Sunday, January 13, 2013

Xero, All Cloud: Grow the software ecosystem, empower accountants, and disrupt the industry

This article is from Australia but it's insightful and presents a glimpse of what we can expect from Xero here in the U.S.  We here at ExactCPA are fans of Xero.  From Patrick Budmar (ARN) in Austrailia:  Accounting software provider expects market to gravitate to pure Cloud offerings instead of hybrid ones.
The pace by which Small Businesses adopted the Cloud in 2012 was surprising, according to Xero Australia managing director, Chris Ridd, who said adoption was much quicker than originally anticipated.  “Looking at our customer numbers alone in Australia, we announced in March 2012 that we had 16,000 paying business customers and by October that number was 32,500,” he said.   “That sort of take-up really took us by surprise.”
Xero was expecting the add-ons market, consisting of Cloud developers that plug into Xero’s products, would start to take off towards the end of 2012, and it turned out that growth through 2012 had been exponential.  “It grew from about 40 partners in late 2011 to over 120 today,” he said.   Ridd said this grow was due to SMB customers seeing the value in plug-and-play capability in relation to Cloud offerings, and the growth in Cloud add-ons is a “clear indication of that trend”.
“We speak to about three to four new developers every week that want to integrate with Xero, so that ecosystem is really gaining momentum,” he said.   Having seen these trends in 2012, Ridd expects the next 12 months to bring about a “real shake-up” for some of competing accounting software providers such as MYOB and Reckon.
“[They] have been slow to respond to the Cloud opportunity and are trying to promote hybrid online offerings,” he said.   For those reasons and more, Ridd expects Cloud offerings that “perpetuate all the complexities of on-premise desktop software” are going to come under market scrutiny in 2013.
He attributes this to small businesses jumping on the Cloud in order to do away with the complexities of managing software, as well as all the headaches of dealing with patch updates, software compatibility issues, security, backups, and so on.
“In addition, customers want to be able to access their applications and data anywhere, any time and on device,” Ridd said.   “The explosion in new devices will continue to give weight to pure Cloud models that use a version-less modern web interface to access applications.”
Growing the ecosystem
The game plan for Xero in 2013 will be to focus on development of new features to its accounting and integrated payroll solutions, such as purchase orders, sales quotes, richer inventory management and more continuous improvements.
Ridd said add-ons will also remain a firm focus for the vendor, with the company continuing to develop its open API to support the continued growth of its ecosystem for Xero integrated solutions.
“We will continue to deliver tools to help accountants and bookkeepers move to the Cloud with the long-awaited release of Report Packs, which will help streamline the preparation of management and annual report templates across their clients,” he said.
Xero also has plans to introduce a new look User Interface for its Cloud Practice Management solution for partners, along with the full release of Work Papers, which Ridd said is currently in beta testing with over 30 of its Australian partners.
“Perhaps most exciting will be the first phases of release of our online tax lodgment platform that is currently under development, which we know many accountants out there are chomping at the bit to see,” he said.
Xero’s accounting and bookkeeping partners will be interested to know that the practice tools will be available for free when partners sign up 25 or more customers onto Xero.   “That's a very different approach to software in the accounting space, and one that should bring further disruption to the industry,” Ridd said.
Posted on 6:18 AM | Categories:

FreshBooks launches Automatic Expense Import, connecting customer accounts directly to their bank


FreshBooks gives small business owners a simple, automated way to manage expenses and understand the health of their business.  

FreshBooks, the developer of popular cloud accounting systems for small business owners, has officially rolled out Automatic Expense Import utility. The program automatically draws expenses in from bank accounts and gives users an easy way to track spending and to see their profit and loss at a glance. The function had previously been in beta testing.
This latest addition to the FreshBooks cloud accounting suite of simple, timesaving capabilities, allows small business owners to connect their financial institutions (including bank accounts and credit cards) directly to FreshBooks and have their expenses imported automatically into their account every day.
“Small business owners want to focus on serving their customers and on doing what they love, not on accounting,” said Mike McDerment, FreshBooks co-founder and CEO. "The ability to automatically import expenses from your bank enables small business owners to effortlessly manage their expenses, which helps them know exactly how much they’re spending and frees up times to work on more important things than paperwork. This is the promise of the cloud – a better way to work.”
Automatic Expense Import includes:
  • Quick one-time setup to connect financial institutions to your FreshBooks account
  • Automatically brings in new expenses daily, on an ongoing basis until disconnected
  • Accommodates multiple accounts including checking, credit card and PayPal
  • Imports the last 30-90 days of expenses data (depending on the bank)
  • Flags duplications and makes editing painless
FreshBooks Automatic Expense Import, which has been in use with over 3000 customers since October 2012, is now broadly available in North America with support for more than 9,000 US financial institutions and 61 Canadian financial institutions. Customers outside of the US and Canada can identify which banks they would like supported by completing a form request found on the FreshBooks blog. Going forward, Automatic Expense Import is included with all FreshBooks paid packages, and for a limited time it is also available to existing, free FreshBooks accounts as well.
FreshBooks supports a wide range of service-based small business types: designers, lawyers, marketing and IT professionals, plumbers, interior decorators – any business with 1-10 employees that serves clients with their time and expertise. Whether logging expenses at the coffee shop, on the way from a client meeting or at the airport lounge, FreshBooks Automatic Expense Imports will help small business owners to save even more time managing the money they spend.   More about the FreshBooks Automatic Expense Import feature is at the FreshBooks blog.
Posted on 5:31 AM | Categories: