Hi team, I'm Reuben from Link Academy
And in this quick session I'm going to take you through the three biggest differences between Xero Projects and an app like WorkflowMax
Xero Projects has been eagerly anticipated part of Xero that was released at the end of 2017
To earn a lot of positive reviews but since then, there's been a lot of commentary and confusion around the differences between Xero Projects and WorkflowMax
So, here they are:
Number one: using Xero projects, you're still going to find yourself with quite a bit of duplication of effort
Occurring throughout your business and here's some examples of that
Can we enter a lead into Xero or Xero Projects? No we can't
Can we can turn a lead or inquiry into a quote or enter a quote into Xero?
Yes we can
Can we turn a Xero quote into a Xero project?
No we can't
Can we take a Xero project that we created and scheduled that out and create a bit of a project plan for our staff?
No, we can't
Can we take a Xero Project and the the anticipated costs on that project, materials etc and copy that into a series of purchase orders in Xero?
No we can't
Can we take the information that I start entering through their timesheets and display that on a Xero projects on a Xero invoice?
No we can't
Can we take a Xero Project and turn it into a Xero invoice
Yes, you can
So it's already saving that time for you
Can we take our staff timesheets and put that into Xero payroll or in Payroll, the net value of the hours they've worked in that week or fortnight whatever the paper it might be
No, you can't
See? As you can see, you're still gonna have quite a lot of double, triple, quadruple handling of the different
The same bit of information throughout your business related to a project
That's number one
Number two: project profitability reporting
Can we get a project probability report from Xero projects?
Yes, you can, kind of. So there are project profit reports available but they don't explicitly call it project profitability
So you need to kind of work out and do the maths yourself
However, we can calculate the total invoice value of a project and the total costs of we've incurred
In time, material, so in that way you can
Can we break those different projects that we've been doing in two different categories so we can report on the different sorts of services we offer using Xero projects?
No, we can't
Can we use the tracking categories that are already part of Xero and report our jobs based on office or region to see which are their most profitable officers be most probable to us?
No, you can't
Can you report based on staff?
So who's my most top performing staff member, using Xero projects?
Now who's making me the most money?
No, you can't
Can you measure worker progress at all?
The amount of effort that we've put into projects that we've yet to invoice?
No, not really using Xero projects
And the big one for me is our estimated expenses
There's no way and Xero projects at the moment that you can actually enter in anticipated costs and compare those with actual costs later on
So that's what I'm getting it around project profitability with Xero projects
Now the last one, is the last big difference between Xero projects and WorkflowMax is project management,
Now there's a lot stuff that occurs between winning work and closing it off
And so can you do things in Xero projects like see what your staff has completed, a timesheet or not
No, not very easily
Can you view the different state to your project?
If you deal with projects that go three different phases, can you view those jobs at their different phases using Xero Projects?
No, you cannot
Can you set task, little dollar budgets to say... This activity is going to be...has a budget of this value, using Xero projects?
No, you can't
Can you set up any notifications to remind you around when you're approaching the budget for a project?
No, you can't. It really relies on you checking on it pretty frequently
Can you take photos from a site or a job from your mobile device and upload that to a Xero project?
No, you can't
Can you do the same with documents?
No, you can't
Can you take email correspondence that you have of your customers and put that against the Xero project?
No, you can't
Can you have a human point of contact for a project, so not just the client but actually human being you deal with for that particular Xero project?
No, you can't
Can you set up job templates for things that you do the same way every time inside Xero projects?
No, you can't
Is there any way to cancel a project that doesn't go ahead without completing it?
No, there's not
Can you generate a single invoice with multiple jobs in it, which is very common in a lot of industries?
No, you can't
So those are the three biggest differences
Duplication of work: you're still going to have a bit of that happening
Job profitability Reporting: they're not really able to break down your job profitability into different segments
And your Project Management Process itself there's only parts that are handled up with Xero projects
Now don't get me wrong, Xero Projects is still a very good app
If you are currently out there and you're using diary for your jobs or you're using spreadsheets to manage your jobs
And you've got multiple staff members, Xero Projects is gonna be a good app for you
It's gonna be a big improvement on that but if you require any of the things i've just talked about
Start as you mean to continue and pick a job management app that's gonna do some of these things for
Like WorkflowMax
So hopefully you found that worthwhile and i'll see you in the next one