Innovating for the future: How Xero is powering small businesses with AI

At Xero, we are building a future where accounting is effortless. We’re designing it to make your work easier, faster and smarter. Today, we are proud to announce that our efforts have received significant external recognition. Xero has been recognized as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide AI-Enabled Small Business Finance and Accounting Applications 2025-2026 Vendor Assessment (doc # US52981325, December 2025). 

We believe this recognition reflects our balance of visionary AI strategy and  real-world capabilities. We also believe it reinforces our focus on not just charting a compelling vision for the future of accounting, but actively delivering on the tools you need today.

Supporting small businesses and their advisors 

The IDC MarketScape highlighted several strengths, including: 

• Extensive partner ecosystem. With over 1,100 integrations, Xero offers unmatched flexibility to build specialized workflows (ecommerce, advanced inventory, industry-specific CRM) around its core GL.
• Unlimited user collaboration. All pricing tiers support unlimited users at no additional cost, making them ideal for seamless, global collaboration among the business, its employees, and its accountant. 

“Xero is really finding its stride in how it approaches small business finance,” said Kevin Permenter, Research Director at IDC. “They’re doing a good job of balancing a big AI vision with tools that actually work today. By using predictive tech and GenAI to handle the ‘busywork’ of reconciliation, Xero is helping shift the industry away from manual data entry and toward the kind of proactive insights that actually help a business grow.”

Building a foundation of accountability 

We consider this recognition timely. We believe the real power of AI isn’t found in replacing human judgment, but in augmenting it. By letting AI handle the routine busywork, we unlock your ability to provide the real-world context and expertise that moves a business forward. This shifts the focus for small businesses and their advisors towards strategic, higher-value work, so you can be firmly in control of the outcomes. At Xero, our job is to provide you with the best possible tools to get there. 

Through innovations like JAX, our AI financial superagent designed to automate your routine tasks—like bank reconciliations, data entry, and getting paid—we are committed to ensuring our tech remains responsible and deeply integrated into your daily workflows. At Xero, our AI is built with you and for you, so you can spend less time on the numbers and more time on your vision.