At its Xerocon Atlanta event this week, online accounting software specialist Xero announced the first wave of new features designed to automate many basic daily business tasks. Calling the new solutions, Connected Accounting, VP of Products and Partnerships for Xero Americas Herman Man added that in addition to automatically categorizing accounting data, Connected Accounting gives businesses insights that can help them better understand their finances.
“With the features introduced at Xerocon Atlanta today, we’re delivering connected accounting so accountants and bookkeepers can help their clients ask the big questions, on cash flow, profit, and revenue,” Man said. “It is these kinds of capabilities working seamlessly together that enables small businesses to pursue their passion, be successful and do beautiful business.”
Initially, Connected Accounting will enable Xero’s platform to capture and automatically populate data from PDF bills to make bank reconciliation simpler. Xero Projects, a job tracking solution for small business now available to Xero’s U.S. customers, is now connected to the platform in a way that allows businesses to combine contact, invoicing, billing, and reporting information with the rich data existing on the platform. The Projects app has also been improved, making it easier for workers to track project work on the go and giving business owners more control over access permissions.
Xero also announced coming enhancements to its query solution Ask and a to-be released solution for Xero HQ, Relationships, that will make it easier for businesses to maintain contacts and sync data across the Xero platform.
In addition to product announcements, Xero also shared news of a new partnership with Citibank. Via the agreement, joint Citibank-Xero customers will get access to direct bank feeds from within the Xero platform. This will give businesses real-time visibility of their finances, including cash flow and overall business performance. The deal with Citibank builds on the relationships with FIs that Xero has forged in 2018 alone, including deals with the National Bank of Australia in February, and the Development Bank of Singapore in January.
Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Wellington, New Zealand, Xero demonstrated the Business Identification feature of its online accounting platform at FinovateSpring 2011. Earlier this month, the company announced its Canadian launch, partnering with Deloitte Private’s financial collaboration platform ctrl by Deloitte. In February, Xero teamed up with IT management solutions provider Kaseya, providing direct integration between the company’s business management solution, BMS by Kaseya, and Xero’s platform.
Xero is publicly-traded on the Australian stock exchange under the ticker “XRO” and has a market capitalization of $5 billion. Rod Drury is CEO.