Xero Personal
It’s an exciting day for us at Xero because we get to talk about Xero Personal for the first time.
We’ve been working on Xero Personal for some time. We need to talk about it now as it’s about to go into external partner testing. It will be available in early 2010.
So what is Xero Personal all about?
One of the first reasons we looked at doing a personal edition is because many small business owners blur their personal and business expenses. Rewards points on credit cards are a good example of why this happens. So a key function of Xero Personal is to allow business owners to separate their personal and business expenses. Personal will work great on its own but it will also complement Xero Business.
The second reason is because this space is a good opportunity – ripe for a new business model. Looking at the state of the personal finance software market it’s undoubtedly becoming a hot space. A recent example is Intuit’s recent $US170 million acquisition of Mint. Personal products generally fit into two camps.
- Those that are stand alone and require some sort of advertising based model for revenue. There has been some great innovation here but we really don’t like cluttering things up with an advertising based model.
- Those solutions that are provided inside online banking. The problem with this approach is the difficulty to innovate and try new things as they are constrained by the requirements of working inside the banking environment.
We wanted to do something that hasn’t been seen before. A hybrid that leverages our great relationships with banking partners, while allowing us to innovate on our own platform. As we discovered with Xero Business – it comes alive when connected to a bank. So we wanted that for Xero Personal. Connecting to banks allows us to do some really exciting things and make it very easy for our customers.
What does Xero Personal do?
In terms of what the software does, we wanted to go past the initial hit of just classifying transactions and seeing the depressing reality of what you spend your money on. We want to create a new service that people use each week to set their goals and track progress. We want to change how people save and how they act with their money. All of us were blown away when our interaction team walked us through the early designs several months ago. We think we’ve built a tool that people will enjoy using again and again.
In New Zealand we’re working closely with the BNZ. It’s been so much fun working with their team. We intend to take Xero Personal to market with other banks around the world over time. We’ve designed it to support bank branding and provide a collection of widgets that can be displayed inside online banking. Xero Personal still works great without a bank connection – but working with banks and getting data moving around automatically will be an even better experience.
Xero Personal is a new code base, but we reused a lot from Xero Business. We’re excited to be able to get many more people to have a Xero experience with this product.
How and when?
Stay tuned for more information over the coming months as we complete testing and get into production.We’ll let you know as soon as it’s publicly available and how you can get it – early 2010. You can register your interest at www.xero.com/personal and we’ll email you updates.
Any questions, please let us know.
98 comments
Rod, this is great. Hope you can persuade ASB to get on board as well. If you can talk them around as effectively as you did my accountant, it should take no time at all.
this will be great. Any indication on the cost of it?
Hugely excited for this product. I’ve been wanting mint.com to offer a New Zealand product for a while now but it looks like you’ve just done that for me!
Looking forward to the release.
This is fantastic. I’d tried at one point to manage my personal accounts in Xero but couldn’t be bothered reconciling everything and found it a real hassle. So this is great news. I look forward to it. Keep up the great work.
Xero Personal, how exciting. Couldn’t wait to see a Xero native iPhone app (I know it’s coming).
CJ
With MSMoney being phased out, I have been waiting for Xero/Mint to release an NZ personal finance program.
ASB seems to have release their own version on their website but i haven’t really looked at that yet as I wouldn’t want to be tied to a bank for that reason.
Simon
This is great news.
However, from watching the video I’m truly hoping that you guys go beyond just enabling people to set goals to having a ‘fully featured’ cash flow facility. As it is all very well to have a goal of saving for a new widget, but what I really want to know is whether I am going to have any cash in 12 months time if I spend all I planning to spend and only make much as I make.
PocketSmith is reasonable example of this and SimplyBudgets does it very well (though on a very old interface).
But I can’t wait to see what you guys are doing, and if cash flow isn’t on the initial release schedule, perhaps you can consider it for future versions.
Mark
This is a great idea. Look forward to trying it out.
One challenge I see is for individuals who put alot of transactions on a credit card, so the individual purchases aren’t properly captured on the bank cheque account statements, just the credit card payment. Would be great to see some solution to this
2 November 2009 #
@Scott- It will be less than $5 a month, but we will be releasing more information on pricing closer to the launch.
