XU Biweekly - Issue 43 - 19 November 2022

APP PARTNER OF THE YEAR: NZ WINNER

The team behind ApprovalMax have been working tirelessly to improve all aspects of our app – from the user experience within the app itself, to the integration with Xero. And the work is paying off. It’s an honour to announce that Xero’s panel of external judg es recognised our team’s efforts and award ed ApprovalMax the NZ App Partner of the Year for 2022.

Xero published the following statement: “The judges respect [ApprovalMax’s] ongo ing investment in the product experience they create for their customers by using and supporting new Xero enhancements. They said ApprovalMax’s high profile customer testimonials are a reflection of their commit ment to training and enablement, stream lined onboarding, and a clear mission to pro vide a quality product.”

What

be Xero App Partner of the Year? Keep reading

By Steve Vamos, Xero

TODAY WE ANNOUNCED XERO’S HALF YEAR FINANCIAL RESULTS TO 30 SEPTEMBER 2022 (H1 FY23).

Xero continued to deliver strong growth momentum with more small businesses placing their trust in our cloud technology and open platform to run their business and meet critical compliance needs.

Our H1 FY23 performance highlights in clude operating revenue growing 30% (27% in constant currency) to $658.5 million, to tal customer lifetime value increasing 30% to $13 billion, and subscribers up 16% to 3.5 million.

The environment small businesses are op erating in around the world remains com plex. They continue to navigate and adapt to increasing inflationary and interest rate pressures and challenges in accessing talent, while responding to the evolving needs of their customers. Times like these strengthen the case for small businesses to adopt cloud technology that enables their businesses...

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XERO ANNOUNCES CEO SUCCESSION, SUKHINDER SINGH CASSIDY APPOINTED

By David Thodey, Xero

THE BOARD OF XERO LIMITED (ASX: XRO) ANNOUNCES THE AP POINTMENT OF SUKHIN DER SINGH CASSIDY AS XERO’S NEW CEO, FROM 1 FEBRUARY 2023. SUKHIN DER WILL SUCCEED STEVE VAMOS WHO, AFTER SERV ING ALMOST FIVE YEARS AS CEO, IS RETIRING FROM THE ROLE AND PLANS TO RETURN TO HIS PREVIOUS PORTFOLIO IN BUSINESS COACHING AND LEADER SHIP DEVELOPMENT AS AN ADVISOR, DIRECTOR AND INVESTOR.

Sukhinder is an experi enced Silicon Valley exec

utive, with more than 25 years’ global leadership ex perience, including as Pres ident, Asia Pacific & Latin America at Google; Presi dent at StubHub; founder of theBoardlist; founder of Joy us, where she was CEO; and co-founder of Yodlee. She has significant public and private board experience with multiple companies.

Xero Chair David Thodey commented: “As Xero con tinues to focus on achieving our global ambitions, we’re delighted to appoint some one of Sukhinder’s calibre as CEO to lead Xero through our next phase of growth.

Sukhinder’s appointment

follows a rigorous global re cruitment process where we considered a number of ex ceptional candidates.”

Sukhinder will start at Xero on 28 November 2022. She will work closely with Steve to manage the CEO transi tion, with Steve remaining available to advise through to the end of May 2023.

Mr Thodey continued: “Sukhinder is a purpose-driv en and human-centred lead er who is passionate about supporting our customers and is committed to growing and nurturing Xero’s unique and vibrant culture.” Read more

APPROVALMAX IS THE XERO NZ APP PARTNER OF THE YEAR 2022. WE HAVE PREVIOUSLY WON THE SAME AWARD IN THE UK IN 2021 AND 2020, AND IN NEW ZEALAND IN 2020.

does it mean to

NEW XERO COLLABORATION WITH INTEL BRINGS CLOUD ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE TO MORE SMALL BUSINESSES

Exclusive Xero offer helps small businesses better manage finances

DENVER, CO – NOVEMBER 15, 2022

– XERO, THE GLOBAL SMALL BUSI NESS FINANCE PLATFORM, HAS AN NOUNCED A COLLABORATION WITH IN TEL TO HELP EMPOWER SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS TO BETTER MANAGE THEIR FI NANCES. XERO IS THE ONLY ACCOUNT ING SOFTWARE PROVIDER INCLUDED IN THE LAUNCH OF THE INTEL SOFTWARE ADVANTAGE PROGRAM AND CAN HELP BUSINESSES GAIN MORE VISIBILITY OVER THEIR FINANCIAL POSITION SO THEY CAN GROW FASTER AND SMARTER.

