To give you some insights into how changing to a cloud accounting solution could help your business, we have provided some cloud accounting case study examples for you.
Business start-up
The business required grant funding for new technology they were creating to launch into the market. 
Their existing accountant completed the monthly requirements and carried out all of the bookkeeping and provided management accounts packs, but the owner wanted access to real-time information provided by cloud accounting software and their existing accountant didn’t use cloud software.
The directors were based all over the UK and required remote day-to-day access to the accounts and for monthly board meetings.
The management decided to bring the accounting in-house and employ an accounts assistant. The assistant was fully trained on Xero and was happy to process bills manually on Xero as invoice levels weren’t too high.
Bank feeds were set up and flowed seamlessly from their bank account into Xero.
Management accounts are now being produced on time each month ahead of the monthly board meeting where all of the management board could login to Xero at the same time to view the reports.
Property rental business
A property rental business used Sage Line 50 and was keen to find out if a cloud accounting solution could improve their efficiencies with regard to manual entering invoices and reconciling all bank payments.
They wanted to track all income and expenditure per agent, per property and report back on internal efficiencies and make future decisions depending on their return per property.
The business used the stock functionality in Xero to create recurring sales invoices which then allowed them to automatically send invoices directly to their tenants.
Purchase invoices were processed through Receipt Bank and the bank feeds were live transferring transactions from the bank to Xero which saved a lot of time on manual entry.
Departmental tracking was introduced so that they could run reports on an agent by agent basis and improve their internal procedures.
All expenditure such as repairs were tracked per property and easily added to the invoicing through the expenses feature in Xero.
Staff could also submit expenses claims through Xero with their own separate logins rather than filling out paper expenses forms for approval.
Food & drink business
A food & drink business ran a group of bars and restaurants and was looking for cloud accounting solution to help to streamline their accounting processes and procedures.
They populated daily cash sheets, handwritten with receipts and till Z readings attached to them. Purchase invoices were sent to the accountant to be manually entered into a spreadsheet.
The bottom line was the business owners didn't always have a good handle on the financial status of the business and they wanted to get more on top of the finances and feel more in control.
After an initial review, it was found that the till system could export directly into an Excel format which was then translated into a customised Xero template and imported into Xero on a weekly basis (as required by the client).
Purchase invoices were scanned using AutoEntry to capture the multiple page invoices. The bank feed was set up and transactions flowed seamlessly into Xero, taking away the manual entry of bank transactions.
The owner received reports using Fathom reporting tool which kept him up to speed with the financial aspects of the business. As the business grew there were great efficiency savings and the owners were able to make better, more informed decisions from the real-time cashflow and financial information they had at their finger tips.
Sports club
The club operated a manual finance system using many spreadsheets and a rather cumbersome membership system.
It was a high cash-based business with income coming from bar, food and memberships throughout the year. Reconciling the bank was challenging and the club's spreadsheets never squared! Sound familiar? VAT was partial exemption which was on another spreadsheet.
The club was introduced to Receipt Bank for scanning invoices directly into the cloud. A bank csv file was exported into a customised Xero template and imported and improved procedures were introduced to deal with the cash reconciliations.
The chart of account codes were amended to suit a partial exempt business resulting in making it easier to post transactions. Partial exemption for VAT was brought in-house as the calculation was much more straightforward, with the club only having to post a couple of journals to reconcile the VAT account before submission to HMRC directly from the cloud.
Spreadsheets became obsolete following the introduction of cloud accounting software. All staff were fully trained on Receipt Bank and Xero for processing payments, invoices and expenses. Thereafter, monthly board meetings took place when they were supposed to as extracting the required reports and MI was easier from Xero than spreadsheets and the reports were understandable and transparent.
