INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Anna Curzon, Chief Product Officer at Xero, reflects on the growth of the accounting software company in the UK market over the past
year.About the authorAnna Curzon, Chief Product Officer at Xero.What have been the stand-out events or notices from Xero this year?In 2019,
Xero is focusing our product innovation on providing fast and accurate data, streamlined tax and compliance workflows and deeper insights to
help our customers not only understand their current data but move into a new era where we can predict what will happen in the future.We
want to build products that will stand the test of time but also support our future growth
have had to submit tax digitally
We worked closely with HMRC to get SMEs and their advisors up and running and launched our Making Tax Digital functionality at no extra
This year we launched a deep integration with Stripe to help small businesses get paid faster and recently launched Pay with TransferWise,
to enable business to manage and pay bills more seamlessly.We also made it easier to get ready for card or direct debit payments
Seamless onboarding now makes it even more simple for small businesses to accept credit card payments, as well as, debit card or Apple Pay
payments through Stripe, or Direct Debit payments through GoCardless, helping them get paid faster.How has Xero been able to become the
Service (SaaS), which is incredible
This means we have built strong relationships and advocates across the accounting industry, helping us to get more small businesses onto the
We are constantly looking ahead to the future and innovating our products to support SMEs and their advisors
the government's roll-out of Making Tax Digital helped benefit Xero?The roll out of Making Tax Digital (MTD) has meant that a lot of
be on the cloud to submit digitally to HMRC, but doing so is definitely the most time-effective and pain-free solution.Cloud based platforms
like Xero means less paperwork and fewer mistakes, but more importantly it gives businesses a real-time view of cash flow
demands changing as more financial activity goes online?Traditionally the relationship between accountant and small business was a long-term
locally based one, focused on tax accounting
Whereas for big businesses, with bigger teams and more resources, they have had the luxury of looking beyond tax returns.As more financial
activity has moved to the cloud, we are going to see more small businesses moving away from purely wanting help with their tax returns
They want more access to information that will help them to make decisions about growth and the direction of the business.This demand for
data driven decision making is what will drive the next generation of online finance software and financial technologies and level the
playing field between big and small businesses.SMEs and accountants are also looking for tech-focussed partners to help build their
We already have over 800 business apps integrated with our customers increasingly leaning on the scale and power of our ecosystem to support
estimate cloud accounting penetration to be relatively low at around 20%, and in many cases we think it is far lower than this
Digitisation of tax and compliance (via Making Tax Digital in the UK), the disruption and innovation going on in financial services and the
wider adoption of cloud storage technology are all contributing towards demand for cloud accounting across the world and these are also
the next 12 months hold for Xero?As a growth business Xero is continuously testing and reviewing its strategy
Over the next 12 months, we're focussed on three strategic priorities; drive cloud accounting, grow the small business platform and building
100% cloud-based tax preparation tool
This will give UK accountants smarter, seamless tax preparation workflows.We have completed our integration of Hubdoc into the Xero platform
which as an integral part of our data automation vision
All customers will now have access to this world-class technology that captures information from bills and receipts, eliminates manual data
entry, and makes bank reconciliation easy
tools like Hubdoc do a critical function that all small businesses and advisors need for success with increasingly new government
requirements to report and hold digital records
also working on further expanding the Xero platform in areas such as fintech, where we see huge potential for growth in services such as
