dwyl / hq

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Xero capabilities and limitations implementation plan - 1 day spike #383

Open iteles opened 7 years ago

iteles commented 7 years ago

As discussed on 26-Jun-2017 and captured in https://github.com/dwyl/hq/issues/321#issuecomment-323071446, we need a spike to better understand how we can utilise Xero to its full potential and in a way that benefits our needs.

Including (but not limited to) understanding how to:

ghost commented 7 years ago

All of these issues will take much longer than a day - or do you mean just understanding the process of how to solve each one?

iteles commented 7 years ago

we need a spike to better understand how we can utilise Xero to its full potential

Yes, this is essentially an implementation plan, with a quick test implementation of one element where relevant, not the implementation itself.

rub1e commented 6 years ago

Add expenses in a foreign currency

We can't do any multi-currency stuff until we upgrade Xero to a Premium account.

If we think that's worth doing, great - if not, I'll draft a process for non-GBP expenses

iteles commented 6 years ago

@rub1e Am I right in thinking that that would be an additional £5.50 per month, £66 a year?

If so, let's upgrade, it will cost us more than that in dwyler time to do the conversions ourselves for dwyler summer receipts alone!

Let's break this out into its own issue and do it. #192

rub1e commented 6 years ago

I've had a quick look at the Xero Projects add-on and it's certainly worth looking into properly 👁 - so I'll start the free trial next week and see if it's worth the extra cost 💸

The main functionality it adds is the ability to add invoices to a specific project, which lets you see the project's profitability at a glance, so useful for #373

There are also a few other features like time tracking ⌚️ and costing which may or may not prove useful

rub1e commented 6 years ago

I've now had a play around with the Xero Projects product - it's between quite and somewhat useful.

If you want a general intro, you could do worse than watching this five-minute video (try to ignore her saying pr-oh-jects the whole time)

The main points of interest are

image

The main drawbacks are:

I think we should have a chat about whether the advantages outweigh the drawbacks, but ultimately I suspect we'd be better off with a lo-fi spreadsheet that does exactly what we need than changing the way we work to fit into this tool (and still having to do extra work to see things the way we want to)

(And I'm not just saying that because I'm the one who'd have to set it up... 😜)

(This is still a WIP, will update when Xero have replied to my queries)

rub1e commented 6 years ago

After discussion with @iteles and responses from Xero:

Xero would indeed charge us for each person involved in Projects.

While an extra £50/m wouldn't be unreasonable if it saved time elsewhere, we'd have to do so much work to get an output from Projects in the format we want that it's just not worth it (specifically the ability to see across a whole client/project rather than just per sprint)

In short, Xero Projects doesn't provide an easy solution to #373, and we're probably better off rolling our own to meet our specific needs

rub1e commented 6 years ago

@iteles the second task above:

Pull information out for year end accounts

Do you just mean the usual balance sheet / P&L reports we need for HMRC & Accountants? If so then that point can be checked off and I'll document the process as we do #461

If there's anything else, let me know and I'll investigate when I look at the pain points in #382

iteles commented 6 years ago

@rub1e That's exactly it 👍

rub1e commented 6 years ago

I've answered the final outstanding question about invoicing pain-points at length here

As far as I can see we've now answered all the points in the issue description (or at least put some explanation of our thinking in the relevant issue), so this issue can be closed.

rub1e commented 6 years ago

I'm not sure where this lives, but I've just checked and Xero Expenses costs £2.50 a month per user, and it would just be me and @iteles using it - so I'm very inclined to say it'll save more in man-hours than the £5/mo cost

So I'd say go for it!