Easing the 1099 reporting burden

With the holidays approaching, most of us look forward to vacations and celebrations, but many in the US face the looming headaches of 1099 filings and year-end compliance work.

It hasn’t gotten easier from year to year. Over the past decade, the US has experienced a sharp jump in the number of self-employed workers, increasing 14.4 percent since 2001 to 10.6 million in 2012, according to a report published by EMSI. In addition, the US government passed the “Patient Protection and Accountability Act” in March 2010, which broadened the definition of vendors and payments that must be reported.

Both of these factors greatly expanded the number of 1099s that need to be filed. In almost every Xero conference, forum and Xero certification class that we’ve attended in the past few months, I have been asked when Xero would properly support 1099s.

Well, we have a present for all of you in the US – completely revamped and simplified 1099s plus GAAP compliant reports – just in time for tax time.

With the new functionality, complete 1099s in 3 simple steps:

1. Create a rule
2. Fine tune the details
3. File your 1099 online

That’s right, file your 1099s online. Xero is being integrated with Track1099 to make it quick and easy to complete your 1099s all in the cloud. Just think – no paper, no printing and no 1096s.

See how it works in this video:

In addition, we are happy to announce the release of General Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) compliant reports – specifically, GAAP versions of the Xero Income Statement and Balance Sheet. We are actually providing access to both GAAP and IFRS compliant reports in one platform. Do you have a client in the US – see GAAP compliant reports, another in Canada – see IFRS-compliant reports. Based on the client organization’s country of origin, Xero can generate the reports in the proper accounting standard.

These are just a couple of the features in today’s jam-packed release – see this other blog post for email templates, payment terms, outstanding statements, remittance advice (for single payments), sales & purchases dashboards and auto-reversing manual journals.