representative body — what do you want to see from them? Get in touch at zoe@cfotechstack.com to let us know.
We’re also going to be broadening our FLAC membership. Interested to be part of a council that’s shaping the future for in-house finance teams? You’ll need to be based in the UK and able to travel into London — if that’s you and you’re a larger Xero user get in touch at zoe@cfotechstack.com, and throw your cap into the ring! You never know, you may get a FLAC cap thrown back.
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