Firstly, the Australian currency has got much stronger, but we also provide a lot more features in the Australian version of the product such as BAS returns and from early next week a full payroll package.

Labour rates in Australia are much more expensive as well and we have a big team there.

We believe we’re proving great value for Australian small businesses and are continuing to invest and innovate on Australian specific features.

Hey @Jeff, good question. If you look at our accountants directory you’ll see Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze partners. Platinum is 500 Xero customers, Gold 100 and so on.

Over the last few years we’ve been focussing on ‘recruitment’ of accountants so they join our partner program and get their first few customers on to see what we do. Then we ‘educate’ them – which is getting their teams trained on Xero and then we ‘grow’ Xero inside their customer base. The early adopter firms are the Platinum and Gold partners who are shifting large numbers of customers.

From a shareholder perspective you may think we’ve been around for a while but from an accountants perspective we’re still the new kids on the block. Getting accountants to change their platform is a big deal. But clearly we are. This is also why we’ve been investing heavily in the ‘accountants side’. It delivers customers.

So we’re very pleased that we already have a relationship with 3600 firms. They have had their early Xero experiences and are on the journey through a transition process that we know works very well.

Having got to 78k customers, while being in the early phases, we think demonstrates the enormous growth potential of the accountant channel.