Friday, October 10, 2014

DigitalFirst : Who’s The King of Cloud? Xero and MYOB Wrestle for Title / “MYOB’s numbers are inaccurate,” says Chris Ridd, Xero’s managing director for Australia.

Sholto MacPherson for Digital First writes: Yesterday Xero announced its latest customer numbers: 371,000 globally, up 76 percent in the past year. The biggest growth, however, is in the hotly contested Australian market where Xero is up against incumbent MYOB.
Xero hit 158,000 businesses, up 100 percent, “cementing its place as the leading online accounting software for small businesses in Australia”, the company crowed in a press release.
Not so fast, says MYOB, which for a long time has proudly worn the accounting software crown at no.1.
“It’s important to differentiate between Xero’s clients that are on simple ledgers through accountants (practice ledgers) and those that are similar offerings to our do-it-yourself cloud solutions (business ledgers),” says MYOB CEO Tim Reed.
Reed points to a research paper by Macquarie Group published in July that estimated 60 percent of Xero’s reported ledgers were business ledgers. In a like-for-like comparison, Xero had 88,000 online paying businesses at its last count of 147,000 in August, Reed claims. (Or 94,800 based on yesterday’s updated figure of 158,000 Australian users.)
“The (Macquarie Group) analyst confirmed the 60/40 split,” Reed says.
MYOB says it doesn’t bother counting practice ledgers among its official figures because their value is so low. Xero sells it for $1-$5 depending on volume, while MYOB gives them away as part of its practice management software suite.
“We don’t count those numbers (practice ledgers) but Xero does. They don’t add a lot of revenue; you can’t charge much for them because they’re only used once throughout the year,” Reed told Digital First. “There is a downside of us in publishing customer numbers because the side by side comparison is a bit skewed.”
Reed says MYOB doesn’t reveal the total number of ledgers including the practice ledger and MYOB’s recently released cashbook product.
“On 21 August we had over 88,000 online paying users in Australia. We are confident that we are leading in this space,” Reed says. [snip].  The article continues @ Digital First, click here to continue reading....
Digital First was formerly named BoxFreeIT.com.au from its launch in June 2011 until 28 July, 2014.  Sholto Macpherson - Editor and Publisher

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