Good morning

We’ll be posting throughout the day from the Viaduct Events Centre in Auckland New Zealand.

Check back at 9.00am NZST for live coverage from the Xerocon keynote #xerocon.

9.37am CEO Rod Drury keynote

“This is about real people, things that they play with everyday. We make things a whole lot easier.” 

9.50am Introducing some of the Xero board members

Sam Knowles, Phil Norman and Craig Winkler

10.00am

Big investment in the last year into accountant side features as it makes sense in the Cloud. Client and accountant software should be seamlessly connected. The client pays-not the advisor.

Xero is moving from being a software vendor to being a partner.

Many practices have out of date hardware which is not helping them to to move to the Modern Practice model.

Partners need a ‘common desktop’ so all of their document and file management works together. Many do-it-yourself solutions require more time in the long run.

10.10am Practice management

Announcement of the new practice management offer with the acqusition of Workflow max. Free practice management for partners who add 20 clients – that caused a ripple of excitement. I think I heard a ‘woo hoo’ or three.

10.23am Andrew Tokely takes the stage to talk about the Xero Roadmap

You can call him ‘Tokes’.

“Even my 83 year old grandmother calls me Tokes so don’t feel weird.”

Report packs give complete control, new features such as notes can be drag and dropped to make life a lot easier.

You can now take Word or Excel tables and drop them into report fields. Lots of claps from the floor.

10:44am What’s in store for 2012 – report packs

Custom report fields e.g. banker, overdraft size, solicitor.

Automating schedule for Current Accounts and Loans.

Report code updates.

Purchase orders, quotes, stock lite and setup and conversion tools.

“We are not doing a full stock management system.” 

10.49am Next up, it’s Craig Walker 

30,000 + downloads Xero Touch from app store.

Craig tells us “what he got up to over the Christmas break.” … Address verification.

Data shows businesses dealing with the same businesses across the ecosystem.

Developing the Xero-to-Xero user features. Online invoices create online statements and help businesses get paid faster.

Users also get remittance advice (big cheer).

11:05 am Sara Goepel

Sara Goepel

The new Xero business community will be coming out on the 13 February. Businesses can help each other and work together.

Online training and a training dashboard for partner edition. Online training modules mean that businesses can keep track of their requirements.

You should see bank feeds in Xero personal in the next two to four months.

11.32am 

Back from the break. Getting ready to hear Hon Craig Foss speak.

“It is fantastic to be in room full of accountants. It’s not often you say that.”

Lots of concerns about the global economy around the world. It is a great time to be doing business in New Zealand. We are a trading nation and the world wants the stuff that Xero is making.

We need people with clever ideas and big visions.

We need exporters and investors who can see a new, innovative, start-up company and make it grow.

The huge investment in fibre adds lots of new opportunities for New Zealand businesses.

12.10pm Trevor Schoenmaekers, Hansens Accountants

GST is the biggest nightmare for his practice.

Trying to send things to India to save costs didn’t work and client’s didn’t like it. Trying to do reporting was taking too long and there was no time to spend with clients.

Switched to Xero in June 2010.

“Their (Xero’s) support to me was something I had never, ever, ever experienced before. One push of the button turned off $30,000 worth of fees to MYOB”.

Show of hands for the Rob Nixon group people in the room? A few here.

Major culture change was required as accountants in the business became more responsible for their clients. Increased transparency was hard for some to change habits. The business models have changed inside the practice.

Hired a marketing person fulltime to use new tools such as Twitter and Facebook to connect with customers. Staff turnover has basically stopped by creating fun and focusing everyone on clearly defined targets. Clients are encouraged to pay bills on time with prizes such as weekends away.

Trevor & Rod

12.40pm David Jessep, DJCA

David invested heavily in his business and then the Christchurch earthquake hit. He was in a bar called the Twisted Hop having a beer at the time. The whole building was demolished.

Up in running after three days with some cheap laptops and products such as Google Docs and Smart Payroll.

“The Cloud enables two businesses that are passionate about different things to connect and work together.”

“We’ve made lots of mistakes but we learned lots. It was hard in 2011 but we still doubled in size.”

1.00pm Lunchtime. (I’ll plug-in and be back soon for the afternoon workstreams).

In the meantime, you might get some food tweets on Twitter #xerocon.

1.56pm Hamish Edwards - Profiting as a connected practice

“Who went to university four years to learn how to do tax returns?”

A lot of accountants have  a lot to offer business because they run their own business.

Labour is expensive and junior accountants are getting paid more.

Love the bookkeeper. “If you annoy one of your client’s staff they will go with their staff not you.”

2.19pm  The Single Ledger

The same accounting system used by the accounting and the client.

The same accounting system is used for all clients.

2.35 pm Live Demos

Spotlight workpapers + Xero + WorkflowMax

Annual financial statements can be built anywhere. Very fast and easy to do.

Richard Francis launches a new innovation on stage with his wife Julie, Spotlight Workpapers.

March 20 is the target release date. Data is imported live from Xero into the workpaper.

The one-stop shop workpaper approach enables queries to be captured and shared online, in real-time.

2.56pm Gavin George

WorkflowMax and now Xero’s newest employee as WorkflowMax country manager for New Zealand demos value-based billing and looking at improving job throughput and practice efficiencies.

WorkflowMax demo

3.10pm Hamish Edwards back into it

It’s not about time. What is the average fee per client?

Taking questions from the floor

3.30pm

Guy Pearson from Interactive Accounting presenting his journey to the Modern Practice. Aiming to go global with his practice enabled with Cloud tools such as Mailchimp, WuFu, Google, LodgeIT and Eventbrite.

Guy Pearson's Ecosystem of providers

4.30pm

A few questions from the floor from some of today’s speakers.

Speakers take questions from the floor to finish of the day session

We’re wrapping up now for a bit so we can all go and get beautiful for the gala dinner and awards ceremony at 7,30pm tonight at the Viaduct Events Centre in Auckland. Keep an eye on our Twitter feed at #xerocon for winners of the New Zealand Xero Partner Awards for 2012. Thanks for all your comments and pictures. Great to see everyone had such a fun and informative day.

