Improving Xero Practice Manager (XPM) / Workflow Max reporting

I want to explore Xero Practice Manager from a Reporting basis. It is a common point of contention from users. Particularly for accounting firms coming from a different practice management system like CCH iFirm, for example.

The most obvious point of frustration with Xero Practice Manager / Workflow Max is that you cannot allocation a budget at a Staff level. You can only allocate a budget at a Task level. This flies in the face of the old system of running an accounting firm and analysing the success.

Example: $5k– JOB comes in the door – Set of Financials

Budget set: $1k WIP as Director, $1k WIP Manager, $3k WIP Junior. So if the Junior produces $4k WIP. $1k WRITE OFF. Not good, and reflects poorly on your Individual KPIs. Individual KPIs PRODUCTION – 1500hrs Year – 80% Productive WRITE OFF - 7.5%

So how can you do this in Xero Practice Manager? Accounting firms are doing the following;

- Make Tasks Individual

- Allocate KPI performance based on the split Invoice against WIP

- End of Month Excel Calculations

This brings up a changing of the guard in running performance based KPIs in Accounting Firms.

THE OLD: Individual KPI’s PRODUCTION – 1500hrs Year – 80% Productive WRITE OFF - 7.5%

THE NEW: TEAM KPI’s Average Charge Out Rate Average Turnaround Time

If you watch the above video, we run you through how you can report on the individual timesheet, against task, job, client and manager. Using Microsoft Power BI, you are able to do incredibly powerful analysis, and get superior reporting.