Day One at Xerocon in London!
/By: Annja Louca
What a day!
We started the conference at 9am with an introduction from Steve Vamos, CEO of Xero Global and Gary Turner, CEO of Xero UK. They shared their stories and it really helped me to understand why Xero, as a company, does what they do.
The thing that I realised is that we all have a story to tell and these guys stories are not so different from yours or mine.
Gary Turner grew up in Glasgow and his parents has a business that didn’t succeed. He learnt from that experience and decided to make a difference where he could. I grew up and my dad started a business he still works in, and my mom was a financial manager. I think I learnt from them about teamwork, working smart and hard and making business work for your family.
Xero is designed to help small businesses succeed by giving business owners real time information when they need it. It is developed to be an ecosystem into which applications can link to provide business information better and more quickly than was possible before.
Just as important as what Xero can do, is the fact that it is an affordable solution. Not so long ago, having an integrated budgeting system cost a lot of money and was very labour intensive. Additionally, having a proper accounts payable department was a considerable expense for small businesses. Now, powerful applications can be seamlessly integrated into Xero to give you a quick, simple and straightforward finance experience.
So, where does this leave the accountant and the accounting practices? Again, it was reiterated that accountants still have a vital role to play as the trusted advisor. The person that small businesses can go to for support and to get information from. A study was done in the UK to find that small businesses feel that they need a dynamic and switched-on accountant even more than they ever did. They want their accountant to help them grow their business and not just focus on compliance and historic information.
Next, we heard from an amazing lady called Priya Lakhani and she is busy changing the world with AI and machine learning to improve the education system in the UK by helping kids with different learning requirements. She is doing this by developing software that is designed to help individuals with their needs instead of a ‘one size fits all approach’. I loved listening to her story and to realise how important it is to understand why we do what we do and to always think ‘is there a better way to do this’.
I also liked what she said that very few people in the world do what they do to make a difference (something like 13% but don’t quote me on that 😊). It resonated with me that when I started Anlo it was to change my situation and my family’s’ situation for the better. Now I do what I do to make sure the people I care about; my staff, family and my clients, don’t have to struggle and not succeed. It isn’t maybe world changing, but it works, and I am happy 😊
Product improvements and developments was the next session that blew my mind. Xero is working on a few amazing things and one of them being Xero Tax. This is amazing for accountants because it will help us prepare and file tax returns from the information within Xero. So, no more importing, exporting and hoping the latest version of the trial balance is saved and updated. This will make posting financial journals seamless and simpler.
Hubdoc has recently been acquired by Xero and soon it will be free on your Xero subscription. Hubdoc is a document extraction tool that extracts information from documents and then integrates it with your accounting program. So, no more manual processing, and the more you use Hubdoc the better it gets.
This is really amazing because currently you can use tools like Autoentry and Receiptbank, but you need to pay extra for this. At Anlo we realised that this is an absolute need for all companies, and we use it ourselves in our business, so we signed up a partner account with ReceiptBank to give all our clients data extraction for free. When Hubdoc becomes available to all Xero users this will mean that we don’t need to use ReceiptBank any longer; our clients will get Hubdoc as part of an overall package!
The rest of the day was spent listening to panel discussions about important topics for small businesses; one being cash flow management and receiving payments on time from customers, but also the importance of making payments to suppliers on time.
Gary Turner, the CEO of Xero UK, said that it is unethical not to make supplier payments on time because of the effect it has on wider society if everyone has a ‘late pay’ attitude. It is disruptive, discouraging and can cause small businesses – always dependent on stable cashflow, to fail. Studies have shown that 50% of small businesses that fail, fail because of cash flow problems and therefore he thinks we should focus on improving cash flow management for all businesses.
We also had time to walk around and speak to a lot of vendors about their products and compare prices. Here are some of the vendors that stood out today:
Hubdoc – Only £15 per company and with multiple line item extraction, we think this is GREAT for small businesses that have supplier invoices and need to allocate or extract all the information on the invoice. Because Xero bought Hubdoc it is also an added bonus and should be considered when you are looking at data extraction tools
Tide bank looked like a great digital bank and has much lower fees than your traditional banks. All support is virtual and therefore quicker and opening a business account is quick.
Iwoca is a finance provider for small businesses and can provide a flexi loan or business loan of up to £250 000. The whole process is online, and they don’t need long unnecessary forecasting and reporting to approve the loans. They also partner up with accountants to provide a better service for the clients and I love that for flexi loans as an accountant I can get some benefits for my clients
Cin7 is an inventory management system and POS and the functionality looks good and the reporting even better. The software fees are not crazy expensive and as a business owner you can have a brilliant system connected to your accounting system that does everything you will need if you have a manufacturing or retail company
Float is something we personally use in Anlo and have recently started signing up clients with and we had a great time learning some new functions. Float is a cash flow management system that links into your Xero, Quickbooks or FreeAgent accounts and gives you reporting on cash flow management and helps you plan for scenarios. Any business owner that complains that they can’t sleep at night because of cash flow should get this as soon as possible. I personally have made a mental note to recommend this to everyone but specifically those clients that say ‘why do I have to pay tax on a profit, if the money isn’t in the bank’ 😊. No judgement promise, but profits aren’t cashflow and accounting transactions aren’t cashflow transactions and that is why Float is necessary.
Finally, there was the Xero party. Oh my, what fun this was! There were live bands, street food, games, helter-skelter, bumper cars, merry go rounds etc.
The only thing I can say is – what happens at the Xerocon party, stays at the Xerocon party!!
