About bloody time

Windows Phone version next thanks

Disappointing that is isn’t compatible with my android tablet. Will have to continue using the web version instead.

Any sign of a Windows Phone app?

Will you be producing Xero Personal for android?

Finally,
I was about to ditch my Galaxy s 11 and or Xero!
You have finally saved the day for my business, thank you Xero.
We need Paymate as another alternative payment to Paypal.

I have a few questions.
1. I create invoices on the fly for new customers where do I add there address?
2. I go to email clients my invoice and always get a error message saying it can’t be done.
3. How do I receipt payment for my clients?
It seems to be this app is ok to look at things as an information tool whilst on the road but can’t be used as a working functional app same as the online version.
Really not impressed to be honest.

Sadly, I was disappointed. The app is slow, clunky and doesn’t integrate with the android environment. The security PIN screen is invasive. Finally the functionality is quite limited. I think the release was premature and definitely not up to the standard of the great web application we all love.

I’ve had Xero Touch Android installed since the day it was released. I cannot express in words just how disappointed I am by how poor it is compared to the generally extremely good Xero web app. In its current form the app is almost completely useless to me, and I have two Xero Business accounts for two businesses I own, and a Xero Personal account. Aren’t I exactly the kind of user who should be using the app? The 2.5 star rating it has in Google Play seems about right – it has some good points and useful features, but overall it’s poor.

The app is appallingly slow. It takes several seconds (on a quad-core Nexus 4!) to even show the PIN screen, so I assume it’s making an unnecessary network call. When I tap the PIN it seems to make a network call, so it takes a couple more seconds to let me in (wifi fast, but not always on wifi).

The dashboard “My Xero” entry screen provides no summary data so is dry and bland. Within the app itself things remain unusably slow. Pretty much every screen I open I get a spinning progress indicator. Tapping the Invoices tab does nothing initially, I have to wait for the list to appear, and that often takes two seconds. The app should be proactively caching data the moment it’s opened, not when the user requests it. Scrolling down lists is lumpy and frustrating, and suggests the ListView adapter has not been optimised correctly. When did you last see a modal spinning progress indicator in the Gmail app?

The app has incredibly limited functionality. There’s no access at all to Personal data, not even a simple spending summary. There are no reports, not even a simple summary P&L or debtors report. I can open up a customer’s page and see their contact details and that’s about it, no balance, no activity summary, no list of outstanding invoices.

The app uses a proprietary Action Bar across the top, breaching the Android design guidelines. The tab contents are not swipe-able, which they should be according to the design guidelines. Tapping the Xero “home” icon does nothing, when the guidelines are clear that it should take the user to the main screen (My Xero).

I notice Xero is currently trying to hire a “Senior Android Developer” and it saddens me that it’s being done in early 2013, not summer 2011. I strongly recommend you hire someone with at least two years full-time Android experience on big apps, ideally three years. Android is a tough platform, and especially tough to create really great, fast, responsive, slick, smooth, touch-friendly apps.

I hope that the Xero mobile team will:
1. Implement a solid local-caching back-end so users can access their data INSTANTLY, and lose all these damn spinning progress indicators. If you make people wait more than 100ms, you’ll drive them nuts.
2. Update the app to religiously follow the Android Design Guidelines. It’ll make the app look better, it provides a tested UI framework to use as a foundation, and it’ll save a lot of time. http://developer.android.com/design/index.html
3. Expose summaries and iceberg-tips of the key data, so at least it’s visible until full features are built. Similarly, find some quick-wins, e.g. letting users send invoices out to customers from the app.