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.

There’s a hot new store in downtown Wellington called The Bay - it’s a Premium Apple Reseller shop, which is the next best thing to an official Apple Store. It’s caused quite a stir, everytime we walk by it’s packed with people.

The store looks amazing, just like you’d expect from Apple. They’ve got all the latest greatest Apple gear with experts on hand to show you what’s what .

As proof of their immaculate taste and good business sense they’ve chosen to sell and promote Xero exclusively as their accounting solution.

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!

One of our developers is not only a whiz cutting code, she’s also a bit of a baking champion - Rowena is our resident ‘Canteen Lady’ and often brings home made baked treats into work to keep us all going (well, all of us if the developers haven’t eaten the lot before everyone else gets a chance!)

Check out these amazing Xero cookies she made a couple of months ago:

And this morning she arrived with these finger cookies - some of us are a bit dubious about trying them …

Happy Halloween!

Well-respected web and technology journalist Chris Keall joined the team at the National Businesss Review last month after leaving Fairfax Business Media publications as editorial director.

He caught up with Rod recently to discuss the upside of the global markets meltdown, and how these current market conditions are actually a boost for the concept of SaaS or cloud computing.

The key points were:

• The low monthly fee rather than upfront capital expenditure suits the current climate.
• Small business keeps on ticking, and with many displaced executives looking for new opportunities small business start-ups will increase.
• There will be a greater focus on cashflow, and to raise funding from any source business owners need more up-to-date access about finanical performance.
• SaaS is a megatrend that is starting to accelerate for example, cloud services are the big focus of Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference later this month in Los Angeles.
• New emerging markets will skip installed software, and all the piracy issues that come with installing software, and go straight to web - in the way that emerging countries skipped fixed line communications and went straight to mobile.
• Well architectured SaaS models allow new markets and opportunities to be opened up at minimal incremental cost

You can read the article here.

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.”

Our Xero network continues to grow and one of the interesting parts of my job at Xero is identifying new opportunities and industries to work with.

We have a number of tourism operators using Xero which led me to think about what system would these tourism operators be using for their online bookings, and how could we make their lives even easier?

BookIt is the premier online booking processing service for the tourism industry, providing solutions for many of New Zealand’s leading tourism companies including Tourism Holdings, New Zealand Tourism Online and Christchurch Airport. Suppliers of tourism products including accommodation, activities, tours and transport can benefit from the increased exposure that BookIt offers through the reseller network or use the BookIt system on their own website to take direct bookings.

The BookIt system automates many routine tasks including payments, settlements, vouchering, cancellations, amendments and invoicing. We are working with the team at BookIt to take this one step further by integrating with Xero. If you would like to participate in trialling this integration then we’d love to hear from you - please contact us on network@xero.com.

The Business Success Group recently attended and passed our tests to become the latest company to receive Xero certification.  We are very pleased to have rocketed to this 100th milestone over the past 3 months, and we’re especially happy to reach that milestone with a company of accountants who truly understand the value of Xero.

Their niche is around supporting entrepreneurial businesses or those in startup mode, and they see Xero as being a powerful tool in delivering business advice on top of traditional accounting services.  Most businesses in startup mode clearly need to keep a tight rein on finances. The real-time nature of Xero means that growing businesses are right on top of their financial position – now, not at the end of the month.   Not many small businesses can afford bookkeepers to keep manual systems up to date, so Xero nicely provides this critical service.

I know its sounds obvious, but it’s really important for small businesses to keep their financial position up to date, they just don’t have the deep pockets to ride out bad debtors and creditors. So in addition to being operationally efficient, the up side is that your business can produce accurate and immediate business reports on your cash position or P&L.  Why is that an up side? Most small businesses generally need to raise money or get credit for something sooner than they think, so being able to quickly show a prospective investor, bank or a finance company where your finances are at – quickly, efficiently and affordably, definitely reflects well.

Would you invest in someone who has their finger on the pulse, or one who says “I’ll get back to you”?

Upcoming Xero certification training dates

All run from 9am to 1pm, please contact your account manager if you’d like to attend:

08/10 Wellington (fully booked)
15/10 Auckland

06/11 Christchurch
12/11 Wellington
13/11Auckland

09/12 Auckland
10/12 Wellington