The Developer Workshop has been an awesome day connecting with the developers and Add-on Partners who bring the Xero API to life.

Over 90 people attended the session in Auckland to hear me and the rest of the API team talk about what’s coming next for the API and give some updates on the Add-on Partner and Developer programs. Then we dove into application security with Xero Security Architect Kirk Jackson.

API Product Manager Tony Rule had some interesting API stats:

• Over 650 custom applications use the Xero API
• There are hundreds of thousands of API calls a day
• 80% of calls retrieve data from Xero

Our Add-on Partner program also had some impressive news:

• There are now 75 Add-on Partners
• There are 5,500 add-on connections to Xero organisations
• Add-on usage has grown 275% since June 2011

Taking a broader look at Xero and the opportunities for technology partners, CEO Rod Drury talked about the New Zealand market and how Australia, UK and USA are also tracking. The country managers for these markets were also on hand to give more info on opportunities for Add-on Partners.

It has been a great day with some great insights from the people behind the Xero ecosystem!

Firstly we’ve raised $20 million from existing Directors and major shareholders. We are thrilled with the internal support. This allows us to continue to accelerate our growth plans.

We have also launched a Share Purchase Plan (SPP) that allows other shareholders to participate on the same basis.  SPP’s are a mechanism that allows listed companies to raise capital inexpensively. We particularly like SPP’s as small shareholders are looked after – which is very important to us.

Share purchase plans allow a company to issue up to NZ$15,000 worth of shares to existing shareholders utilising a fairly short, simple offer document. The rationale for the Exemption Notice is that a full disclosure document, such as an investment statement, is not necessary given that issuers are subject to the continuous disclosure requirements of the NZX and thus existing shareholders will be fully informed about the company.

If you are a shareholder on the 14th of February you will receive SPP information in the mail.

Click here for the full Capital Raising and SPP announcement.

Our next bit of news is we have acquired leading Xero Partner WorkFlowMax.

We’ll talk more about this at XeroCon tomorrow and give you all an update on our plans when we’re back on deck next week.

Congratulations to Gavin and Chris and the fantastic WorkflowMax team. We’ve been working with them for years and we’re very excited to welcome them to our team.

Click here for the for the WorkflowMax acquisition announcement.

We will be establishing a development office in Auckland hopefully providing access to even more talent to join our team.

As always, we welcome your comments and questions below.

RightSignature has taken document signing to the cloud. You can easily send a document for signing and complete the whole process without the usual hassles. You choose which format – PDF or Word doc (other formats too).

To find out more, check out RightSignature.

Watch this video to see how you can capture an electronic signature on a Xero invoice:

You can see the release here.

The key points and some additional commentary are as follows:

• Operating revenue for the full year ended 31 March 2012 will double 2011 (which was $9.3m).
• Committed Monthly Revenue (CMR) is now $1.75m or $21m annualized. We’re delighted that 50% of CMR is from offshore markets showing that we becoming a truly global company.
• Paying customers using the Xero business software worldwide exceeds 60,000. There are 240,000 user accounts.
• There are over 3,300 accounting firms now using Xero. The accountant and bookkeepers channel model, proven in New Zealand, is showing similar early signs of success in offshore markets.
• The company now employs 170 staff across four countries. The US sales office has been established with six staff in San Francisco.

We know we still have a lot to do, but we’re firing on all cylinders – and still hiring. We still think we’re just at the beginning of this ride and we have so much more we want to do.

Huge thanks to our customers and especially to our hard working team to continue to deliver such outstanding growth.

Any questions please fire away.  We’re always happy to share experiences and we’re still learning.

A key theme at the conference was that technology should be seen as a strategic asset. Keynote speaker Gary Boomer, who has been named in the top 100 most influential people in accounting for the past 10 years, talked about some outdated paradigms in the accounting profession, one of which is that “technology is an overhead”. He suggested that technology should be seen and used as a competitive advantage. Improving efficiency through technology can free up valuable time so that firms can offer more value-add services.

He referred to cloud technologies as being far more intelligent and much easier to integrate than traditional desktop products (You can read this in his recent article). Gary cited Xero as a product accountants should be looking at for their practices. Many firms who were relatively new to cloud technologies started to see the benefits of Xero immediately. A partner from one of the larger firms in Texas summed it up by saying, “Let me understand…no licensing issues, no version issues, and I don’t have to send data files back and forth…it’s all just there all in one spot?”. Exactly. One version of the truth and no file transfer. Ever.

As many of our longer-standing partners in New Zealand, Australia, and the UK can attest, Xero has helped them revolutionize their practice to a subscription and value-based pricing. Firms are truly becoming virtual CFOs introducing monthly reporting, tax minimization strategies, and proactive advice. They’re bundling services to offer a variety of prepackaged monthly plans based on value, not time. Moving from hourly billing to packaged pricing is not new to the industry in the US. Many firms have been doing it for some time. What is new is the mechanism in which these value bundles can be delivered at a much lower-cost and more efficient manner. This is one of the reasons Xero is so revolutionary. Exciting times…

You can find out more about our US Xero partner program here: www.xero.com/partners

Integrating Streamtime with Xero lets creatives track what’s important. You can keep notes of your first contact with a lead, manage projects to make sure they’re delivered on time, then send and account for the client’s bill when the job is finished. It’s a true end-to-end solution.

If you have an iPhone or iPad, there’s a Streamtime app for both devices.

Signup to try Streamtime for free.

While we Brits might like to arrange ourselves in orderly queues for many things, filing tax returns isn’t one of them. The ingredients of bad record keeping and procrastination combine right around this time every January to form the practice efficiency equivalent of a dirty bomb in pretty much every accounting firm in the UK.

Meanwhile, being skint and also being conveniently in possession of crown appointed tax raising powers, the UK government’s revenue department, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), recently toughened the penalties it levies for late or incorrect filing and stands to further boost its inflow of taxes with cash derived from late filing penalties.

All of which makes January every year quite angsty if you’re an accountant in the UK.

