There’s no room for Ernie with this XBert!

When Clarity Street first encountered XBert at Heather Smith’s annual pre Xerocon meetup, we were there to introduce the speakers. Like all new applications on the market, we always try to understand what pain point the app is solving. Truth be told, at the time we weren’t too sure what problem XBert was solving, but boy have our opinions been changed now!

Fast forward 12 months and our initial thoughts have been turned on their head.

XBert solves some major pain points that are facing the industry including: risk within a clients Xero file, automated audits & checks, bookkeeping task management straight from a Xero file, alerts that are not currently provided by Xero itself and a structure around how to assess a file quickly and then price a client up or engagement of bookkeeping accounting services. Overall, XBert provides accountants and bookkeepers with risk management and mitigation services for their clients' Xero files.

What does it do? 
XBert provides alerts or “XBerts”, based around machine learning and rules which are designed to assist the user in identifying areas of risk. They have been working feverishly under the hood to improve the overall visibility of these alerts to the accountant/bookkeeper, and to help them become something that the industry has been ramming down our throats for the past 5 –10 years... Being proactive!

The awesome thing about XBert is you can be proactive without even trying! By just lifting 1 finger and clicking your mouse, you can see the alerts in all your client's files or tasks that are yet to be completed by your team.  

Here’s a scenario for you 
Imagine this scenario... You want to pick up a new client who is a Xero user. You ask them for access to their Xero file and you connect up XBert. You let it sync and let the XBerts go to work. When you come back from lunch you log into the clients XBerts & Tasks. The dashboard has all these alerts going off... Payroll has not been run for the past 5 months, there are suppliers whose ABN’s are not registered for GST on the ABR even though your supplier contact has them registered, a supplier's bank account matches that of one of your client's payroll employees, and so on and so forth. XBert has not only provided you with valuable information about the state of the Xero file. It has also given you information to go back to the potential client with, to help service and price them correctly. 

Let's continue this scenario... The potential client has now signed up and you are onboarding them. Your team needs to know what has to be done on a daily, weekly monthly, etc basis. Within XBert, you can create tasks to clean up their Xero file or by using the browser extension directly in the Xero file, your team are able to identify issues and create tasks to be rectified. As the partner/director/manager, you can see at a snapshot glance what tasks still need to be completed, and reassign those to another team member if required. Recurring tasks, with subtasks, can also be created to help with those month end processes! You can even email tasks directly into XBert by using the client files unique email address, allowing you to quickly allocate tasks to your team without them losing it in their emails.  

All these tasks are displayed in a very user-friendly task calendar.

Another nice little feature, called snapshots, shows you a picture of the business’ financial health, including some snappy metrics such as weekly earn and burn rates, when you might run out of cash etc. The team are also working hard on real-time analytics and risk reports that will provide deep insights about your clients.

XBert will enable your accounting or bookkeeping practice to be proactive and not reactive to your clients needs. You will further be entrenched as the trusted advisor as you are mitigating your client's financial risks in real time. With XBert, you have the complete and up-to-date visibility over the client's business' financial health, trust in the numbers, and a deeper understanding of what those numbers mean – just like you always wanted.