Hubdoc & Xero - the time saving way to process your bills
We and our clients have become virtually paperless since the start of the pandemic. Whilst we always had a plan to work towards this, suddenly we had to encourage as many businesses as we could to provide us with their paperwork electronically.
It was amazing how many businesses embraced emailing documents, uploading them to software or taking photos of their receipts. We connected Hubdoc to Xero and the majority of our clients now send their documents straight to Hubdoc or use the app on their phone to send a photo. No more lost receipts for them and no more paper filing for us.
Our cupboards and our archive room used to be so full of lever arch files and archive boxes awaiting collection. Now we have almost empty cupboards and spare storage in our archive room.
Hubdoc came at the ideal time for us and our clients have found it easy to send each electronically received document straight to their Hubdoc location as soon as they have checked and approved it. It is time saving for them and saves us the chore of sorting through paper, filing it and storing it.
How it works
What we like about Hubdoc is that once you have coded the document in Hubdoc, it will remember that coding the next time it comes across a document from the same supplier. Hubdoc will extract the supplier name, the invoice number, the date, the due date (if there is one) and then select the detail from Xero which you used before. You may just need to change the description as that often gives relevant information for your accountant.
The first invoice from a supplier does need to be set up with the supplier name, type of transaction, VAT code and account code but after that it appears automatically. Once you are happy with the selection you just publish it.
Once published the document creates a transaction in Xero - either a bill or a spend money transaction, whichever you choose - and the document is attached to that transaction. So no longer will you be searching for a bill to check you put the right VAT code or chose the right account code. It is already there for you to look at. And your accountant won't need to send you a list of documents they need to review when they are doing your accounts because they will be able to see them.
Of course, as with any software, there are occasional issues such as Hubdoc not picking up the right date, or the supplier name but this is sorted very quickly.
How it works for us
We work with some businesses which have several hundred bills each month and many can be from the same supplier. Once Hubdoc is set up with that supplier it will bring up the relevant coding and after a quick check on date, amount and VAT the document can be published in seconds. Imagine entering each of these manually - it would take hours .
One of our clients uses POs for all purchases which is an important way to check off the expected cost against the billed amount. We use Hubdoc to process bills to draft then add the PO to the transaction once it is in Xero so we can check the values are correct before approving for payment. This ensures all relevant documents are kept together in one place.
Document storage
Not only are all your bills attached to your transaction in Xero, they are also stored in Hubdoc and can even be automatically extracted from Hubdoc to another storage solution. So you could have each bill in three places if you wanted! It always makes sense to store documents outside of your software as well so that you don't have to extract them when you no longer want to use that software. Hubdoc enables you to download all documents quickly and easily, which you can't do directly from Xero.
Make the change
If you are still manually inputting your bills into Xero but want to make your life easier and save time connect Hubdoc. After all its free with your monthly subscription and once set up you will wonder how you managed without it!