While Xero doesn’t yet calculate or file personal tax returns, I decided to conduct an informal survey last week with a handful of Xero Gold Partners to enquire if their Xero clients’ tax returns were any less onerous owing to the data being online and bank feeds mitigating the chance for financial records to get out of step.

Here’s what they told me…

Laurence Moore, Prime Chartered Accountants

“…the challenge is getting the information from clients in time. Many tax return clients are directors and in many cases their only income is that generated by the business – salary and dividends. So, getting the information means getting their company accounts completed which relies on them giving us their accounting records. What we found this year is that as more and more clients are moving over to Xero, this information is available whenever we log in rather than waiting for the client to send it to us. We were therefore able to process Xero clients’ tax returns earlier in the cycle thus spreading the load on our tax department more evenly over the year as well as giving those clients more warning of their upcoming tax payments.”

Stephen Paul, Valued Accountancy Services

“…much easier, and in fact it has helped me to convert troublesome clients into clients that provide much better information more quickly through Xero.”

Peter Czapp, The Wow Company

“It’s easier with Xero. We’re able to log in and gather their dividend and salary information quickly and easily, allowing us more time to plot and scheme ways to help save them tax. This is good news for the client (and for us too).”

Jon Morley, JW Smith & Co, RM Locking & Co

“A key advantage is that where client is on Xero we have potential to get on with their work as soon as the year end bank reconciliation has been done so that eases pressure as the deadline approaches. Also having clients on Xero can reduce the time that we spend on their processing as, generally, the bank is reconciled and reasonably well analysed into the nominal.”

The four Xero Gold Partners quoted above between them handle the financial affairs of approximately six hundred Xero clients in the UK.

Despite the aggressive hiring climate, we’ve been able to recruit top talent because we all believe in the same thing – making the lives of small businesses easier.

Please welcome the new members to Xero Team USA. Spencer, Deborah, and Michael. They are awesome.

From left to right: Deborah, Michael, Spencer, Catherine, Craig, Jamie

Throughout the hiring process we were lucky to find out that they all have a love of numbers. And being an accounting software provider, that’s important to us : ) I thought I’d dig into their backgrounds on some things that aren’t commonly known about them.

3

3 is the number of cocktails Deborah can make in less than 30 seconds. It is also the number of scuba dives she’s done in one day, and lastly, it is the number of nicknames she has one of which is Whale Shark for her aptitude with poker. Poker, cocktails, scuba…it didn’t take much for us to take a liking to Deborah.

15

15 is the number of years of accounting experience Michael has with public and private companies. It is also the number of days before his wedding date that the wedding reception hall burned down, and lastly the number of steps he took crossing a street prior to being hit by a car. He ended up marrying the driver.

7

7 is the day in March when Spencer was born. It’s also his jersey number for all the teams he played for growing up including baseball and football. And lastly it is the number of stitches he received in his forehead on his 7th birthday after using a gift his uncle gave to him – an exacto knife. Who gives a 7-year-old a knife for their birthday?

295

295 is the number of things Catherine owns that are orange. “I quite like orange” Catherine says frequently. Anything from a pair of socks to an alarm clock with orange numbers to laundry detergent in an orange package to orange staples, there isn’t much that Catherine owns that doesn’t have some remnants of orange. She is looking for an orange traffic cone to add to her portfolio. Hopefully she doesn’t take this anywhere Michael will be walking.

10,000

10,000 is the number of songs Craig has on his iTunes Match. This is a an eclectic mix of everything from Mozart to Metallica, Tiesto to Tupac, Green Day to … dare I say it … Glee. He resisted telling me that, but secretly I think it’s his favorite album. I can hear him whisper-screaming to it on Fridays.

Kidding aside, each of Spencer, Michael, and Deborah has had some serious pain they’ve experienced with competing desktop software products. They have a solid understanding of cloud technologies and a sensibility to see that what Xero has built is the future of accounting software. We are super happy to have them on board and are looking forward to serving the needs of our small business customers in the USA.

If you’re up for a challenge in this huge exciting market and want to join our awesome team here please take a look at Xero Careers – we’re still hiring!

In the past few days, applications to join Xero’s mobile team have really picked up. It’s heartening to see the enthusiasm out there. People get it. Mobile is nothing less than the next wave of personal computing.

In the ’00s there was a shift from desktop to web, and Xero was part of that evolution. The term start-up is now almost synonymous with some sort of web-based application, even if it’s just a website to take orders. All of our competitors are web-based or getting left behind.

Mobile is the next transition. People are visiting websites and searching application marketplaces on their handsets and looking for mobile equivalents of the online services they currently use and enjoy. They’re using their mobiles as personal way-finders and memory banks, as high-tech extensions of themselves. Eventually, the mobile experience, by necessity, will be on an equal footing with the web experience, and depending on the business it may eclipse it. We’re already starting to see the first cloud-connected businesses where mobile is the primary mode of interaction. Path and Instagram are two recent examples.

At #xerocon Australia last year, the audience was asked to put their hands up if they owned a smartphone. Seventy percent of the people in the room put their hands up. Those people expect a compelling mobile experience on their devices, and they deserve one.

But mobile isn’t just smartphones. In maybe 10 years we’ll see more wearable computers, more tablets and touchscreens, IPv6 addressable appliances, and even the beginnings of a chip implant industry, all connected to the cloud. Those brave souls that have gone from bluetooth headsets to iPod nano wristwatches are going to look less like film extras and more like the early adopters they are. We’ll wrestle with privacy and etiquette and fashion as these devices change the way we interact with one another, but people will inevitably gravitate towards what is easy and instantly available. More often than not, that will be the mobile in their pocket, the touchscreen on their arm, or the chip in their brain.

What does that mean for Xero? We make accounting software, right? Is the real work only done in front of a computer? Is the mobile version just a poor cousin to the web version, the dinghy that is pulled along in the wake of the larger application?

Absolutely not.