Sara Goepel
Xero Personal Product Manager
[...] Dennis Howlett on November 1, 2009 Now that Microsoft has officially canned MS Money, today’s announcement of Xero Personal is a case of ‘right time, right place’ innovation. From Rod Drury’s announcement: [...]
Hans van Hutten
Hi, would be very interested to get ANZ connected to this. Cheer Hans
This is fantastic news, early beta users required?
Been using Xero for my two companies now for almost a year, and was wondering when this would happen.
My questions repeated from my Twitter (@GavinKnight) at your request:
1. will Xero Personal be BNZ only?
2. accessed thru Xero?
3. or thru BNZ?
4. what if you multi-bank?
I bank with 3 banks across my various bank accounts and credit cards (as well as Amex and Diners Club) so it would be a limitation if it was BNZ only, and/or if we could only access it thru BNZ (that is not clear from the blog post above).
My primary personal and business bank is ASB (so I concur with the requests to get them onboard too!). I also have longstanding albeit low use NBNZ personal accounts. One of my businesses banks NBNZ. My highest use credit cards are BNZ (their AirNZ globalplus rewards scheme is my preferred one).
I have been a very happy Xero Business user for over a year so keenly await announcements on Xero personal.
I like the pricing you’ve stated in the comments stream above! (“less than $5 a month”).
Happy to be a beta user …
Just realised that the feeds are only BNZ at launch. That’s a bit disappointing to be honest. Guess will just have to wait until you get KiwiBank feeds sorted. Hopefully it doesn’t take long.
2 November 2009 #
@Benjamin + @Gavin- Beta testing, if you bank with BNZ they may invite you to be part of their beta testing program, otherwise register your interest on http://www.xero.com/personal and we’ll be in touch.
@Gavin- To answer your questions:
1- No Xero personal will be available to all Xero customers but through BNZ, users will be able to get daily bank feeds.
2/3- For BNZ customers you will be able to access it through either BNZ’s Internet banking or Xero. For Xero customers it will be accessible through Xero.
4- You can import transactions for accounts and credit cards from as many different banks as you like.
Sara
I would strongly doubt my own bank(osaurus) will be over this anytime soon.
Luckily then I have stored a couple years of carefully downloaded OFX files. These should come in pretty handy…
Sounds a great concept. I’ve been using MS Money for about 10 years now and when I switched to a Mac was annoyed to find that I couldn’t find a Mac alternative which suits the NZ market. I ended up developing one for myself (cf website) but always thought a web based solution would be brilliant. I just hope you’ll be able to import historical data from old finance packages like MS Money and Quicken. MS Money in particular is a real pain to extract data from.
Rod, happy to be a guinea pig if required, as both a Xero and BNZ client
Regards,
Paul.
Great news, I’d consider changing to BNZ for this.
Cash flow is important for me personally, I want to have an alert if an expected deposit does not arrive, because then I have to take corrective action. Presently I have email alerts for balance goes below x, but it is ok to go below x if your rent (or other big outgoings) have gone out, and not if they haven’t, i.e. it depends on the day of the week. Also, some outgoings are not weekly, but fortnightly or monthly.
Go Xero!
Love the overt international aspirations.
Miki
Harry
Hi guys,
Great news on this product expansion!
I am really hoping you intend to get automated feeds from all banks like you do for the business accounts. It’s not clear if this is your intention as the responses so far only mention manual import for other banks. I would be extremely disappointed as a customer and shareholder if it is intended to remain this way.
Anders
A wrong path ? right the business idea may be sound, what I dislike is the idea of releasing features to certain partners (BNZ Bank) EXCLUSIVELY.
Seems shortsighted instead of openminded, scalable and transparent.
Be aware of strategic drifting !
Adam
Yes, yes, yes.
What an amazing design! It looks amazing, from product, IA, through to visual design. I hope some of these interactions and designs make it back into Xero Business.
I was wondering why it’d seemed quieter within the recent months. When can I start tracking my shares through it as well?
Tim
I commented to Xero support last year that a personal addition was just what I needed, they said they were only focusing on SMEs so I’m glad you realised there was a big enough need in this space to pursue it.
I’ve been asking for this for a while, and it’s good to see this coming. Unfortunately without automated bank feeds it would be difficult for this to work. Users will not change banks just to use this product. I think we all have to be vocal in asking banks to support this exciting innovation.
