Accounting software maker Xero adds customers / Cloud accounting software developer Xero now has more than 250,000 customers globally, almost doubling customers in a year.

James Hutchinson for the Australian Financial Review writes: Accounting software maker Xero added 39,000 customers to its online platform in the past four months, surpassing the 250,000 customer mark for the first time as the New Zealand company prepares to ramp up activity in the United States.

The new customer numbers, revealed before a customer roadshow in New Zealand this week, are spread over New Zealand, Australia, the US and the United Kingdom.

The company said the number of customers in Australia alone was approaching 100,000, up from 79,100 in September. By comparison, rival MYOB claims to serve 1.2 million customers across Australia and New Zealand and Reckon says it has 600,000 registered businesses on its accounting platform.

The updated numbers mark some of Xero’s fastest growth so far – particularly in Australia, which is seen as the company’s big priority as MYOB, Reckon and large US provider Intuit all look to steal ground from the fast-growing company.

“It took five years to get our first 50,000 customers, but in the last 12 months we’ve added 115,000 more,” chief executive Rod Drury said in a statement.

The company replaced its chairman Sam Knowles with former General Motors chief financial officer Chris Liddell last week. It also added two other US technology executives as it prepares to increase activity in the US and potentially make a third public listing in New York.

“It’s time to build the best management team that we can,” Mr Drury told The Australian Financial Review last week. “We’re doing really well in New Zealand, Australia and the UK, so it’s a new market. We’ve seen the same sort of patterns in each of the markets we’ve gone to, so the US is where we’d expect it to be and it’s time to put a bit more gas on it.”

Shares in the company stood at $36.66 at the close on Wednesday, up 21 per cent since the start of the year.

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Cloud accounting software developer Xero now has more than 250,000 customers globally, almost doubling customers in a year.

NZCity.nz.co reports: Xero, the cloud accounting software developer, reached a quarter of a million customers at the end of January, almost doubling its paying clients from the same time a year ago.

The Wellington-based company attracted its 250,000th customer in January, adding 50,000 customers since August, and taking it a quarter of the way to its target of one million clients.

That implies Xero has annualised recurring revenue of $83.5 million, based on its last published revenue figure of $70.6m as at September 30.

The company has previously said it was on track to boost annual revenue by more than 80 per cent, which would take sales beyond $70.2m for the year ending March 31 from $39m a year earlier.

"Now with a quarter of a million customers globally, and with the Australian market fast approaching 100,000 customers, we are gaining real momentum," chief executive Rod Drury said in a statement ahead of the company's annual conference in Auckland.

"The results we have achieved over the last year are testament to the innovation of the product development team, which is working hard to build the features enabling us to target all small businesses in our core markets, as well as the wider teams in US, Australia, the UK and here in New Zealand."

Last week Xero appointed former Microsoft chief financial officer Chris Liddell as its new chairman and ex-PayPal executive Peter Karpas to lead its North American unit.

US-based Bill Veghte, who runs HP's enterprise group, has also been appointed to the company's board.

The shares were last at $39.60 on the NZX 50, and have climbed 23 per cent this year.