Xero’s always taken the view that accounting is something that is done by people. Strip all the job descriptions and titles away and you’re  dealing with a human being who wants to get stuff done. Our philosophy informs every design decision, every page of documentation, and every email we issue from Customer Care. Mobile is in the privileged position of serving people when they’re away from their desks and busy being people. It’s present when they’re with customers, meeting potential business partners, when they’re in an airport lounge or having a night out. It’s the last thing they check at night, and the first thing they check in the morning.

It’s the mobile team’s job to help our customers be more effective individuals. To help them get work done on their way home or in the airport so they can spend more time with their family. To help them make better and faster business decisions by giving them the right information when they need it. To help them make meaningful connections with others. And it’s the team’s job to record ideas and actions and plan ahead.

Working in the mobile team is about refining the Xero experience, the whole experience, on the next generation of computing devices. It means developing new interface paradigms for small touch screens, while continuing to optimise and enhance the full site on tablets like the iPad. The roll-out of HTML5 charts which begins with the next release will be another significant step in that direction.

But it’s also about rethinking how accounting happens. Things like location, near-field communication, voice and image capture and mobile payments become the inputs we can use to help people get stuff done. We can talk about ideas like creating invoices through voice commands, and how touch has almost completely brought interface design back to first principles and created amazing new interactive possibilities. But that’s just the beginning. Mobile puts Xero closer in time and space to where business and accounting meets the real world of people and things. It’s high-octane IT.

I don’t think there’s more exciting work to be involved in right now. If you agree, you should contact careers@xero.com. We have a lot of work to do.

With a new business year ramping up, it’s time to crystal ball the year ahead for a sense of how the economic landscape will play out.

The bad news
You’d certainly be forgiven for feeling some sense of caution given the doom and gloom forecasts that appear in newspapers and our inboxes everyday. As the European debt crisis continues to loom large, we are reminded each day about the troubled retail sector, which here in Australia grew only 0.3% in 2011 – the worst result in nearly 30 years. Domestic tourism and manufacturing is still being hit hard by a strong Australian dollar and the continued weakness in the housing sector is seeing a slump in construction and associated industries. Together with continued volatility in our financial markets and the real risk of a slow down in China, it’s no wonder business and consumer confidence is suffering. But it is not all bad news.

A silver lining
The last quarter of 2011 saw the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) cut interest rates for 2 consecutive months offering some relief to consumers and small business owners. Moreover, when you reflect on Australia’s GDP growth in 2011 it was a very respectable 2.5%. Underpinning these figures was household consumption at 3.8%, and while consumer spending was clearly not flowing through into the traditional sectors of retail and housing, some parts of the economy were benefiting such as travel, transport, home services, healthcare and technology/online. With the $A expected to decline over the course of this year and the RBA demonstrating a willingness to shield the Australian economy from risks abroad by easing monetary policy, there are some positive signs out there.

Accounting services in demand
So what of the accounting industry? The latest IBIS World 2011 Market Research Report on Accounting Services in Australia, forecasts average annualised growth for the industry of 5.5% to 2016-17. I conducted my own field research while travelling to all the major capital cities in December to catch up with many of Xero’s most loyal partners over a few end-of-year drinks. While not a statistically valid sample, I was overwhelmed with the number of accountants and bookkeepers that told me they were flat out and doing very well despite the current economic conditions.

One thing we can be sure about is that small businesses need accounting services and good advice. This is accentuated when times are tough. Hamish outlined what small businesses look for in an accountant in his recent blog and if you’re giving good advice, promoting innovation and delivering excellent service, your practice should thrive. So for me, rather than stoking the fire of discontentment about our hapless and fragile economy, I’m taking a positive outlook. Here’s why…I know small businesses need their accountants. I know they want innovation, simplicity and ways to save money. And, I know Xero, and the efficiency gains we offer to both the accountant and client, are compelling. Hence I feel optimistic about our industry and what we are doing.

Xero keeps growing
I’m pleased to say we’re continuing to invest in the business and right now we’re looking to hire six new staff in Australia. The first role we’re recruiting for is a new National Sales Manager for our accounting channel. Wayne Schmidt will shortly switch his focus to our fast growing bookkeeper channel – watch for extra resource and investment in this area throughout the year! We’re also seeking an Events/Sponsorship Manager, two Associate Account Managers and an Enablement Specialist in NSW to further build our presence in this key geography. So if you know of anyone who you think would love to work at Xero and who shares our optimism about the future, send them our way.  

Here’s to a prosperous 2012!!!

• Introduced pay-for-performance advertising to the mainstream (ie. charging per action rather than for exposure), forcing traditional media to become more transparent in terms of the ROI they offer
• Created a PPC model combined with infinitely flexible ad targeting that allows even the smallest ad budget to be effective
• Created a search relevancy model that evens the playing field, potentially giving the little guys just as much exposure to prospective customers as the big global brands
• With Google Places, every business in the world can have a strong, easily self-managed online presence, for free!

The benefits of these innovations are well documented. I want to look at what Google has done more recently, and how this could change how businesses promote themselves online.

Google is going social – and in a big way.  By now you’ve probably heard about Google+, Google’s new social network. On the surface, it appears to be just a competitive product to Facebook and Twitter. However, Google has much bigger plans than that, as evidenced by changes to Google’s search engine announced last week. These changes are rolling out now.

In a nutshell, Google has embedded Google+ into its core search engine product in three key ways:

Personal results

Google’s search results are tailored more specifically to you (they already were to a certain extent by using your location and web history, but this now goes further). Relevant content shared by you and your connections on Google+ will get a ranking boost, appearing higher in search results than they normally would.

Profiles in search

Google+ profiles and pages will appear in the Search Auto-complete and in search results.

As in the screenshot below, a search for photography blogger Trey Ratcliff brings up his G+ profile as an Autocomplete suggestion…

And if you then click on that suggestion, his profile appears, including a button allowing you to immediately follow him on Google+

Suggested people and pages

On the right hand side of the Search Results page, Google will now show suggested G+ profiles and pages for some high level topic searches. For example, the following may appear in a search for “music”…

These changes are a major overhaul of Google’s search engine and there’ve been many calls in the blogosphere that Google has abandoned its objectivity and is unfairly favouring its own social network over rivals Facebook and Twitter. Excellent analysis of the issue was made by my favourite search blogger Danny Sullivan.  Check it out here.

