Comments on: Being creative with Xero

By: Amanda Ellis

Amanda Ellis — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:53:53 +0000

@Rod @Campbell it would be good to receive invoices from Xero over the Xero-to-Xero network. Nobody I deal with invoices me this way, and I would love to see the feature in action.

Regarding lean accounting and paying bills quickly, I would love to be able to request an invoice from someone through Xero (like you can in Freshbooks). Sometimes it’s hard to get suppliers to send through an invoice and I want to be able to pay it while I have the funds.

By: Rod Drury

Rod Drury — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 05:32:15 +0000

It’s a good question.

It’s really to us that we always are compelling for very small businesses – because by number that is the largest market and it forces us to make things easy. We have watched software in the SME space drift up to larger bases. For example ‘N’ is in a tough space being pitched at larger SMEs so still fairly expensive at the small end. They are now pitching themselves as an SAP companion or replacement. So keeping at the small end is a key strategy of ours.

However, as we go go deeper in features, those requirements are often driven by handling more data and workflows. So we seem to be building increasing fit for larger companies as well.

Often the complexity of a growing business requires special Line of Business (LOB) software that can quite happily link into Xero through our API. So the accounting can actually get easier as you make that transition.

You will see us deliver more and more features for larger business over the next year. For example better coding for large volumes, payment batches etc.

At some point we may consider high volume Xero – where we pull some transactions out of our standard engine into subledgers that are optimized for volume. Say you need to bill 1000′s of customers a month. We need to do that for ourselves but keen to hear if this is of interest to many others.

Small business are really hard to label. Some are small and very complex. Some are bigger and fairly simple. So as we build more and more we fit more and more.

So in summary, we’ll always do very small businesses, but hope that we can still be the #1 choice as you grow up alongside us.

Hope that helps,

Rod

By: James R

James R — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 03:11:54 +0000

Hi Rod.
It is good to hear that you ‘account for it in Xero’.
Its sometimes suggested to me that our company will outgrow Xero if we meet our targets and that we should consider switching to other accounting software (whose very name’s send shivers down my spine)
I argue that the Xero feature set has grown with us and will continue to grow and that the nature of Xero SaaS with its API and Xero Network will enable us to plug in 3rd party tools or develop our own to meet requirements outside the Xero feature set.

You do market Xero as being for small businesses though so i’m interested in Xero’s plans as you grow. Do you anticipate that Xero will still be using Xero in 5 years for its core accounting functions?

By: Rod Drury

Rod Drury — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 02:49:19 +0000

Irony not lost We just haven’t got to linking our billing engine to the Xero Network yet. We bill from our subscription engine and account for it in Xero. So much to do, so much to do.

Rod

By: Campbell

Campbell — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 02:21:11 +0000

@Antz appeared not to know about sending invoices via teh Xero Network which OG helped on. I want to repeat his question though – why does Xero not use it’s own network to send invoices? I know there will be a valid reason but it seems of having to re-key my Xero Invoice!

By: Rod Drury

Rod Drury — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:55:44 +0000

Thanks Martin, that’s really useful. We’re digesting that. Would be good to have a standard invoice format that the vendors can use and pass to each other.

We’re up for it.

Rod

By: Martin Salo

Martin Salo — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 23:40:03 +0000

Well, in Estonia, we have an official E-Invoice standard, that enables companies to exchange invoices electronically with each other or with consumers. When for example a telco issues me an invoice, it automatically appears at my online bank and I just have to click a button and enter a pin code to make the payment. For each company that issues e-invoices, every receiving party can choose if they want to receive it by post, by e-mail or directly to my bank.

The standard:
http://www.pangaliit.ee/files/est_arveldused_e-arve/e-invoice_1.0.1.pdf

Thinking about creating a Xero Network service, enabling Xero to directly receive / send invoices according to the standard. Then it wouldn’t even matter which program is sending / receiving the invoices, it would just work.

By: Rod Drury

Rod Drury — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 20:54:10 +0000

Thanks Kimball, that’s really interesting.

By: Kimball Fink-Jensen

Kimball Fink-Jensen — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 05:08:24 +0000

This is a really good example of an approach to accounting called “lean accounting”, a corollary to lean thinking. The idea behind lean accounting is to speed up the cash-to-cash cycle just as lean thinking is designed to speed up the flow of materials and information through any process.

There is a growing movement towards lean accounting world-wide – I attended the 5th Annual Lean Accounting Summit in Orlando in September.

The idea that suppliers can load/transmit their invoices to their customer’s systems direct, and then get paid “next day” is an example of cash moving through the system. In lean thinking the plan is to improve cycle times, first from say monthly to twice a month to weekly to daily to hourly (or whatever is possible). However that won’t work if the accounting system remains marooned in traditional accounting cycles.

Congratulations Xero for creating an environment that facilitates “everything, everyday” activity – let’s now see the rest of the activity base in our respective economies strive to catch up!

Kimball Fink-Jensen
Principal
KAIZEN Institute New Zealand

By: Catherine Walker

Catherine Walker — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:48:29 +0000

@Antz – it sounds like our Xero Network might already take care of this! While 3rd-party organisations can use our network to integrate their software with Xero, we also use it as a Xero-to-Xero network allowing 2 organisations using Xero to send and receive invoices.

Here’s an overview page in Help Centre that also has a short video on how to set it up: Xero Network

Hope this covers it!
Catherine

By: Antz

Antz — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:44:35 +0000

Here’s another suggestion: if the supplier is also using Xero, what about having the ability to link the two Xero accounts to allow a form of “EDI”?

Eg. every month I receive a bill from Xero for my monthly subscription. Would be great if a draft supplier’s invoice automatically appeared in my Xero too.

With more and more businesses switching across to Xero, creating those networks of “Xero-friendly” businesses can only increase.

By: Ian Sweeney

Ian Sweeney — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:47:24 +0000

Richard’s comment about wanting to pass the benefits on to his suppliers is something we regularly hear from our small biz customers. We also have customers who take the opposite approach so as to manage cash-flow or get early payment discounts. The nice thing about shifting to truly electronic invoicing is that the (e-invoicing) customer gets to choose the benefit.

Nathan, in regards to Adrian’s suggestion, we’d love to talk to the Xero team about an integration.

P.S. Adrian, thanks for the mention!

Kind regards,
Ian Sweeney
CEO billFLO

By: Nathan Travers

Nathan Travers — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:28:04 +0000

Hi Adrian – thanks for the tip. I’ll ask the Network Team to take a look.

By: Adrian Pearson

Adrian Pearson — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:12:18 +0000

Clearly another benefit of cloud accounting. Nathan, can I suggest that Xero integration with Billflo (http://www.billflo.com) would serve the same purpose?