Question

Xero Practice Manager


Hi,

We are switching over to Karbon at present. I am just wondering how those using XPM for billing handle Karbon? Do you still set up a job in XPM? If so then there are two jobs on hand - one in Karbon and the other in XPM? How do you then bill the client? 

 

What is “Best Practice”?

Still a bit confused here.

Thanks 


5 replies

Userlevel 5
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We were on XPM until 18 months ago when we then switched over to Karbon.

 

At that point, we finished all jobs on XPM and now use Karbon for timesheets and data recording. We never used XPM for automatic billing previously so I don’t know if that was your question? But we do our billing through ignition and Xero - and there has been no change there for us.

 

Reach out to your account manager who may be able to help with this and provide clarity. I know that billing is something that is being developed - and knowing the timeframe may help reduce your confusion.

Thanks Coral. Its such a big change! 

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Hi Danny

 

The simplest solution would be to set up repeating invoices in Xero for any recurring fixed fee work and use a payment service such as GoCardless to collect direct debit payments from your customers.

 

If you use Ignition it would be worth speaking to them to see how the latest billing functionality works - they can also push your invoices through to Xero, which goes through XPM but it can be set up to function without you needing to actively use XPM for task management.

 

We have some exciting additions coming in the near future to help you streamline and organise your client invoicing - stay tuned!


Dom

Userlevel 1
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Hi Danny!

We also recently switched from XPM to Karbon. 

Take it from someone who tried and tested 4 different task managers before, Karbon has the whole cake here. We never used XPM for task management, only Job/Work tracking (Time, Costs, and Billing). 

I won't prefer any other software than Karbon for Work & Task managent. It has helped my firm a lot.

The only cons here is:

We still need to use XPM to track our time and to bill our clients as Karbon does not mark which time has already been invoiced (one benefits of XPM as we are mostly billing time-based and not fixed rate). Secondly, there is no integration with Xero which means we cannot invoice directly from Karbon and push the invoice to Xero automatically (another reason why we do billing in XPM).

This is the two main problems we experience with Karbon and we really hope that the functionality will be developed soon as we have to duplicate admin now. Nevertheless, still our go to for work and task management as all communications stays together and linked to the work items.

You won't make a mistake switching to Karbon!

If you don't need the advance billing feature of XPM, then I'll suggest doing your time capturing on Karbon and manually create your invoices on Xero.

That's my input.

So there is no integration from unbilled time in Karbon to Xero so it can be billed from Xero and client billings and collections being handled from there?  

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