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Office AutoPilot & Xero - Business Automation in the Cloud

Written by Arnold Shields | May 26, 2012 8:08:36 AM

The use of Office Autopilot and Xero enables small businesses to have the level of business automation available to only the largest companies, freeing business owners to do more productive activities or just some free time.

We are currently examining the automatic integration of through their API's. But a great deal of integration is already available. This enables the accounting functions (invoicing, products, reporting) to be handled by Xero and the business automation processes (email, CRM, followup, customer communications, business systems) to be handled by Office Autopilot.

The process is particularly effective for information marketers selling information products and membership programs where the entire business processes can be handled automatically by Office Autopilot and Xero.

Joe's Widget Making Course.

Joe through his website has developed on strong following around the world discussing everything to do with the making of widgets. He has decided to put together an online training course for beginner widget makers. He has developed a series of videos that show step by step how to make a beautiful widget. He is going to charge $49 for the course.

Using Office Autopilot he can:

  • Transfer his existing mailing list to Office Autopilot so that he can send emails that track who has opened his emails and clicked on the links.
  • Install opt-in forms to sign up for his regular newsletter of widget making tips.
  • Deliver his monthly email newsletter to his existing and new subscribers.

Now that is nothing new because all email autoresponder services can do that.

But Office Autopilot can do much more. So lets move on.

Joe needs to set up a membership site so that only members can access the valuable widget making videos. He needs to design forms that collect buyers details and enable them to pay for access to the course. He wants this to be an automated process so that it will happen instantly for every customer.

Using Office AutoPilot he can:

  1. Use his existing Wordpress site to allow for a membership area within his site and he can limit access using an infinite number of membership levels ( if he wanted to drip feed the contents over time).
  2. Host his videos with OfficeAutopilot and using the membership plugin instantly connect to videos into his weekly lessons.
  3. Developing a Landing / Signup page on his site and insert the order form that will enable users to pay by Paypal.
  4. Set up automated sequences within Office Autopilot so that when someone completes the transaction they are:
    • automatically granted access to membership area,
    • recorded that they bought the product for $49,
    • adds a contact tag 'client',
    • removes a tag 'prospect',
    • removes them from the email sequence 'prospects', and
    • adds them to an email sequence 'new course customer'.
  5. Track his members visits to his site and design automatic sequences to ensure that they keep coming back each week to watch the new videos.

Joe's new widget making website is a great success and he is getting new customers every day from his existing list and from new visitors to his site.

But... Joe hates accounting, his books are a mess and he is never sure how much money he is really making.

Joe's accountant recommended Xero and helped him set up the basics of the system including daily bank feeds from his Bank. This meant that he never had to enter individual bank transactions, he said what each transaction was for and clicked OK. Xero started to remember common transactions so he often he was just clicking OK.

The new course meant that his income and number of transactions was rapidly increasing but luckily Xero has also got daily feeds from Paypal so that the daily sales where automatically recorded into his accounting system.

The entire business processes from product delivery, marketing, sales, accounting and customer followup is all handled automatically.

We use Xero and OfficeAutopilot and we highly recommend both.

Contact us to find out more and how we can help.