I’ve sent through my info on the /personal page, when will the Beta begin – I’m pretty excited about this!
3 November 2009 #
[...] » Xero Personal this [accounting] space is a good opportunity – ripe for a new business model via blog.xero.com [...]
Looks really well designed. Just a quick question, what charting control are you using?
Looks like the amcharts control…
Keep up with the great work, looking forward to using it! 
[...] Rod Drury (CEO) has recently announced this on the Xero blog. (Followed closely by Orange Girl on their twitter [...]
I have been a Money user for 15 years now. Was dismayed to find that I cannot migrate my data to Quicken, or Mint or Moneydance or anything else I can find. (Intuit build a Money->Quicken tool but only for the US market). All the Money International users in Australia/NZ/Singaprore/Hong Kong are trapped and would therefore represent a great market for Xero if you build a Money Intl->Xero converter.
4 November 2009 #
@Darryl- For version 1 we won’t have any conversion tools, but this is something we will explore as we evolve the service and collect customer feedback.
Sara
It’s great to see services developing which help to improve people’s ability to manage and understand their money and cash flow.
That’s certainly what ASB customers’ are telling us from Track My Spending, launched in July this year. What’s more, it’s free; and data is updated in realtime. Check out https://www.asb.co.nz/tmsfeedback/
In late October ASB also launched a new service to compliment Track My Spending which is focused on people with more specialised needs, property investors and the small business customer (see https://www.asb.co.nz/Business/Ways-to-Bank/Business-Cash-Plan).
Rod, ASB is unaware of an approach regarding Xero Personal, but would be happy to discuss.
Anna Curzon DDI – xxx xxxx.
Ryan
I know you have said BNZ is the initial partner, and that you want to work with others to interface with down the road. In those down the road plans are you looking at US banks?
[...] new pricing plans Small, Medium and Large; then as you heard this week we announced plans for Xero Personal. And that’s just some of [...]
Wow. This is so full of win. Anything that helps me see what the hell is going on in such a usable way is a huge step in the right direction. Will this integrate with the business accounting services? The reason I ask is that, as a sole-trader, my business is very tightly coupled with my personal finances (& life).
cheers
Ewen
[...] has made two great announcements – Xero Personal and a massive increase in [...]
Hi Ewen,
You’ll be able to run both personal and business editions of Xero and any business spending that comes through your accounts in Xero Personal can be pushed as expense claims through to your business accounts. Should make things easier!
Regards,
Catherine
gretal
Have you approached TSB Bank re xero personal. I think itis a fantastic concept. Gretal.
Terrific news. Look forward to being a guinea pig, sorry, beta tester!
Way to go Xero! Can’t wait!
Andrew Bartle
This is fantastic news. The three big items on my wish list -
1) Import from Quicken – it will be a shame to lose the years of financial history, from a reporting point of view.
2) ANZ integration
3) Ability to create custom reports, or export the data in a way that allows this to be done externally (e.g. in Excel).
Picking up on Amanda’s comment about Quicken (which is the most clever accounting system ever!) I hope you’re dropping account numbers and allocating ‘Entertanment’ as the code for Entertainment!
F-ing fantastic! I’m a Xero business user currently mixing business and personal expenses. Separating these two tracks would make my accountant a very happy man.
This is the best news I’ve had since I first started using xero. I’ve tried all sorts of personal finance packages over the years, but after xero anything else is a disappointment. I already know xero Personal will be the exception.
As a sole trader, not having to manually record expense claims will cut my time on GST returns down to…hmm about as long as it takes to log in and run the GST report. The only downside is less quality time with xero 
but I suppose I can make up for it with more time in xero Personal!
Push hard for those bank feeds, and don’t forget the minor players. Not having automated feeds to xero has put me off at least one lending provider.
Jared Roussel
Of course I’ve been thinking this would be really awesome. Thank you guys so much for all your hard work! It looks wonderful!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! for adding value where banks have never been able to. Banks seriously fail at adding value to their personal banking products. I have wanted this for years!
Great news. I’ve used both Mint and ANZMoneyManager.com in the past and have been disappointed with both for various reasons.
For Australian users, ANZMoneyManager was a mammoth effort, attempting to pull together your financial information from bank and nonbank saving and loan accounts, credit card accounts, share trading accounts, even points programs. And it’s free to use.
