Xero enriches connected platform for businesses and advisors

Digitisation takes centre stage at Xerocon London with new global updates as Xero removes friction, helping small businesses and advisers run projects efficiently, and make their businesses more profitable

Auckland, 15 NOVEMBER 2018 — Xero, the global small business platform, today announced major innovations and partnerships that help small businesses and their advisors quickly access the data they need most, and ensure they can run more profitable, more efficient projects for customers.

The new features, unveiled in front of 3000 attendees at Xerocon London 2018, make Xero an even more powerful business platform for small businesses in the UK and around the world. They include:

More Hubdoc banking and vendor connections

Hubdoc now automatically fetches bills, receipts and other financial documents from more than 150 financial institutions and vendors that small businesses interact with daily, feeding them directly into the Xero accounting platform. The features make financial document collection and data entry, often time-consuming for accountants and bookkeepers, more efficient by extracting key financial data from documents and seamlessly syncing it with Xero.

Hubdoc was acquired by Xero earlier this year to streamline administrative tasks such as financial document collection and data entry so accountants and bookkeepers can run their practices more efficiently.

Faster bank feeds from five leading UK fintechs

Tapping into Xero’s new, full-featured bank feeds API, leading UK financial institutions including Tide, Starling, TransferWise, Revolut and Soldo will now provide faster direct feeds into the accounting platform so UK businesses can track foreign exchange payments, manage expenses and uncover deep insights about their performance, at no extra cost from their accounting dashboard.

The new connections are available to small businesses and advisors in the UK, a global hotspot for fintechs, and show the major initial success of the API in helping financial institutions dramatically improve time-to-market for new services by securely and directly integrating with Xero. Xero is working with financial institutions around the world to provide a consistent development platform for direct integrations and will announce further connections in future.

New Xero Projects integrations make it easier to run more efficient, more profitable projects

Xero Projects is integrating with Atlassian's Trello to help businesses deliver on projects more efficiently. Once the integration is enabled, businesses will be able to track time against a client project directly from Trello, giving them an all-in-one view of project completion and time, cutting down on data entry, and improving accuracy. Businesses can let Xero Projects take care of the financial side of project management, use Trello to schedule and manage work across time, and have a single way to track productivity across projects.

Invoicing is also now easier in Xero Projects — businesses can create deposits, task & expenses or fixed amount invoice directly from within Projects and seamlessly sync with their accounting dashboard, ensuring any credit notes or invoicing irregularities are available in one view.

Xero acquires Instafile to automate tax preparation for UK businesses

Xero has acquired Instafile a cloud-based accounts preparation and tax filing solution that connects UK accountants, bookkeepers and small businesses to UK compliance bodies (including HMRC). Instafile links directly to underlying Xero data to allow preparation and filing of Corporation Tax returns together with statutory accounts. With Instafile, Xero is future-proofing UK accountants for 2020, the current expected date for mandatory Making Tax Digital (MTD) filing across all tax types.

A new, more refined interface for the Xero dashboard

Navigating the Xero dashboard is now more intuitive than ever, ensuring business owners can find what they need quickly, while accountants and bookkeepers can help guide their clients through issues as they arise. The new navigation makes it easier to on-board customers and scale in growing practices.

“The features and partnerships we’ve announced at Xerocon London make sure small businesses can spend less time on their business and more time growing it,” said Steve Vamos, Xero CEO.

“From tax and compliance to financial performance, projects and payroll, the new features in Xero make it easier, simpler and more efficient for businesses to get on with what they do best. And for our accountants and bookkeeping partners, it means less time searching for information, and more time giving their clients the valuable insights they need to help them grow. We fundamentally believe in the power of technology to help small businesses, and the global economy as a whole, continue to expand.”

ENDS

© Scoop Media