Implement Spread into your Accountancy Practice

This document outlines key considerations and best practices when implementing Spread for a client. Following this pathway ensures a smooth onboarding process, accurate financial data handling, and maximum benefit from the platform.

Lift-off!

Initial set-up and billing

The user that will set-up and manage your billing should configure the initial setup of Spread. We’d also recommend that where possible this user is the Master Administrator for your firm in Xero.
Note - Due to the way a single token connection works for all users linked to the Spread Practice, this user must have access to all Xero clients to enable a connection.

Invite additional staff members from the Users tab.

If more than one person will be using Spread, you’ll next want to add staff members to the Users area. They can then login to Spread by creating their own account to accept the invitation - they’ll see a banner prompting them to accept the invitation at the top of the screen.

If Staff members create their own accounts and attempt to connect an organisation to Xero before accepting an invitation - they run the risk of creating risk of duplicated actions as they will be operating from their own unique spread dashboard rather than one that is synced across the practice.

Change Management

Training

We’d recommend that all users of Spread navigate to the Help area and complete the short training modules on Setting Up, Cost and Sales Inboxes and the Recurring Bills area.

For convenience here’s some direct links you can complete and share with the team.

Setting up
Spread Inboxes
Recurring Bills

Recommended Client Onboarding Timing

Best Practice Timing

Clients should ideally be implemented after a closed management reporting period, and no later than one month after the period ends.

Implementing within this window allows teams to:

Identify and understand transactional discrepancies
Establish clean accrual processes
Understand client COA structures and typical expenses/sales transactions
Gain the maximum historical lookback benefit

Lookback Periods

When setting up a client, it is important to be aware:

Start Dates: This will pull in transactions based on Xero activity date i.e. everything that was processed or edited within Xero since the beginning of the prior month.

Transaction Date: This is based on Invoice or Spend/Receive Money transaction dates.

The Sales and Cost inboxes can only be pulled back to the beginning of the previous month. This is why we recommend setting Spread up within 1 month after closing a period for a client. Depending on how and when the bookkeeping is done, you may be able to proceed outside of this recommendation.

For example, newer clients that have just moved to Xero since the beginning of the prior month will pull through all Xero transactions regardless of transaction date.

Recurring Bills History

Spread will pull through a 12-month look back for suppliers added to the Recurring Bills area, this helps to:

Calculate average values for variable expenses
Provide better visibility into historical supplier behaviour
Allows you to accrue for missing bills for a historical period

This historical view helps ensure accrual calculations reflect realistic expense patterns rather than relying solely on recent transactions.

Who to implement first?

Recommended approach:

Connect priority clients first

Identify a suitable test client that will allow the team to see Spread’s functionality clearly.

A good test client typically has:

Costs that are invoiced in arrears
Instances of deferred income - subscriptions, memberships etc
Suppliers who bill in advance

Using a client with these characteristics helps teams understand how Spread handles common accounting scenarios during the early stages of implementation.

Connect a Client!

1. Connect your first Client

2. Configure Settings

- Search for existing nominal codes for payments, accruals and deferred revenue

- Add nominal codes to track for your Costs and Sales inboxes

These should be codes that are typically treated as accruals, prepayments or deferred income e.g. Rent & Rates, Subscriptions, Insurance, Accountancy Fees, appropriate Sales codes for the client such as Annual Memberships or Subscription fees.

Important - Codes added later will only pull new transactions in rather than any previous history

3. After clicking Save Spread will take approximately 5 minutes to pull through transactions that relate to the nominal codes you have selected

4. Whilst you wait you can add suppliers that typically have regular recurring expenses to the Recurring Bills section of spread. This is where you will monitor to look for missing expense invoices so you can accrue for them accordingly from Spread. Figures in the ‘Billed’ amount will show a 12 month look back from Xero based on any invoice or spend money transactions.

Select each supplier you wish to track:

Select a nominal code to monitor (to track multiple just repeat the process)
Select the expected invoice frequency (e.g. Monthly, Quarterly, Annual)
Enter the expected amount in relation to the schedule above i.e. a Quarterly invoice with a value set to £1500 will recommend an accrual for £500 a month when nothing has been billed. If this is typically a variable cost, you can select the Variable average checkbox so that Spread can help calculate an average based on a look back period of your choice.
Select the Start date you wish to track from - You can also add an ‘End Date’ should you wish for Spread to stop making suggested accruals following the end of a contract period.