Unfortunately it was a let-down for me as it was frequently asking me to re-verify my login and security question/answers for most of my accounts. It’s a huge undertaking, I understand that, but it would have been better to focus on doing a great job for a smaller set of accounts and providers.
Also, the user interface is pretty lame. I like the clean, modern lines of Xero 
This is outstanding – exactly what I’ve been waiting for, but didn’t know I was waiting for… Will look forward to the release.
I suspect this software will tell me I have a drinking problem. Will Xero judge me for this?
Kristin
Brilliant news! I can’t wait for this, I have often thought about how great it would be to be able to manage your own finances with Xero given what it has helped us achieve in the business over the past 18 months; we can’t recommend it to others highly enough. Put me down for another supporter to bring on ASB in the personal space! A far superior alternative to certain local financial planning websites that deem the latest version of Safari too old a browser to cope with their product. Well!
tarch
Hopefully US banks will eventually be part of the planning.
I’m really impressed by the design and layout. The whole UI looks very clear. I’ve been using Kublax for a year now and from what I can see on your video this will be a big step up.
Will there be anyway to track cash purchases, I try to use my debit card as much as possible, but sometimes you have to use cash. Maybe some sort of phone application to add each cash expense to the system. Or should I just be asking for receipts whenever I purchase anything.
Jenny
You’re kidding! I want it now!
Great.
Jen
Alex
Great work, I’ll change to the BNZ to get a slice of this. I’ve always wondered why internet banking only had transactional and online statement capabilities. Where are the visuals, tools and reports?
This will be internet banking on steroids. Keep it up.
First of all – congratulations. This is a great idea. In your blurb above you touch on something that I’ve often dreamt of having – and that is the ability to monitor my points in various loyalty programmes in the same way as I monitor my accounts. That way I could know in any instant where I’m at with a particular programme rather than having to fuss around with the paperwork. Good for business and personal use. I hope you’re going to incorporate this as a feature.
Tim
Great news! As a Xero shareholder, ex BNZ developer, and BNZ customer I’m pretty excited about Xero Personal. I remember making suggestions of such a tool for the BNZ over 10 years ago when we were developing the retail banking platform (and the middle tier you are no-doubt using to interface Xero with). I think it’s a space that has plenty of potential. Would love to be a Beta tester (and Xero developer for that matter – just wish you had an office down in Christchurch)!
So did you see our recruitment video? We’d still love to hear from you – careers@xero.com
Maureen
Great, I will be able to throw out the excel spreadsheet I am currently using and updating for actual/budget for my wages and savings. Will you be linking Kiwibank??
Hi Maureen – initially the direct link for automated bank feeds will be with BNZ, however you can import your own statements yourself from Kiwibank and other banks in NZ or overseas. In time we should be able to support automated feeds from other banks too.
[...] demo of Xero Personal. Can’t tell you any more than that (or actually this), you had to be there to be “in the [...]
[...] behind on the posting sorry! But Xero announced it’s move into Personal finance and is launching to market early 2010 with Xero Personal. Xero have been working away on Xero [...]
[...] good. Xero has grown so much since January 2009. During the past few months we’ve developed Xero Personal, a tool to help manage personal finances. Xero Personal makes me [...]
[...] iPhone, to emerging technologies for personal fitness, wellbeing and welfare all mesh deeply and seamlessly with with our social and professional [...]
Duncan Babbage
Kiwibank! Kiwibank!
(Awesome. And pricing sounds good.)
[...] is preparing to enter the PFM space next year with Xero Personal, on the back of successfully delivering small business people the kind of tools they need to take [...]
30 December 2009 #
[...] Put your hand up if you have not heard of Xero? Xero was launched in 2006 and is one of the fastest growing online companies in New Zealand. Their primary focus has been on online accounting software for small businesses, and they have been very successful in this area. The good news is that Xero is currently building a new package, "Xero Personal", that is to be released "early 2010″. You can read the press release here. [...]
If you are interested in online budgeting software that works well in New Zealand – and also supports automatic feeds of transaction data for ASB and ANZ, then have a look at some of the tools mentions in this review…
http://matthew.delmarters.com/weblog/online-budgeting-software-for-new-zealand/
Brad
So now that it is 2010, is their an updated timeline for this product? I know it says early 2010, but does that mean 1Q ? I would also be very interested in beta testing if that is an option.
