As your business begins to scale, it’s natural for your focus to shift toward sales, operations and keeping up with demand. But there’s one crucial area that often gets left behind: your finance function.
When financial processes don’t keep pace with the rest of the business, growth can quickly become messy, stressful and potentially risky.
The good news? Cloud accounting platforms like Xero, and the ecosystem of apps around it, make scaling your finance function a whole lot easier.
Here are six practical, tech-powered ways to scale your finance function as your business grows:
- Structure your Chart of Accounts to grow with you
A messy Chart of Accounts makes reporting confusing and growth harder to manage. As your business becomes more complex, your accounts need to be structured in a way that reflects your operations.
Actionable Tip: Plan ahead! Group income and expenses by product line, service type or location so you can track performance more meaningfully.
- Speed up cash flow with smarter invoicing
Manual invoicing may work at first, but it doesn’t scale. Automating your invoicing in Xero means faster payments and fewer admin headaches.
Actionable Tip: Set up recurring invoices, automatic reminders and standard payment terms in Xero. Connect your bank feeds to reconcile payments in real time.
- Streamline supplier payments with batch processing
As payment volumes increase, so does the admin. Batch payments in Xero let you pay multiple suppliers at once, reducing time and error risk.
Actionable Tip: Upload payment files from Xero straight into your online banking to keep payments accurate and efficient.
- Use tracking categories to improve financial insight
As your business grows, you’ll benefit from deeper insights into how different parts of your operations are performing. Tracking categories in Xero let you segment revenue and expenses without cluttering your Chart of Accounts.
Actionable Tip: Set up categories by region, product or team to analyse profitability in more detail and make smarter investment decisions.
- Automate the routine so you can focus on strategy
Repetitive finance tasks eat up valuable time. Automation through Xero and tools like Dext can free you up to focus on big-picture planning.
Actionable Tip: Automate bank reconciliations, recurring invoices and data capture for bills and receipts. The less time you spend on manual input, the more time you have to focus on strategy.
- Extend your finance stack with the Xero App Store
Xero alone is powerful – but its true strength lies in its ecosystem. The App Store includes tools for everything from cash flow forecasting and inventory to approvals and employee expenses.
Actionable Tip: Identify bottlenecks in your finance process and explore apps that solve them. A good advisor can help you navigate what’s worth integrating.
How we can help
Scaling your business is exciting, but it also brings complexity. At Harold Sharp, we help growing businesses set up the right systems and processes so their finance function becomes a foundation for growth.
If you are scaling and looking to review your current processes, contact James Turner on the below or complete our Contact Form.
James Turner
Accountant | Fast growth
0161 905 1616
jt@haroldsharp.co.uk