So what does this mean for small business?

Regardless of whether or not Google is being unfair, it’s obvious that having a Google+ page is a very important weapon in your arsenal. Here’s why:

• Content you have shared on G+ will appear highly in relevant searches made by not just your followers, but also those your followers are connected to.  If you generate as many followers as possible and then share content, you’ll enhance your reputation and brand!
• Appearing in the People & Pages suggestions for relevant search keywords could create invaluable exposure even if you don’t appear on the first page of normal search results. I would be over the moon if we got the Xero+ page to appear here whenever people did a search for “accounting software”!

For marketers there are some additional features – but I’ll leave that for another blog post.

Finally, you might think having yet another social media profile to maintain is a time waster, but for those businesses that rely heavily on the web, Google has made G+ almost impossible to ignore.

By the way, don’t forget to follow Xero on Google+!

How to get started on G+

If you don’t already have a G+ profile, follow these steps…

1. Navigate to plus.google.com
2. If you have a Google Account, hit the Sign in Button.  If not, click the Create an Account link
3. Follow the instructions to create a public profile
4. On the Add people you know screen, search for Xero and click ‘Add to Circles’.  Repeat for anybody else you know or want to follow
5. Complete your G+ profile to reflect who you are
6. Start sharing!

Accelerate is an event for HiTech entrepreneurs and investors to get to get together in a relaxed environment and share stories. This year we’ve timed it so we can finish the day with Gin Wigmore and friends in the Black Barn amphitheater.

In the first session I’ll kick off with a Xero deep dive covering such things as our funding, building the team internationally, approaches to marketing and hopefully pass on some useful things we’ve learned over the years. We’ll then have another 5 companies doing rapid fire presentations of their businesses and experiences. We have a couple of slots left for those sessions.

So this years program should be useful for companies looking at expanding internationally and/or planning an IPO especially.

You can register at http://0to60.com

I’ve written on here previously about my discomfort with the way that Twitter seems to unilaterally and utterly change its user interface at what seems like the slightest whim, and how such behaviour runs entirely against the way that software you pay for is updated and improved. There aren’t many software product managers who would spring a complete redesign of their app’s UI on a paying customer base without warning, never mind protracted consultation.

Imagine you’d paid for a Ford Focus only to wake up one morning six months later to discover that a crack Ford spec ops team had sneaked in under the cover of darkness, with night vision goggles and everything, and replaced your much loved Focus with a completely different colour and model of car. AND in the process they’d taken your Bee Gees greatest hits CD. Now, if on the other hand Ford had given you a Focus completely free of charge and then done the overnight ninja switcheroo on you, you’d find it understandably hard to find any basis upon which you could really complain.

That’s sort of how I feel about the way Twitter and Skype just fundamentally change their user experience on me. I really liked the old Twitter iPhone app and I’m still rolling with a two plus year old version of Skype for Mac. I really don’t like either of their latest versions and so, for as long as it’s technically feasible for me to continue to use the old versions, I doggedly will.

However I don’t pay for either and presumably the Twitter and Skype product marketing geniuses have determined that their only hope of monetization is to accentuate features that make their apps either more attractive to people with advertising budgets to spend – in Twitter’s case – or people who tend to make the kind of calls that cost money – in Skype’s case – by accentuating the revenue generating aspects of their apps, and muting the free’n’easy design conventions that old true freeloaders like me prefer.

And when you think about it, both Skype and Twitter (and Facebook for that matter, but unfortunately for my point I actually like the new Facebook UI) are entirely justified in squeezing me out of the equation, in fact in a business sense it’s absolutely the best thing for them to do. Why expend their valuable resources on someone who is in effect un-monetizable inside the context of their free / freemium / ad driven revenue and design models when there are four billion Justin Bieber fans out there with their parents’ credit card details.

And so I think we’ll probably see a further splintering of the disciplines of software design and feature innovation where new monetization principles of the web sit alongside on traditional expectations and revenue models. This isn’t actually a complaint, and in fact I think it’s pretty remarkable that software design decisions are now apparently* informed by such sophisticated commercial reasoning and behavioural data.

* I say ‘apparently’ because I don’t know for a fact that Twitter’s or Skype’s product managers actually operate this way. Perhaps I’m crediting them with too much intelligence and it’s actually a just a chimp pressing big buttons whenever a picture of a banana appears amid a random sequence of images on a screen in front of it. Wouldn’t be the first time.

The session will cover two areas

1. Technical information and feedback about connecting to Xero
2. Building your partner business alongside Xero in offshore markets

The half-day session is in Auckland on Thursday 2 Feb (the day before Xerocon New Zealand). Our country managers from Australia, the UK, USA and NZ will be there for you to connect to. This is a great time to build a relationship with these key people and find out about the markets we operate in.

Once the workshop is over, developers will be able to unwind with some of our accounting Partners at the drinks that evening.

We’re expecting around 500 accountants to attend #Xerocon this year so this should be the biggest event you can do in 2012 to move the needle on your business.

So if you use the Xero API and want some fresh ideas, we’d love to see you at the workshop. Find out more and register here.

Lance even posted about it.

We were trying to do two things:

1. Have some non Xeroes create helpful content for small business owners, especially the non tech savvy.
2. Have established international writers create Xero sponsored content on other sites to drive link traffic back to us.

We learned that:

1. Having others outside of the Xero community writing our blog turns some of our followers off. (We acknowledge there were posts that did generate a huge amount of positive feedback).
2. The guest posts didn’t generate significant traffic back from other sites.

So lesson learned.

We love that our community gives us such candid feedback and we appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.

We’re just a few months away from the integrated Xero Payroll for our Australian customers, but in the meantime you can access Paycycle from your iPad or other tablet. Who would have thought payroll could be completed anytime, anywhere? Employees can access their dashboard from almost any device, and even apply for leave from their phone.

