Purchase order systems suck for most users within the average organisation and also their suppliers.
Continue reading “Why purchase order systems suck”Why purchase order systems suck
VAT partial exemption on Xero
Here are some practical tips for accounting for VAT partial exemption on Xero.
What is partial exemption?
A basic principle of VAT is that you can only reclaim VAT that relates to “taxable supplies”. A “taxable supply” is a sale or other income line where you charge VAT. If you only sell products where you charge VAT, then you can reclaim all of your VAT as a business. However, if you have sources of income that do not attract VAT – for example residential rent or grants – then you cannot reclaim all of your VAT.
I am not going to go into further details of partial exemption methods or calculations – that’s for HMRC to explain in pages of copious guidance.
There are essentially three parts of the process. Firstly, recording the VAT correctly, secondly carrying out a partial exemption calculation and finally adjusting the VAT return. This process applies whichever system you use, however this post sets out how it applies to Xero.
Continue reading “VAT partial exemption on Xero”Five things I learned at the Global Excel Summit 2022
Last week I “went” to the Global Excel Summit. This is a three day event featuring many of the superstars of Excel, eg Leila Gharani, Chandoo, Wyn Hopkins, Oz du Soleil etc etc. It was virtual this year, but as I’d never been before I didn’t know what to expect anyway.
I learned way more than five things, of course, but here are my biggest takeaways.
Continue reading “Five things I learned at the Global Excel Summit 2022”The five most useful new Excel functions for finance teams
This post sets out the five most useful new Excel functions for finance teams, based on my experience. By “new” I mean available in 2019 or later versions of Excel (including Office 365).
Note – this post was written in January 2022 and reflects what was available at that time.
Many of us are self-taught in Excel, and it can be hard to keep up with the changes. In the past few years there have been loads of new Excel functions that replace and add to existing ones that you might be familiar with.
Continue reading “The five most useful new Excel functions for finance teams”Tracking resolutions throughout the year (with Excel, obviously)
There’s no particular reason why you should listen to my views on how to keep to New Year’s resolutions. This quick blogpost is just to share a few thoughts. Excel is involved, obviously.
Continue reading “Tracking resolutions throughout the year (with Excel, obviously)”The most useful power query functions for accountants
Here are the five most useful power query functions for accountants, in my personal opinion:
- Extract
- Conditional Columns
- Merge Queries
- Data from Folder
- Unpivot
It is, of course, impossible to pick just five. However, the point of this post is to illustrate that the power query functions I use the most are actually the simple ones. They are still enormous timesavers. Let’s have a look.
Continue reading “The most useful power query functions for accountants”Accounting for a property purchase in Xero – partly paid by direct grant to vendor
I had a fun challenge recently – accounting for a property purchase in Xero where a third party had paid grant funding directly to the vendor. As it took me a while to work it out, and I couldn’t find what I was looking for online, I thought I’d set it out here.
Some of this advice also applies if you need to account for any kind of purchase where a third party has paid the supplier directly. Or if you are accounting for a property purchase in Xero where you have already paid a deposit but only received an invoice at completion. This post assumes that you have reasonable prior knowledge of accounting for invoices, bills, receipts and payments in Xero.
Continue reading “Accounting for a property purchase in Xero – partly paid by direct grant to vendor”Creating dashboards in Excel – key skills
I attended an excellent livestream last week about Excel dashboards, presented by the legendary Chandoo. In his tutorial, he built a KPI dashboard in Excel in around an hour. As well as learning lots of useful tips, it also made me think about the key skills (Excel and otherwise) that you need to build a great dashboard.
Continue reading “Creating dashboards in Excel – key skills”Power Query for accountants – enhance your trial balance
Power Query has been out for over a decade and yet the majority of accountants I meet still seem unaware of what it can do for them.
A possible issue is that it is usually presented in the context of Power BI, and analysing Big Data. And the type of people who like to talk about that also like to talk about other scary things such as VBA and SQL. There aren’t many training resources or articles focussing on Power Query for accountants more generally.
How English language teaching helped me become an Excel trainer
Before I was an Excel trainer, even before I was an accountant, I taught English as a foreign language. Even though the subject matter is quite different, I learned some really useful techniques and principles which I apply to Excel training now.
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