When New Zealand-based entrepreneur Rod Drury began researching his market he could hardly believe what he was seeing. As seen in Drury’s comments last week on the state of the online finance ecosystem, only a handful of players like Saasu and MYOB were targeting small business clients. While Drury saw that a number of cloud-based personal finance companies like Mint were gaining traction with users, small businesses had been stuck with the same tired desktop accounting software they’d been using for the last ten years. Drury built Xero with the intent to help small businesses manage their accounts in the cloud.
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When asked why the cloud is so important for accounting services he explains, “In the past small businesses rarely shared their business data with accountants as the majority of billable hours were spent simply extracting the right information.” Says Drury, “The fact that your entire business can now look at your accounts in the cloud means that the accountant can finally act as a business advisor and improve your cash flow.”
Xero also works with a number of banking institutions. This means that rather than waiting 5 business days for a bank to reconcile your accounts, they’re up-to-date with your daily transactions.
There are currently 12,000 companies working with Xero (including ReadWriteWeb) and the company recently launched integration with invoicing service FreshBooks and CRM-tool Salesforce. For between $19-39 dollars per month startups can access their accounts from anywhere and reduce the anxiety around the accounts payable and receivable process. To try it for yourself visit xero.com.
Editor’s note: This story is part of ReadWriteWeb’s Online Finance series, a weekly, three-month long look at how the Internet has transformed finance. Up until April 15, the deadline for U.S. readers to file their taxes, we’ll be looking at how finance software has evolved, analyzing top web tools and posting video of our conversations with the people who are shaping online finance. If you are interested in sponsoring the rest of this Content Series, please contact our COO Sean Ammirati.