For the time being, you can continue to access Paycycle from https://go.paycycle.com.au, but watch this space for updates on integrated payroll. An exciting year ahead!

As with many of my IT colleagues, my career has been shaped by years of working in large multi-national corporations. While there’s certainly a lot of valuable experiences and knowledge to be learned along the way, you sometimes witness what I would call “cultural train wrecks”. These become even more apparent once you are out of the big corporate game and running your own gig, or at least overseeing something on a much smaller scale. Hence you promise you will do things differently.

Taking the reins of Xero in Australia in February 2011, I felt both excited and a little anxious about having total responsibility for shaping the culture and personality of a new and fast growing business and team.

With the acquisition of Paycycle and more sales and support staff we recently moved to an office in Hawthorn, which we hope will be the next phase of expansion in Australia.

Work hard, play hard

One of the best things has been to transform a 100 sqm data centre on Level 1 to a full blown rock ‘n’ roll music studio. Try that in a big corporate.

I’ll admit my influence here, but with at least 5 other Xero staff boasting various musical talents, this became an obvious use for a space otherwise reserved for racks of servers and cables – hardly something we needed when everything we do is in the cloud. Jam sessions (pictured) are emerging as a feature on a Friday after work.

Building our community

Another epiphany was setting up a hot desking area with the view that Xero is “open for business”. For example, we’ve just started sub-letting desk space to one of our accounting partners who needed extra room. We will also be offering further desk space to a small number of Add-On partners that have solutions which integrate with Xero and who want to establish a footprint in Australia, but minimise startup costs.

We’d also like to encourage our accounting and bookkeeping partners to come and visit us whenever they are in our neck of the woods and need somewhere to work. Xero is richer for its partner ecosystem and this philosophy should extend beyond the product to the people we support, and those who support us.

Symbols of informality

As for how Xero staff work, this is much like a start-up environment. There’s a complete absence of any individual offices. It’s open plan all the way, with breakout rooms used for making private calls. The 2nd floor is also scattered with beanbags, posters, coffee tables and funky seating areas. And there’s a staff room where the team can chat over lunch or enjoy a social drink at the end of the working week whilst shooting it out on Xbox Halo… I’m told Kinnect is on the way.

It’s amazing how much impact you can make without spending a lot of money.

Help name our office band

But back to the band… we know there is a great deal of talent out there so we will be recruiting musicians from across our many partners to form an all star band to play at Xerocon 2012. We figured we would need a band name, so why not send us your suggestion? The line-up so far includes Bachman-Turner Overdraft; Clouded House and my favourite Joel Hanna and the Bad Debts.

We’ll pick the best suggestion and announce it in the lead up to #Xerocon 2012.

Where to find good coffee in:

Portland, Oregon

A lush green city known for its great water, beer, coffee and perhaps lesser well known facts, excellent pigeon population control and home to the word’s smallest park (Mill Ends Park)! No shortage of great independent roasters in this city.

My favorite was Public Domain – check out these machines and the gloss on that cappuccino!

I also rate any of the Stumptown cafes and Water Avenue Coffee (not just because some of their beans come in orange packaging!).

San Francisco, California

My new home. I have a coffee app for that and I’m slowly working my way around the independent roasters here. Top of my list is Blue Bottle. They have a series of cafes and kiosks around town but my happy place is at their cafe in the Ferry Building, where I also get my weekly supply of beans.

The Xero office is in SOMA and we’re lucky enough to have 3 great cafes 5ish minutes walk away – Epicenter Cafe, Blue Bottle Mint Plaza and the very new Elite Audio Systems.

I have to say, San Francisco has the longest lines for coffee in the world – all the big names here like Blue Bottle, Four Barrel, Ritual Roasters have lines that go out the door and you need to get used to building a 30 minute wait for coffee into your day. I’d say this is high demand for independent coffee … new cafe anyone?

Washington, DC

Luckily most visitors to Washington DC are goggling at the White House or are in very important Government meetings so the local independent roasters slide somewhat under the radar, well, not mine! If you’re slightly out of the main crowded areas, Chinatown Coffee Co has a great space for coffee and a catch-up.

Also, M E Swing Coffee House, closer to the White House.

New York, New York

Definitely a Starbucks (shudder) on every corner in Manhattan but also loads of great independent cafes if you know where to look. My absolute favorite is Ninth Street Espresso, and in particular the one in Chelsea Market.

There are so many others – I can personally vouch for most of the cafes on this New York Times list – what can I say? I’m a girl on a mission! Try Saturdays Surf for a location with a difference or Rize if you’re caught in Midtown or Culture Espresso if you’re partial to an Australian accent or want to try a flat white (popular coffee order in New Zealand and Australia)!

Las Vegas, Nevada

Forget it. If you’re there for a conference and confined to the hotel and Strip there’s nothing. I did find one cafe in our hotel that didn’t seem to be a big chain outlet but even with 2 extra shots in the bucket-o-searing milk (at $2 per shot) I couldn’t drink much more than the 1st sip and at $8.50 for that coffee you’d think I’d force it down!

However, that same cafe over the course of my 4 days there, when I wasn’t searching out urns of hot water at buffet tables, did supply me with a cup of hot water at no charge so I could make my own coffee. Yes ladies and gentlemen I was forewarned by conference vendor veterans that the only way to get decent coffee in Las Vegas was to take your own – they might’ve meant a travel tin of Nescafe but I went all out.

My kit contains the only TSA-approved grinder – a thing of metal and ceramic beauty.

People were SO jealous when conference delegates were in session and I mixed up a brew … although the nature of my addiction was called into question … it’s just bad exposure, not white knuckles of desperation in this photo …

Austin, Texas

In the land of orange Long Horns t-shirts, big trucks, drive-thru banks and streets melted by the summer heat it is possible to get great coffee. Thanks to a Kiwi colleague who used to live in Austin I had a head start. Try Caffe Medici for somewhere reasonably central with lots of room to sit and meet.

Also great is Juan Pelota (in a bike shop) and Franks (in a bar).

