Xero

Project Overview

Xero is beautifully designed accounting software that lets you manage your small business finances anywhere, anytime. See your cashflow in real-time with online accounting, invoicing, billing & banking.
Xero improves the performance of your business by giving you and your financial advisors instant access to your real-time financial data – letting you take advantage of business opportunities and avoid problems when it matters, not months after the fact. The Xero Touch mobile app lets you check all your account balances, upload receipts, invoice customers and run your business on the go. With Xero, it's a pleasure doing business.

Context

When you talk with business owners and accountants it's obvious that cashflow is key to their success or failure. But badly designed software makes it difficult to understand your financial situation. And traditional accounting software doesn't focus on cashflow - it focuses on tax compliance. Paying taxes is not why people run a business. Xero lets you see your cashflow in real-time by automatically connecting all your bank accounts, processing your transactions for you, as they happen. The Xero dashboard shows you all your bank balances, invoices, bills and expenses at-a-glance. Add new transactions with a click. Interactive graphs show money going in & out, and the watchlist lets you monitor specific accounts.

Xero automates common tasks, simplifies data entry, and makes your financial performance obvious and up-to-date. Business owners and their advisors work on the same financial information in real-time without the need to share a computer or exchange conflicting data files. Xero is accessed online, so it requires no software installation, no up-front costs and no maintenance. Every enhancement to Xero is free and available instantly to all customers.

Impact

Most people think accounting is a pain, so they avoid it, causing more pain. People are discovering with Xero, accounting can be fun – even addictive. Because it's easy and they enjoy it, people using Xero are much more aware of their financial situation – they can avoid problems and take action when it matters, not months after the fact, when it’s too late. Everyday people tweet about Xero and the impact it's having: Wish I had more stuff to put into @Xero. It is actually fun doing the books.

http://twitter.com/#!/kylierichardson/status/71409474946072576 Music to an accountants ear when a client is getting excited abt doing the biz books thank you @xero https://twitter.com/#!/akagrp/status/103079117041303553 #Xero is enabling us to manage investors in australia clients in japan, and growth in the US from europe xero.com http://twitter.com/#!/getplanwise/status/106646606237011968 More tweets http://xero.com/tweets Ryan Carson of Carsonified "We use Xero and I freaking love it.

The scary truth is I didn’t truly understand our Balance Sheet or P&L until we switched recently. Since we moved from QuickBooks to Xero, I’ve learned a tremendous amount about what actually makes our company valuable and what really affects our profitability." http://thinkvitamin.com/business/creatives-know-your-numbers/

Craft

People enjoy playing with money (eg Monopoly, video games, lotto) and they love their business, so we believe their accounting software should be a joy to use. Our bank reconciliation - the most frequently used feature and key to cashflow - is designed to be like Tetris: a stack of matching items you clear away row-by-row. More about that here http://www.slideshare.net/turntable/designing-a-game-changer We focus on information hierarchy - giving greatest weight to primary data and key actions. Our screens are data rich, yet easy on the eye. We guide people through the task at hand with visual cues and ample white space.

We use relatively big, brightly colored buttons, with big target areas that standout. We deliberately minimize the number of options in our menus - making Xero much more approachable and less overwhelming than traditional accounting systems. Our entire product development process centers on rapid prototyping. We use a technique called "screenflows" - simulated walk-thrus of a person using the software. Screenflows let us simulate complex user scenarios and iterate our solution with unprecedented speed & quality. More on that here http://skyrize.com/files/FakeIt-RapidPrototyping.html

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