We are early in the journey of using AI to simplify accounting to make it easier for small businesses
Xero has launched its biggest wave of products as it evolves from online accounting software to a global small business platform to help grow millions of businesses around the world.
The products were announced at Xerocon, its annual Asia Pacific region conference in Melbourne attended by over 3,000 accountants, bookkeepers and ecosystem partners, representing 19 countries.
New products demonstrated at Xerocon, include:
Xero HQ open practice platform, an integrated multi-vendor platform for accountants and bookkeepers to run their entire back office;
Xero Expenses, a mobile-first expense management with Open APIs for banks to connect to the millions of employees in small business;
Xero Discuss, which allows users and their advisors to communicate within the Xero platform;
Xero Projects for time and job costing for professional services;
Xero Lifelong Learning Platform, an online learning tool aimed at students and the reskilling of the workforce, which will be delivered by educational institutions.
“We are early in the journey of using artificial intelligence to simplify accounting to make it easier for small businesses,” says Rod Drury, Xero founder and CEO.
“We are proud to deliver a new generation of smart tools to drive further productivity. In parallel, our focus is to create opportunities for our community of accountants and bookkeepers to take advantage of our global platform to help grow small businesses and create new jobs.”
Automation is shaping the future of accountancy.
Anna Curzon, Xero chief partner officer, explains the impact of the next iteration of Xero HQ and its curated set of third-party apps for accounting and bookkeeping practices.
“It is the golden age of accounting,” says Curzon.
“Automation is shaping the future of accountancy. It is creating opportunities for the growth of accounting and bookkeeping practices and it’s increasing room for accountants and bookkeepers to be the advisors small business need to succeed. We know that by helping accountants and bookkeepers fully embrace technology with a digital switchover of their practices it will grow their own business,” says Curzon.
“As accountants and bookkeepers move to the cloud, we’re seeing that by the time they reach 100 clients or more, they are growing revenue 80 per cent faster and creating 70 per cent more jobs relative to non-Xero partners. These practices are adding more capacity and resources in additional services and those practices providing IT and app advice are growing 60 percent faster. The efficiency gains these practices are gaining bring them closer to their customers as a true advisor,” says Curzon.
Xero HQ connects directly into other Xero tools and third-party practice apps. The first nine app partners launched at Xerocon on Xero HQ include:
● Boma for self-drive marketing;
● Fathom to efficiently create forecasting reports;
● FUTRLI, to provide future insights for a business;
● Hubdoc for automated financial documents;
● NowInfinity to tackle corporate and trust compliance issues;
● Practice Ignition to assist with client onboarding
● Receipt Bank for more efficient bookkeeping;
● SuiteFiles to bring all client data and files into one place; and
● Spotlight Reporting to enable accountants and bookkeepers to see how clients are performing in a single view.
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