Kansas, Missouri

Mostly barbecue, and I wasn’t prepared at all to drink their coffee so I had my trusty travel kit with me, however a bit of research uncovered a coffee-drinking hipster meeting point a 10 minute bus ride from our conference. Broadway Cafe.

An up and comer showing promise is Parisi’s new cafe in Union Station.

Are there any cafes in your town that I shouldn’t miss if I find myself there?

P.S. In the States, I recommend you order cappuccino at independent cafes for the best espresso-based-coffee-with-milk experience.

Apple iPhone

This is for people who want to be seen with an iPhone – and don’t mind paying for the privilege. Regardless of the contract this isn’t going to be your cheapest option but it’s nicely designed, a pleasure to use and now built for use in the cloud. It syncs well with Google Apps and this can bring all of your Apple kit into union, with all diary entries appearing simultaneously on all machines.

It’s also a very good ‘social’ phone – not social as in social media, which all smartphones will handle very nicely, but it handles video conferencing, music, the video playback is good for younger people (we fortysomethings prefer a bigger screen). IPhone has the largest market of apps if you need to configure your phone to your own specification.

Recommended if: You want an easy to use smartphone, which you can all but build to your own spec.

Not recommended if: You haven’t bought into the “do everything Apple’s way” ethos. Also if you don’t want to be forced to buy a case so that you don’t cut out calls by daring to hold the phone wrongly – seriously, this is a known fault with the iPhone 4.

BlackBerry

The original portable emailer is still around in several guises. Look at the Torch for a serious competitor to the iPhone. A solid keyboard makes text entry easy but the leisure features like music and video are well catered for with direct links into Amazon’s music libraries for downloads. Syncs well with Google Docs although needs an extra app to do this with complete efficiency.

If the social stuff is less important to you then the Bold is a good business model with fewer bells and whistles but a nice at-a-glance daily agenda. All BlackBerrys will sync well with a BlackBerry Playbook tablet.

Unfortunately the market is buying fewer BlackBerrys so you’d have to be aware of this before buying; this has led to odd gaps like the fact there’s no Skype app available for a BlackBerry, which is a pain because the hardware should make this easy. Worse still is the news that the next generation of BlackBerrys, based on the new version of the operating system, has been delayed and now won’t be emerging in Q1 of 2012.

Recommended if: You want an easy smartphone mostly for emailing but one which does everything else including satnav.

Not recommended if: You want a wide range of apps – including Skype, which is a glaring omission. And NO ANGRY BIRDS.

Android

The greatest proportion of the smart phone market buys Android phones from various manufacturers, with Samsung and HTC among the most popular. The software comes from Google and it has a completely open marketplace – so whereas Apple will have approved all of the apps you can fit onto an iPhone, Google hasn’t done the same for its software. It’s just a difference in philosophy – Google understands “marketplace” to include an element of openness.

These phones are as functional but never quite as elegant as their Apple competitors. Longer term they’re almost certain to stay in the number one slot in the market simply because Google allows loads of companies to make them whereas Apple is the only iPhone maker just as RIM is the only BlackBerry maker. If Google’s takeover of Motorola is approved then other manufacturers may be a little less quick to make more Android phones.

Recommended if: You want a safe option shared by millions of others, and all the functions you’ll get from an iPhone – often earlier than the Apple community.

Not recommended if: You like an elegant-looking phone, or don’t like companies putting their own overlay over a basic operating system. HTC’s version of the software is slightly different from that of Samsung – and when I played with a Sony Ericsson that was tweaked to work better with Facebook, Twitter et al it was so complicated it made my teeth itch.

Windows Phone

Microsoft has been making software for phones and hand-helds for a while but this is only now taking root in the market. It has announced a major tie-in with Nokia, whose own operating system is effectively on its knees.

It’s a little early to say just how this one will develop; certainly Microsoft has played the long game quite convincingly before, and basing its computer software and phone software on the same look and feel so that everything looks as though it’s laid out in “slates” is a good marketing strategy.

Recommended if: You’re a Windows user and want the same manufacturer to supply your phone software for complete compatibility.

Not recommended if: You don’t want to be the first in the class taking a risk with what to all intents and purposes is a new operating system.

Others

There are a handful of other operating systems to look out for. Nokia is still selling phones based on its Symbian operating system, which aren’t as easy to use as anything else on the market. Nokia denies it’s going to kill Symbian off, but its tie-up with Microsoft on Windows Phone has certainly set people wondering. Nokia also announced a more basic smartphone operating system called Meego during the year; by the time it announced it the company had already made most of the developers redundant. It’s difficult to imagine Nokia’s own software being around for long.

The other place to watch is WebOS. Developed by Palm over a number of years, bought by Hewlett-Packard in 2010, HP shocked everybody by pulling out of the market earlier this year – then sacking the CEO that made the decision. In December the company turned WebOS into open source software so anyone can develop using it if they choose – which is a great way to develop apps but not so good if you want any significant market share.

Guy Clapperton is the British author of the books “This Is Social Media” and the forthcoming “This Is Social Commerce”. He has been a technology and business journalist since 1998 and is also a speaker and broadcaster who has addressed audiences in seven countries during 2011. Guy appears on the BBC’s News Channel regularly and writes for the Times, Guardian, Telegraph and other national newspapers in the UK.

While most of us are moving our data to the cloud, there may still be some data that remains on your office systems. Bear in mind that if your router is damaged or desktop computer has gone missing, you won’t be able to access the web.

And even though your systems will spend much of the next fortnight turned off there are still risks such as power surges, fire and theft etc. There’s even the risk of a virus creeping in when you turn things on when you return. So here’s some things to consider before you leave.

Reset passwords

The New Year is a good time to refresh passwords, so review what your key login details are and update them to stronger, more secure phrases. I personally like using phrases like a song or poem and dropping characters into the spaces so a password might look like: Mary$had$a$little$lamb

You can make the passwords stronger by adding numbers and capitals as well.

Staff turnover happens in all businesses and you may have forgotten to remove some former employees from your accounts when they left. The end of the year is a good time to review who has access to your cloud and remote access accounts.

