Xero Introduces New Innovations for Small Businesses and Accounting Professionals

Xero, which develops cloud-based accounting and small business management tools, has debuted several new accounting tools at Xerocon Denver, its annual partner conference. Xero’s new product upgrades are designed to ease the accounting process and advance small businesses’ success. These solutions afford bookkeepers and accountants rea-ltime connections with the clients they serve.

The announcement was made before an audience of over 500 at Xerocon, including mix of accountants, bookkeepers, developers and industry decision-makers.

Highlights of the first day of Xerocon include the release of Xero’s new Business Performance dashboard; the addition of new states for Payroll in Xero, including Colorado; and a number of new product features. The most excitement was generated over the new Apple Watch integration following an onstage demo showcasing the software’s seamless user experience across multiple iOS devices.

Business Performance Dashboard

The new Business Performance dashboard allows businesses to identify potential pain points or concerns early enough to take action. Launched today, the dashboard’s reporting option provides a view of a business’s performance across a wide range of standard business metrics. This way, business owners and their financial advisors can view simple graphs of each metric. This simple, beautifully designed and integrated interface can become a critical tool to promoting effective, realtime decisionmaking within a business.

“Small business owners are some of the hardest working entrepreneurs in the world, and are helping fuel the growth of their communities and their businesses,” said Xero’s U.S. President, Russ Fujioka. “The worst case scenario for an entrepreneur is losing any of that hardearned growth as a result of improper planning or cashflow issues. At Xero we are obsessed about giving small businesses the power of big data to help deliver the key metrics they need, at a glance, about how their business is performing.”

The dashboard feature also makes it easy to collaborate with their trusted accountant and bookkeeper advisors on how to improve performance. Fujioka adds, “Small business owners aren’t accounting experts and shouldn’t have to be. We create an enhanced
communication channel between financial experts and their clients so business owners can do what they do best run their business.”

Apple iOS Integration

The rapid adoption of wearable technology is well underway. Xero allows for consistent access and ease of use from any device whether a MacBook, iPhone or Apple Watch. At Xerocon, the company showcased an integration with the Apple Watch that provides
consistent, elegant notifications regarding business financial success while owners are on the go. When coupled with iOS alert capabilities, small business owners can now stay uptodate on what’s happening with their business with a glance at their wrist. Alerts will appear when bank feeds have been updated. The new Apple watch integration is the latest announcement in Xero’s “Xero Everywhere” vision. iOS users can access the first iteration of this feature now.

Enhanced Integration with Gmail

Xero is dedicated to creating solutions that can seamlessly integrate with the tools businesses already use. As part of this promise to customers, the company is working to integrate email and contact records (initially via Gmail) into the Xero platform. Xero users will have the capability to choose a filtered view of their inbox in relation to a specific business contact. If there is an action that requires followup, or an individual wishes to archive information for future reference, they can select to store a particular email in the activity stream for that contact. This new functionality will also allow for the creation of a new quote or invoice from within email.

“Email integration is another facet to our Single Ledger story,” said Xero Chief Product Officer Angus Norton. “By bringing in data from as many sources as possible, we allow Xero users to better manage their relationships with customers or suppliers, and document the irinteractions with them.”

Payroll in Xero Expands to Colorado

Payroll in Xero is revolutionizing the way small businesses are running their accounting departments, and now Colorado businesses are able to benefit from the seamless integration with accounting functions. Payroll software streamlines the accounting process by providing accurate employee timesheet management, worryfree payments with direct deposit or printed checks. Come tax time, businesses can file and pay federal and state taxes electronically with a single click.

“We are extremely happy to see Payroll in Xero continuing to gain momentum with key states including California, Colorado, New York, New Jersey, and Texas,” said Fujioka. “We’re looking forward to keeping the momentum going and adding more states each month.”

Payroll in Xero is now available for use in select states with no added cost and will continue to be rolled out across over the next 12 months. Tennessee and Indiana are expected to be available within the coming weeks.

Xero Billable Expenses

Xero has also announced new expense capabilities designed to help businesses manage costs that they will bill to their clients. Whether for travel, building materials or buying on behalf of a client, it’s important to be able to keep track of these expenses.
Billable Expenses in Xero allows for consistent, transparent expense tracking in an effort to promote positive cash flow. When a purchase is recorded, the business owner can simply specify which client (or clients) and assign the expenses. Xero will send a reminder of any outstanding items the next time a bill is raised for a specific client and reports can be issued to identify outstanding costs. The Billable Expenses 7.8 capability is slated to go live in July.

Xero Me

Xero continues to simplify critical communications between business owners and their employees with Xero Me, a new iOS app designed to continue to ease and automate some of the key functions that come with running a business. With the new app, employees can easily and immediately communicate with business owners and decisionmakers to request time off or view payslips in realtime on their mobile device whether at home, at work or on the go.

Practice Reports

In keeping with its goal of streamlining processes for small businesses and the financial professionals who counsel them, Xero today introduced Practice Reports, a simple and fast way for accountants and bookkeepers to generate powerful business insights for their clients. Traditionally financial reports take hours to build and are difficult to keep up to date. Xero’s new Practice Reports enables reports to be built in minutes and based on accurate real-time data. Practice Reports leverages Xero’s complete accounting platform to create intelligent financial reports based on practice-wide report templates, that can be applied across all clients instead of having to repeat the effort for each individual file.