Next click into Manage Supplier for each supplier and ensure the correct billing basis has been selected. This is relevant for the reversal journal calculation spread will suggest later.

What’s next?

Cost and Sales Inboxes

If you haven’t yet had the chance, this is the perfect time to complete our interactive training on the Cost and Sales inboxes.

You can now review the Cost and Sales inboxes periodically, either weekly or monthly to correctly handle adjustments for accruals, prepayments and deferred income to post back to Xero to ensure more accurate reporting.

You can use filters or the column sorting feature to batch items together for efficiency e.g. work through all cost transactions with detected accruals for a particular cost centre e.g. Rent & Rates

A good place to start:

Apply a Filter for transactions that have the ‘Spread’ status. This is everything where Spread has detected a timing difference.
Review items that have the Ready status - this will help you assess what Spread would have automated, had the automation setting been enabled for the Xero connection.
Next look at the transactions that are ‘To Review’.
Lastly, if you have any, look at the No Action Required items. These can be cleared down in bulk once you are happy.
Once you have finished reviewing the client, consider if you want to change any settings for automation or the tracking of specific nominal codes, or exclusion of specific suppliers.

Note: It’s easy to review any Spread automated by using the Automation filters - so even if you're not feeling 100% confident just yet, you can enable the automation setting and review the outcome easily later on for the client. Journals can also be easily reversed.

Recurring Bills

I’d recommend reviewing our interactive training for the Recurring area before jumping in.

The Recurring Bills area is a great end of period review point to ensure nothing material has been missed. Spread will suggest journals to accrue for missing purchase invoices and make suggestions for reversals once the invoice has landed. It is easy to set up suppliers for tracking within Spread as the previous 6 months of transaction history are displayed for each supplier.

If this is an arrears invoice, the correct treatment will then be applied through the Cost inbox.

Feel free to create some test journals - Spread will suggest the reversal when the bill lands.

Existing Journals

Prepayments & Existing Deferred Revenue Adjustments

If you have an existing prepayment schedule in place in Xero, unless the invoice has landed within the Spread Box (i.e. the Invoice was received within the last 30-60 days and relates to a tracked nominal code) then we would recommend leaving this schedule in Xero for now. Ensure the end-date matches the prepayment period. Future prepayments invoices from this supplier will still be picked up in Spread and processed accordingly moving forwards.

Accruals

Ultimately, you’ll need to make some decisions here.

If you have previously accrued expenses that have not yet been reversed, you can either:

Void these journals in Xero and add the accrual from Spread (remember you can look back up to 12 months). This will allow you to see when to reverse this later when the bill lands.
Add these suppliers to the Recurring Bills area for the client with the Start Date set to match the start of the next billing Cycle.

Workflow Variability

There are several factors that may influence how your team interacts with Spread during day-to-day operations.

These may include:

Individual preferences among practice staff
Whether the client performs their own bookkeeping
Existing internal accounting workflows

While these factors are unlikely to disrupt implementation significantly, they can affect how Spread is integrated into the team’s accounting process.

Areas Where Workflow May Differ

You may need to determine how your team will:

Reverse accruals
Perform checks against a source of truth
Manage accrual information currently tracked in external spreadsheets

If a client manages their own bookkeeping, small process differences may arise. These are typically manageable but should still be considered when implementing Spread.

Establishing a Standardised Accrual Workflow

To ensure Spread remains a reliable data point to act from, teams should align on a standardised process for handling accruals.

This includes coordinating Spread with any OCR extraction tools or invoice capture platforms currently in use.

Spread will reflect the correct information
Processes remain consistent across the firm
Easier to train staff
Easier to move client work between staff members

Recommended Approach

All supplier invoice processing could now be fully automated with adjustments handled confidently within Spread.

Post expense invoices and receipts directly to the appropriate cost centres - automating as many suppliers as possible in your OCR tool.
Manage the posting of prepayments, accruals, deferred income and accrual reversals through Spread

This ensures that Spread delivers its full automation benefits

Workflow Support

Our team is available to help you map and optimise your internal workflows when implementing Spread.

If you would like assistance reviewing your processes or establishing a standardised accrual workflow, please schedule a call with us.

We want to help ensure you get the maximum benefit from Spread.