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One of our most requested features has been the ability to raise a credit note directly against a customer or supplier account. We’ve delayed for a while delivering on this so that we could take some time to extend our accounting engine to support this and a lot of other future features we have on our roadmap.
As of yesterday, you can now raise a credit note directly against a customer or supplier account and you will be prompted to apply it to any outstanding invoices, or you can carry it as a credit until the next invoice you raise.
We’ve also made some improvements to our Accounts Receivable dashboard and to all reports that include credit notes. You can read the full release notes here.
This is an exciting release for us as even though we’ve kept the changes to a minimum, we’ve set up the accounting engine for the next 12 months of features that we’ll be delivering like foreign currency invoices and bank accounts.
As you’d expect, raising and applying credit notes is as simple as working with invoices - here’s a quick walkthrough.
The upgrade to Xero over the weekend has been completed. We hope the downtime didn’t cause you too much inconvenience.
Improvements to credit notes are the major part of today’s release. You can now raise credit notes directly against a customer or supplier in either accounts receivable or accounts payable.
We’ll post more details soon, in the mean time you can view the release notes here.
Thanks to all those who fed me coffee and zapped me to keep going - I’m off home now!
As announced, this weekend we have some scheduled downtime. Many members of our devoted team will be working around the clock to make this upgrade go smoothly.
We’re installing a live webcam so you can keep an eye on Craig Walker, our Chief Technology Officer.
In addition, you will have the option to supply Craig with coffee OR give him a jolt of electric shock therapy - your choice - as a way to make sure he stays focused and motivated.
Be sure to visit go.xero.com during the scheduled maintenance period and show your support.
We’re doing some upgrades to Xero this coming weekend, 8-9 November. During the upgrade Xero will be unavailable for approximately 24 hours beginning at 12:00am Sunday 9 November NZT (click here for your local times).
The upgrade includes some great improvements to credit notes, plus it lays the foundation for many upcoming features, including multi-currency.
We’re sorry if this causes any inconvenience.
You might regard it as a welcome holiday from your accounting!
Since releasing our Common Formats feature in Profit and Loss reporting a few weeks ago we’ve had some great feedback from our accounting partners that this very useful. Especially when used with tracking categories.
Most companies use P&L reports to see how their business is going. P&L reporting is especially useful in Xero as the numbers are up to date every day so they are a valuable management tool. How is my income doing compared to last month? Are my expenses under control?
We had lots of feedback that while everyone uses a P&L, there are many ways to look at the information.
As we designed this Andrew came up with the idea of just creating some common formats so that you could quickly look at your P&L in a number of ways. Here is a video that shows you how simple it is.
Profit & Loss Common Formats from Xero on Vimeo.
You probably spotted that I’m using the Blue microphone I picked up in Palo Alto a couple of weeks ago. We use Screenflow to capture the tour and Vimeo to host the video. It only takes a few minutes to make a movie and get it up so you’ll see many more of these from us. And yes - we all dislike the sound of our own voice :)
Here’s a video of using Xero on your iPhone. Xero also works on Windows Mobile and your BlackBerry. Point them to http://m.xero.com.
Xero iPhone walkthrough from Xero on Vimeo.
We’re pleased to announce that Deloitte NZ has signed up as a Xero partner. Deloitte is recognised as one of the ‘Big Four’ international accounting networks who are are highly regarded and well recognised throughout the world.
Deloitte’s evaluation and support is major validation of what Xero has to offer. It also reflects their confidence in where Xero is heading.
Bridget Musker, Associate Director in Deloitte’s Accounting & Advisory practice focused on helping SMEs grow, commented…
“For our clients, Xero dovetails brilliantly with our ‘Virtual CFO’ service where our Deloitte team is on call and available to assist businesses on all sorts of strategic, financial or management issues.”
I’ve long been concerned at how off target the last versions of Microsoft Office were after we’ve seen the real time collaboration features of Google Docs.
To my mind, the killer feature of Google Docs is not that it is Web-based, per se. It’s that it makes real-time collaboration easy. You can invite a user into a document you currently have open, and you both can edit the file at the same time. It’s not a feature you’re going to need all the time, but when you’re on a deadline and need to get sign-off from one or more other person on a document right away, it’s a life-saver.
In the past week Steve Balmer has started to go public with Microsoft’s Cloud computing strategy and it’s good to see they understand the issues.
I think what people want is something as rich as Microsoft Office, something that you can ‘click and run’, if you are not at your own desk. Something that is compatible, document-wise with Microsoft Office and something that offers the kind of joint editing capabilities that is nice in Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Will Microsoft Office offer that? Yes! Standby for details in the next month.
We want software that is more powerful than runs in a browser. Does that mean we will not have some neat stuff that does run in the browser? No.
We think you’ll actually want the full power of Word, Excel and PowerPoint - and you’ll want to be able to get that simply. But, if you just happen to be in an Internet cafe kiosk and you want to do some light editing, perhaps we need to have a way to support you in that as well, inside the browser.
This is great news and the best example of Software + Services. Using the power of the PC and the connectivity of the Internet together. I really believe that Collaborative Office could be one of the most exciting breakthroughs in productivity for enterprises and small businesses since online accounting.
However there are a few concerns that came immediately to mind.
If I was in Microsoft’s strategy team I’d seriously look at tying Office collaboration into their stack. For many enterprises they don’t want working documents out of their firewall so SharePoint would make sense - and be justifiable.
Looks like some of the details will be revealed at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference later in the month. But this is exciting news.
There’s obviously a lot going on at the moment in terms of the markets and how this downturn is going to hit some small businesses. It may seem like a momentous leap – from Wall St to your small business – but the ethos remains the same, how do you protect your assets, your business and most importantly, your cash.
Accounting software such as Xero is there to help in the leaner times as well as the good..
Here’s some ideas on what you can do. 
