…would love to add some value in the smooth spending plan area (budgeting). What have you got proposed for this as I have seen one example that would fit perfectly. It works on the principle of knowing exactly the daily balance and let’s you know when your dailey balance is high/low.

High being a great thing – spending allowed – low being a not so good thing and gives you the opportunity on a dailey basis to make informed decisions about your cash flow right down to the point of do I spend $10 on lunch or not.

Great system that was featured on the Ray Martin show in Australia around 2003.

Keep up the great work!

Cheers,
ja

You simply do not have enough transactions to warrant the cost, you are a one-man band, working from home

Generally, you are interested in Profitability, Tax, Accounts payable and Accounts receivable –

You only have three to four receivable invoices a month

Most of your other sales are cash or credit card

Accounts payable involves keeping invoices and statements together and paying on time, again this is not large.

Knowing profitability every month would be good, and this could be achieved with bank connect. Again, the cost would outweigh the benefit

As to a 30 minute time saving – the only difference between Xero and bank connect is that you write codes onto bank statements rather than into the computer

Put the two systems side by side and I still reckon my way is more cost effective and not time excessive.

Sara’s comments appear to be commission driven or simple blind faith that their system fits all – what accounting experience does Sarah have?

Any accountant who blindly recommends Xero with out analysing the cost/benefit should not be on a preferred supplier list.

You are welcome to cut and paste this into the blog, including my contact details. I am happy to be proved wrong.

As already mentioned, we aren’t able to publically disclose the commercial terms of our partnership with the BNZ. However, as also previously described, automated bank feeds for Xero Personal require the development of a specific and entirely automated bank customer registration, authorisation and provisioning process, with an associated daily account feed solution capable of handling an order of magnitude higher volume of accounts and data. From our experience we believe that the development of this level of integrated solution will determine the timeframe for the availability of feeds from any other NZ banks.

To be honest, I’m trying to find details on Bank Connect on the MYOB website but I can’t find any, lol. My accountant has clawed me back about $30k in tax over the last 18 months. This was money I never expected so he’s my best buddy right now! On top of the fact he’s spending time sitting down with me to look at the future and look at my personal finance and structure of my family assets etc, that’s not a service I’ve EVER had off any accountant before, and I’ve had more than one! He told me on Friday Bank Connect will save me just as much time as Xero with less cost. Is he right or can you educate us on why we should go for Xero?

We hope that together we move consumer expectations so that in a few years this level of integration is the norm.

We hope this is the start of what we call Banking 2.0, an integrated model where you get the best banking services integrated with the other things you do as a consumer or business owner.

We hope that after you’ve played with Xero Personal you will ask your bank to integrate as well.

Rod

Personally I really hate hearing messages about – it’s coming soon after we’ve given all these people you don’t care about access first…

If your accountant doesn’t think saving 30 minutes a month with our daily bank reconciliation and being able to assist you by working on the same copy of your financial data is valuable then we’d recommend you check out our accountants directory- http://www.xero.com/advisors/accounting/

@Rod/Sara got to say I’m still a little confused and perhaps need clarification on what you mean as a ‘Xero account’. Is a person who has a ‘Xero user account’ someone who has a business account with you?

To put it simply, and for my clarification, I don’t currently use Xero for business. I’d love too but it’s too much for too little (I’d want the medium package at the small price, I need more accounts payable and reconciliation lines and an extra $30 a month doesn’t warrant the small increase). My accountant doesn’t think I’ll get the ROI in using it and is pushing me for bank connect. However, I’d LOVE to use Xero personal. I’ve signed up to play with the demo so would this constitute me having a ‘Xero account’? Or do I need to be paying the business fee to have a ‘Xero account’.

I think allowing people to use Xero personal would be huge. I can imagine once I’m using it for personal I’d think ‘sod it’ and pay the extra to convert my business accounts over. I think it’d open up awareness to your business products too.

BTW, I’ve never heard of or used bank connect. My accountant is sitting me down and showing me the ropes on Friday. If anyone has any recommendation not to go with bank connect I’d love to here them!

Just to reiterate and clarify our responses on these questions. As you would expect there are commercial arrangements between Xero and the BNZ around their involvement as our NZ launch partner. As is quite normal, we are not in a position to share the details of these with anyone outside of the partnership.

We can say that the current bank feeds for Xero business customers are not able to be extended in their current form to cover Xero Personal. For a low cost consumer based service like this we require an entirely automated bank customer registration, authorisation and provisioning process integrated back into the Xero platform and an associated daily account feed solution capable of handling an order of magnitude higher volume of accounts and data.

We have talked to other NZ banks about this but we do not have any projects with other banks in the pipeline at this stage. We would expect they are waiting to see more of the Xero Personal product once it is launched, including feedback form their own customers, and where it might fit in their own online channel plans.

Anyone with a Xero user account will be able to subscribe to Xero personal. However, for NZ customers we’ll be highlighting that the automated bank feeds are currently only available from the BNZ. If we have any updates on when that might change you can be assured that we’ll be communicating that to our customers and the market as soon as possible.

Thanks for you interest in the upcoming launch and we’ll of course welcome your feedback once you’ve had a chance to have a closer look.

This is a new and exciting space and we’re looking forward to hearing where people think we should take the product.

Cheers

Rod

Sara, your last comment didn’t seem to answer Lloyd’s question – do you need to have an existing business account to be able to sign up for Xero Personal?

And Catherine, your response didn’t answer mine and CJ’s questions about *why* BNZ get’s exclusivity, when other banks are already providing bank feeds for business customers.

Sara

Does that mean that you have to have a Business Xero Account to get access to Xero Personal or would we be able to sign up for Xero Personal as a stand alone?

Sara