BNZ, with Air New Zealand, recently launched its brand new GlobalPlus Business Visa card.

Ideal for small businesses the new card offers a great business credit card rate and if the balance is paid off in full each month, you get up to 50 days interest-free on purchases.

GlobalPlus is a BNZ offering for its business customers who want to earn Air New Zealand Airpoints Dollars TM for every purchase they make on their credit card.

It also helps small business owners to easily seperate personal from businesss spending by using this card instead of their personal one.

Xero supports the new card to deliver automated bank feeds, and we are included in the card offering. Customers who take up the new GlobalPlus Business Visa can try Xero for free for 60 days.

One of our innovative UK customers, Ash Young of evoluted web services, has resolved issues he was having with his Abbey Bank statements for himself and for other joint Abbey Bank and Xero cusotmers.

Abbey provide bank statements in a slightly unusual .CSV format not easily converted or imported into Xero.

Well not any more - Ash has developed his very own Abbey .CSV to .QIF converter which enables the Abbey .CSV file format to be converted to a .QIF which is fully compatible with Xero. Not only this, but he’s embedded the converter within a page on his website making it accessible to all Abbey Bank customers experiencing the same issue.

Thanks Ash and the evoluted team. Great job building this and making it readily available!

UK accounting partner Pearson & Associates have a small business client whose bank manager has stopped charging her unnecessary fees because Xero is so good!

Adrian Pearson tells the story in his blog post and explains that because the management reports produced by Xero were so up to date and detailed, their client’s bank manager has cancelled the monthly account ‘management’ fee.  This Xero user is now £50 a month better off and we all think its a great result.

The bank manager in question could not justify the management fee being charged as all the financial information he had been calculating is now worked out by Xero. He waived the fee on the spot when he saw the management reports from Xero!

We have great news for Westpac customers – you can now have your bank account transactions automatically imported into Xero every day. All you need to do is fill out the authority form and we will work with Westpac on your behalf to get your bank feeds started.

Please note there is a $25 (GST inclusive) establishment fee per authority form which we are passing on. This will be included on your Xero subscription invoice once the feeds have been successfully set up.

Westpac is the latest bank to offer automatic bank feeds via Xero. For more information on setting up automated feeds please select your bank: ASB, ANZ, the Bank of New Zealand, Kiwibank, National Bank, TSB Bank or Westpac.

This is a big milestone for us. Xero now has daily bank feeds available for virtually every small business in New Zealand.

Well done Kiwibank! They’ve just released an iPhone version of online banking.

It’s very similar to the Xero for iPhone version, letting you see your account balances and recent transactions. It also lets you transfer money between your Kiwibank accounts.

Of course, the big advantage of using Xero on your iPhone is that you have access to transaction data from all your banking providers, plus all of your invoicing data, to give you a complete cash flow overview.

Our latest release out this morning has a bunch of banking improvements to make processing your bank-related transactions in Xero even easier.

The most requested feature is the Mark as Reconciled option in Xero’s bank reconciliation. This is helpful for anyone who can’t import their bank statements into Xero - either because your bank doesn’t let you import older (historical) bank transactions or because your bank doesn’t provide statements in the OFX or QIF file formats.

This option is only to be used in the two scenarios above. We recommend you always set up automatic bank feeds if your bank supports these. Learn more about banking in Xero.

Let’s say you have a savings account that only has a few transactions through it each month. Your bank doesn’t support OFX of QIF files but you need to reconcile these transactions so you know what’s in Xero is the same as what’s in your bank account. Enter the transactions into Xero (either spend or receive money or raising an invoice) and once the transaction has been processed through your bank account, reconcile it using the Mark as Reconciled.

Select one or more items using the check boxes and click Mark as Reconciled…

The items will appear with a tick mark, showing that they have been marked as reconciled in the list of bank account transactions…

Read more about Mark as Reconciled and other processing improvements in today’s release.

Fresh from the Xero labs, we’re very pleased to announce a customised version of Xero for iPhone (and iPod Touch). It’s never been easier to have your accounts on hand.

Xero for iPhone gives you an overview of the accounts for every organisation you manage. See all your bank balances, recent transactions and who owes you money. You can even call any contact with a single tap.

Xero for iPhone is available immediately to all Xero customers at no extra charge. Simply login at http://m.xero.com. It’s also available for anyone to try for free by simply signing up to Xero.

Please have a play and tell us what you think. What else would you want from Xero on your iPhone?

Automatic bank feeds will be delayed for ANZ, BNZ, National Bank and TSB, due to the public holiday on Friday. Thursday’s transactions will appear in Xero on Friday morning as usual, but transactions made on Friday will arrive with the weekend and Monday’s transactions on Tuesday morning.

ASB and Kiwibank feeds will be unaffected, as they arrive 7 days per week, even on public holidays.

If you’re a Xero customer with New Zealand bank accounts, you can read our guide How do I set up automated bank feeds to find out how to set up bank feeds.

Latest research from the University of Waikato’s Management School shows that four out of five small businesses might be paying more in banking costs than they need to.

The research, conducted by Dr Stuart Locke, covers all financial services that New Zealand commercial banks offer, and tries to rationalise a small business’ choice in bank, looking at cost efficiency and services.

Small business banking in New Zealand is dominated by five banks: ASB, ANZ, BNZ, National Bank and Westpac.

“Our findings show small businesses could save more than $1,000 a year if they pick the right bank,” says Dr Locke. The effects on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) because of this market concentration are under development in the SME sector and in regional development.

The conclusions were based on a simulation model – comparing costs of the five major banks by creating five typical banking transaction scenarios.

“Our simulation model provides a much quicker way to analyse banking fees. It could be a useful tool for small business advisors and accountants, who can be held accountable for any advice they give,” says Dr Locke.

The research team concluded that there isn’t much information out there for the public in getting the best advice on banking deals. It was estimated it would take SMEs three days to compare banks and determine findings like these.

Download the report here.