Xero Integration: A Q&A with Small Business Expert, Adrian Connard

Here at ECI, we are so excited about the JobBOSS²- Xero integration, which will save hours of time and prevent costly errors associate with double entry.

For this piece, we thought we’d let you hear this excitement from one of our very own job shop and small business expert, Adrian Connard.

Thank you for your time today, Adrian. To start off, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at ECI?

Adrian Connard: Yes. My name's Adrian. I'm the Sales Engineer in the manufacturing division here in Australia and New Zealand. My background is in manufacturing and software. I worked at SolidWorks in Sales and Applications Engineering.

When I started here five years ago, ECI didn't really have an offering in the job shop space. Therefore, when ECI added JobBOSS² a few years ago, it added product that really appealed to the small manufacturing businesses here.

Sounds like you are very experienced. Can you tell us why you think a solution like JobBOSS² would appeal to the small businesses in Australia and New Zealand?

You know, COVID has really changed a lot of businesses. Manual processes limit the capacity of these small businesses and their ability to change. Also, these days, the price of materials and labour have increased. For example, we've seen the price of steel in Australia more than double in the last 18 months.

Therefore, while in the past these businesses could have been more relaxed with their pricing and quoting, we’re now in a time where they need to tighten their processes and better track their margins.

JobBOSS² provides these small businesses with a single source of truth to manage their jobs, costs, and margins. They can see who their most profitable customers are, and take action not to be overly reliant on one or two big customers to provide all their business, aka diversify their markets.

Can only a solution like JobBOSS² provide these solutions for job shops?

Let’s first talk about ECI. ECI carries the experience of helping businesses for over 30 years. We have a global support organisation covering Australia, the UK and the US. So, while in JobBOSS², they have a software created for job shops, in ECI, they are a big organisation that will walk with them as a partner.

Now let’s talk about why JobBOSS² is a good fit for small businesses in manufacturing. When I show customers the product, the first thing that they notice is how light and easy to use it is. Also, you're not installing software, as it's in the cloud, and they can access it anywhere there is internet from any device they want.

This means that these business owners can drop their kids off at sport and then use JobBOSS² mobile apps to work through quotes while they are in their car and waiting for their kids. They have access to a great number of standard reports from anywhere. That’s a game changer. They're no longer having to print stuff out or go into the office to be able to access the data.

Why is the JobBOSS² - Xero integration such a big deal for job shops?

Xero is by far the most commonly used accounting solution in Australia. It quickly became a popular solution, partly because it’s like JobBOSS², a cloud-based solution made for small businesses. With the similarities between the two, it just made sense for an integration to happen. Our customers are so used to Xero, that we try to make their lives even easier by giving them an end-to-end solution to help them seamlessly manage their finances and their shop floor.

Learn more about the integration by watching our On-Demand Webinar.