The document provides two recommendations to improve the user experience of Xero's trial version. Recommendation 1 is to disable liability, equity, and revenue account types when recording bills to reduce errors. This is because bills should credit accounts payable and debit expense or asset accounts. Recommendation 2 is to disable tracking for balance sheet accounts to simplify assigning departments to amounts on the income statement, as balance sheet amounts relate to income statement amounts.

1. From an amateur user of Xero…
Based on user experience of the trial version…
2 Recommendations…
making it
Less likely to
• record bill amounts to inappropriate accounts
Easier to
• track amounts booked to the income statement

2. Recommendation #1
Recommend disable
Liabilities, Equity, and
Revenue account types on
the Account dropdown menu.

3. Recommendation #1 (cont’d)

4. Why Recommendation #1
 Creating a bill, in effect, creates a journal entry that credits the Accounts
Payable account (i.e. increases its absolute balance). For the journal entry
to balance, it needs to debit either an Expense account (e.g. the bill is to
pay for advertising fee) or Asset account (e.g. the bill is to pay for
inventory or equipment).
 While it may allow some flexibility for the user to have the Liabilities,
Equity, and Revenue account types available on the Account dropdown
menu, rarely would a bill amount be booked to those account types. In
fact, in those rare cases, using manual journal entry would be more
appropriate.
 In comparison, disabling the Liabilities, Equity, and Revenue account types
on the Account dropdown menu can greatly reduce the human error of
booking the bill amount to an inappropriate account. Presenting the user
with only the Expense and Asset account types makes selecting the right
account easier.

5. Recommendation #2
Recommend disable tracking
for balance sheet accounts.

6. Why Recommendation #2
 Take the tracking category of departments for example. Similar rationale
applies to other tracking categories.
 An accounting convention is that amounts booked to the income
statement accounts are assigned specific departments, but not amounts
booked to the balance sheet accounts.
 The reason is because: amounts on the income statement are results of
the changes in balances of one or more balance sheet accounts.
Dr Balance sheet account X 10,000
Dr Income statement account Z 20,000
Cr Balance sheet account Y 30,000
When amounts on the balance sheet have different departments
assigned, it will complicate the process of assigning a department to the
resulting amount booked to the income statement account.