Advanced Certificate in Xero

The harder jobs in Xero, done on an inherited file. You'll health-check and fix it, bring a new client across mid-year, then handle broken bank feeds and platform payouts, VAT returns you can evidence, CIS and the reverse charge, assets and finance, foreign currency and MTD for Income Tax. It closes with period-end adjustments, the month and year-end close, management reports and budgets, and a capstone quarter end on a client you choose.

You need its skills: invoicing, bills and bank reconciliation, plus the basics of double entry. If you use Xero confidently at work already, you can start here. If not, take the Xero course first, or both together in the Advanced Xero Bundle.

Not to start: Xero's free trial is enough. If you don't use Xero at work and want to keep going in the same file once the trial ends, that's a monthly Xero plan. Xero's free demo company is handy for trying a feature first.

Advanced Xero if you keep books in Xero and want to run its VAT, CIS and month end properly inside the software. Advanced Accounting if you want to prepare year-end accounts yourself and understand the judgement behind every adjustment. If you prepare accounts as well as keep the books, the two fit together: this course teaches the clicks, and Advanced Accounting the why.

No. You work on a fictional joinery workshop's inherited file and a second client's, so you won't need a real client, or Stripe, Shopify, Amazon or Dext accounts of your own. Never practise in a live client file: a filed VAT return can't be undone.

How to run VAT properly in Xero: auditing a file's VAT settings, picking the right tax rate on every line, reviewing a return box by box, correcting errors and writing the working paper a reviewer expects. Advice on a client's specific VAT position stays with their accountant, and current rates and thresholds always come from GOV.UK.

Payroll has a course of its own, the Certificate in Xero Payroll, which sits alongside this one in the Advanced Xero Bundle. Here you post the payroll journal at period end and reconcile the payroll control accounts, so the wages figures in your file tie up.

Yes. Complete the course and pass its final assessment and you get an OBA certificate of completion that an employer can verify online. It isn't Xero's own advisor certification, which Xero runs separately and is worth having too if you work with Xero clients.

Download the free info pack first. It walks you through every module, what you'll build and what you need before you start, so you can enrol knowing exactly what you're getting. If you'd like to talk it through, get in touch and we'll help you choose.