Lloyd Phillips
Notice you mention you can have bank feeds from NZ banks and overseas banks. Will that allow foreign bank accounts in the same Xero account and will it be able to show totals based off exchange rates? I have accounts in the UK and NZ and I have to keep seperate spreadsheets for the two countries. I hate having such seperation I want one screen where I can see it all upfront.
Is Xero Personal being launched to Australian customers this month? ANZ has a Febusave campaign next month and I’d love to sort out some money planning before then. A
@Brad, The plan is still for early 2010. We will update everyone on our blog as soon as the dates are confirmed
@Lloyd, Unfortunately, for version 1 of the product there is no multi-currency support
@Amanda, Australian customers will be able to sign up for Xero Personal when released early this year – be sure to follow our blog for updates
@Lloyd good suggestion, we have bank accounts in Australia and the UK. Would be good to track in one login.
@Catherine, thanks for the update
Chris J
Agree with comments above – Multi country/multi currency functionality would be a huge benefit. The Aus & NZ expat market is large ( and all would have multiple accounts in multiple countries). I would love to be able to pull together my NZ , Aus, and UK accounts. …so if it is not in version 1 , bring out version 2 quick!
Adam W
Sounds great, hope BNZ will be pushing this, I was lucky enough to hear it through the grapevine…. This sounds like it will be worth the effort of me changing banks for.
Good move and your right, to innovate correctly you need to get out of the large organisations innovate like mad then push them back in.
Keep up the great work guys!
Adrian
+1 for multi-currency. I live in Belfast – Ireland is a small island, but has two currencies!
[...] been amazed at the feedback we’ve received after announcing our plans to launch Xero Personal and delighted by the number of people who’ve asked to be kept [...]
Jusitn
Will the personal verison allow you to track your share portfolio?
Rob
Hate to add another bank to the list, but Westpac NZ works with my business Xero for feeds, so why won’t it for my personal account?
Nigel
Fantastic idea – except for “For version 1 we won’t have any conversion tools, but this is something we will explore as we evolve the service and collect customer feedback. ”
Thats a major missed opportunity. Think of all the Money users you could attract with that tool!! I’ve been using Money for 15 years+, and would really want to be able to transfer all that history across.
In fact I probably won’t change until that can happen. I haven’t updated my version of money since 2003 as it has continued to provide what I need. So I guess I can go on using it like that until it breaks.
For me this is more important than automated bank feeds. I’ve been downloading .ofx files into Money for so long, a couple more years won’t matter.
PLEASE reconsider the priority for this one.
iain Rolfe
Hi Everyone
The trick for me will to get my wife’s feeds! (with her permission of course!). We came to an agreement to cut up our credit cards last year but only after I proved to her how much they actually cost!
On a serious note, family level overview is critical to get a total picture
Cheers!
iain
Mark Fenemer
Sounds great…just what the doctor ordered!
justclint
As a small independent business owner working from a home office where small business and personal accounting tasks and needs often converge, will Xero Personal be capable of handling my small business related tasks such as limited debtors/invoicing etc without having to go subscribe to one of your core line business products/plans?
Charlotte
I am really looking forward to Xero Personal. Great Idea. I have only just signed up for Xero Business and it is fantastic!!!
One query, will the personal section be passworded so only I can access it and not my staff or other people that may have access?
And please add my vote to ANZ getting banks feeds for Xero personal (I shall email my account manager immediately).
Looking forward to this, release date can’t be far away?
Melissa Johnson
Any update on release date?
Joshua Senft
Xero is the best online accounting solution I have ever seen. I can only imagine that Xero personal will enhance that experience. I know much of the focus is on NZ customers, but please develop full functionality for US based customers. We need bank feeds too and I am confident you will earn much of the market here if that can be accomplished. Good luck!
Could you share any more information on how Xero Personal will work, or some of its key features? A release date would be great, but in its absence another blog post would keep our appetites wet.
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This is great news Rod. On Friday I pointed out to a client who uses Microsoft Money that it will be phased out in the near future. He said he knew this and would probably move to Sage. Aaagh!
A few weeks ago I tried to find a UK alternative to Mint without success. I’ve just found it.