Have you visited Venice? Rising out of the Venetian Lagoon like a dream, Venice is a tangle of enchanting laneways and canals lined with Renaissance-era palaces and churches. It is beautiful to behold and ranks as one of Europe’s most celebrated destinations. In Venice, there are no cars, tooting Vespas, or even bicycles. Visitors to Venice explore the city on foot or by water taxi or gondola.

Venice is a maze of anonymous streets. Very few streets have names, making most maps essentially useless. One of the great pleasures of Venice is to toss away the map and simply lose oneself in this magical labyrinth. But if you are trying to find your way back to your hotel at night or trying to find your hotel fresh off a train from the mainland, Venice’s no-name streets can prove frustrating.

Navigating a new software application can feel a lot like being lost in Venice: lots of beautiful dazzling features, but when you are trying to get from point A to point B and encountering dead ends at every turn, things start to lose their lustre.

Every software application comes with its own bible to study: a veritable paper storm of how-tos and FAQs. There are online forums, hours and hours of instructable videos, and detailed infographics. It is the equivalent of navigating Venice using an unwieldy folding map and a Lonely Planet guide book that could moonlight as a doorstop.

A dinky-di Venetian, does not need a map to navigate his or her city and neither does a visitor. Getting to grips with a new software application does not mean slavishly committing to memory  every command and process. It is simply a matter of unlocking the logic that underpins the software’s design.

The logic that underpins the layout of Venice is simple to grasp and once you do the city is actually easier to navigate than a metropolis with street names.

Venetian addresses are different in that they do not locate a business or residence on a street but in one of Venice’s six districts, called sestieri. For example if the address of your hotel is 5609 Cannaregio, then your hotel is located in the district called Cannaregio, not Cannaregio Street–it doesn’t exist.

Using a starting point like a bridge or a water taxi stop at the edge of a particular district, it is simply a matter of noting how the numbers above the doorways change. Simply follow the increasing or decreasing numbers to find your hotel. A big change in the number, means you may have crossed into another neighborhood. Simply turn around and go back the way you’ve come.

The path to unlocking the power of a software application is revealing the underlying logic that informs how it is laid out. And to do that you need access to expert users who spend their days navigating the software.

Notch Above offers new Xero users as well as more experienced users valuable insights into how Xero works. Sign up for your personal training session with one of our Xero experts.  You can answer questions specific to your business one on one with us from the comfort of your office.  You will come to know Xero the way a local knows his or her hometown.

If you run into a dead end in Xero, we will turn you around and put you on the right course again. Think of us like a hotel concierge providing you with directions you need to explore the highlights of a foreign capital.

Specialising in Xero bookkeeping, Notch Above is a Brisbane bookkeeper and BAS Agent located in Alderley that offers Xero setup, as well as training and ongoing support.  Notch Above can take care of all the bookkeeping tasks you would rather not do, like bank reconciliations, supplier payments, payroll services, debtor control and BAS returns.