If you’re a social media user it’s also worthwhile checking what applications you’ve allowed to access your Facebook, Twitter or other online services. That mafia or farm game looks harmless, but often you’ve given it the right to post things and collect data from your account, so take off the ones you no longer find useful.

Unplug everything

Even when turned off, most modern computer equipment still has power running through its systems. This puts technology at risk during storms or brownouts. Printers, modems, routers, should all be turned off and disconnected from power and communications lines.

Network, telephone line or cable connections should be unplugged – power surges can often affect phone and cable network connections. In fact you should unplug anything that connects your equipment to the outside world.

Hide your equipment

Give thieves as little temptation as possible. Electronic equipment has a high resale value and is easily moved. Lock away anything portable and draw the curtains or blinds in rooms where less portable equipment is kept.

If you have an old laptop or mobile phone sitting around it’s not a bad idea to hide away the modern equipment and leave the old stuff in an obvious location. This is a variation on the old “leave ten dollars in the cash draw” ploy that gives thieves something without them ransacking the place. Don’t leave the sacrificial laptop in plain sight or you’ll be inviting break-ins.

Backup

One of the advantages with cloud computing is that many of your backup needs are taken care of. Unfortunately you still need your own local backups.

In most offices not everything gets saved to the cloud and that information matters. For many small business years of work is sitting on the hard drive.

External hard drives and DVDs are the most popular ways of saving backups. Your backup should include documents, email, address books, favorites and bookmarks.

Store the backups away from the computer, preferably offsite. I recommend making two copies, leave one onsite for easy access and store one elsewhere. If something terrible happens to your home or office while you are away, your data is at least safe.

For home offices, it’s a good idea to leave a copy of the backup with your neighbours or a relative in a nearby suburb. An old client of mine swaps external hard drives with his mother- in-law at church each week so he has a reasonably up to date copy of his data somewhere he knows he can get to.

When you return

Your computer is the very last thing you should turn on. Turn on modems, printers, external drives and network equipment before your computer. If you have a cable or ADSL Internet connection, give it a few minutes to connect before trying to log on.

Update your system

While you were away new Internet nasties in the form of viruses, Trojan horses and spyware will have come out and there’s a good chance some of them may be waiting in your inbox.

Before checking emails or surfing the net, update your security software and check for any system updates. Don’t do anything on the net until everything is updated.

Christmas and New Year are times when you should relax. There’s nothing worse than returning to find office equipment and valuable data lost. By backing up your systems and taking some precautions you don’t need to feel anxious about your business being up and running quickly when you get back to work.

Enjoy your holidays and let’s all look forward to a great New Year.

Paul is a leading expert in online business and is based in Australia where he is well known as a broadcaster, speaker and author of seven books, including eBusiness, Seven Steps To Online Success. His Future of Business website looks at Internet trends like social media, cloud computing and other web technologies that are changing our industries. 

You can look at how much you made and spent in the last few days, weeks or months. Or you can make it more relevant by looking at your income vs expenses in your last pay period.

You can then see your spending trends by looking at how your income vs expenses have changed for a given period and compare this year on year.

Watch this video for an overview:

If you want a better view of your income vs expenses in the New Year, try Xero Personal for free.

This is a much sought after feature which allows you to enter data in Xero through receipts instead of accounts payable invoices, where appropriate. You can specify that receipts have been received from a particular user, attach files and then make the receipt part of an expense claim.

We’ve also added some improved error messages and error handling where we found this needed a nudge.

Finally, we have a new Australian Activity Summary Report.

Check out our full release notes here.

Coming soon
We’re working on improving response times for requests, and giving you the ability to attach files to Accounts Payable invoices.

Make sure you keep informed of releases, events and other important developer announcements by joining our mailing list.

Left to right: Vicky, Ming, Simon, Hannah (Uli was on assignment and missed photo shoot)

While the rest of the team work on larger headline features, the Sniper team are focused on taking aim at smaller enhancements and fixes.

And it’s amazing how big the impact can be. Take a look at what the team’s been up to.

• Xero will now remember the sort order on the accounts receivables/payables screens
• The total amount due/owed of selected invoices will now display
• Two new reports – customer and supplier invoice summaries
• Budget manager updates – fixed column headings, row totals and full screen support
• Bank rules allow matching on any field
• There’s the option to register an asset and add another one immediately after

And the rest of the team worked on a couple of things too:

• Two new partner feeds for CRT Co-operative and Bartercard (NZ)
• Report Pack updates for New Zealand accountants

Now we know that one man’s sniper rifle is another man’s bazooka, but if you’ve got a small feature you’d love to see, let us know.

As an accountant if you use Xero as a ‘Single Ledger’ you’ll be saving time on core compliance work because there is no data friction. In a nutshell the Single Ledger is the same ledger used by business owners to run their business and it’s the same ledger used by accountants to prepare Management Reports and Annual Reports. So if you stay on the old time and cost model, it makes sense that you would bill for less. The solution is to move to an agreed fee base from the outset. This way clients know upfront exactly what they’re up for. It’s also an opportunity to be able offer services beyond compliance and give real business advice.

A bundle is like a shopping list, which your client can chose from. You charge a monthly fee for the provision of these services. Great examples of accounting practices that offer bundles successfully include Cloud Accountants and Interactive Accountants.

The main benefit to your client is fee certainty, which is the number one reason why your client avoids calling  you now – they’re afraid how much this might cost. If you introduce an agreed monthly fee to your clients they will respond positively to it. Every accountant I have even spoken to who has done this, says clients love it.

So how do you make it happen?

Step One

Create your bundles (tailored selections of services), plus your terms of agreement and a proposal document.

Step Two

When you do end-of-year reports, decide which bundle would best suit each client and create a proposal for them.

Step Three

At the year-end meeting with your client, present the bundle and explain why you think it is best for them. Also show them the full list of services you offer and another couple of bundle options. Talk them through how the new service would work and answer any questions.

Step Four

The client agrees for you to deliver the new service bundle to them.

If you follow these steps you should have all your clients on bundles within a year. We’d be keen to hear what’s worked for you when offering bundles to clients.