In the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom, Xero customers who purchase an eligible Intel vPro ® PC (desk top or laptop) will receive an exclusive offer for Xero’s cloud accounting solutions. The Intel software bundle for business provides small businesses with access to key soft ware, extended trials, discounts, and app

XU BIWEEKLY - No. 43

Newsdesk:

If you have any news or updates that you would like us to consider for inclusion in the next edition of the XU Biweekly, please email us at: newsdesk@xumagazine.com

CEO: David Hassall

Managing Editor: Wesley Cornell

Director of Strategic Partnerships: Alex Newson

Design & Communications Manager: Bethany Fulks

Creative Assistant: Hebe Vermeulen

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‘Xero’ is a trademark of Xero Limited (New Zealand). XU Biweekly and XU Magazine is collaboratively produced by an independent group of Xero users and is not affiliated in any way with Xero. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

© XU Magazine Ltd 2014-2022. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced without the written permission of the publisher.

XU Biweekly is published by XU Magazine Ltd (08811842), registered in England and Wales. Registered office: Office 1, Brunswick House, Brunswick Way, Liverpool, L3 4BN, United Kingdom. All information contained in this publication is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. XU

Magazine Ltd cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information.

If you submit unsolicited material to us, you automatically grant XU Magazine Ltd a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in all/any editions, including in any physical or digital format, throughout the world. Any material you submit is sent at your risk and, although every care is taken, neither XU Magazine Ltd nor its employees, agents or subcontractors shall be liable for loss or damage. The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily the views of XU Magazine Ltd, its editors or its contributors.

credits worth more than $500 USD.

Xero’s cloud accounting software helps businesses sync bank and financial infor mation, monitor cash flow, reconcile trans actions, send invoices and get paid faster with online payment options. The Xero plat form can help eliminate manual data entry and provides business owners with seam less bookkeeping, so they can get a better picture of how their business is performing, identify pain points and uncover new oppor tunities for growth.

“We are proud to work together with Intel to bring Xero into the hands of even more small business owners around the world who are looking for crucial tools to help them start, run and grow their business,” said Chris O’Neill, Chief Growth Officer at Xero. “We are passionate about providing small businesses with beautiful, seamless...

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ProWorkflow New Feature Announcement: Active Time Dashboard

NOT HAVING ENOUGH VISIBILITY AROUND STAFF PRODUCTIV ITY? ARE YOU FINDING THAT YOU ARE NOT GETTING THE FULL IM AGE AROUND YOUR OUTPUT?

In the effort of helping you answer these questions, we have developed the new Active Time Dashboard. It com bines productivity and activity monitor ing to ensure you have a detailed view of what your staff are achieving for any given day or week.

So how does it work?

This dashboard allows you to monitor how your team is tracking for the week or day based on an 8-hour day/5-day working week.

Simply track time using any of the time tracking methods available on ProWorkflow, the active time dashboard will capture that time and automatical ly calculate the productive hours. The analytics allow you to even track time against your billable hours, providing you specify which tasks are billable.

The Active Time Dashboard is easy to find right next to the Homepage tab in your account.

Understanding the Active Time Dash board is easy, please see the following...

Read more

By Katie Shea

UBDOC

Consistent

a new section: documents.

This new, global section con tains all documents across all clients across your firm. This global section joins other ‘global’ sections: jobs, tasks, invoices, time entries. In future, we plan to add global sections for other ar eas (chats, contracts, etc.).

As more business goes digital, the need for chats...

PAYROLL INTEGRATION:

A new partnership with BMO to streamline bank reconciliation

By Faye Pang

THE ABILITY TO CONNECT YOUR BANK ACCOUNT TO XERO IS ONE OF OUR MOST LOVED FEATURES AND A CORE PART OF OUR VISION TO AUTO MATE ROUTINE TASKS. IT’S DESIGNED TO HELP YOUR BANK TRANSACTIONS FLOW SECURELY INTO XERO, SO YOU CAN SAVE TIME ON BANK RECONCILIATION AND HAVE BETTER VISIBILITY OF YOUR CASH FLOW.

At Xerocon New Orleans, we announced a new partnership with BMO Financial Group in Canada, and we’re excited to share that this partnership has now been extended to customers in the US. Our BMO bank feed is now available for small businesses in the US and Canada*, and allows you to:

• See your daily BMO transactions automat ically flow into Xero once a day (no need to sign into online banking or manually ex port or upload files)

• Have a 1-year transaction history...

Find out more

The 2020 Asia Pacific SMD Digital Maturi ty Study is a report commissioned by Cisco, and the research institute IDC has surveyed SMEs in the entire Asia Pacific region. The results show that SMEs with higher digital isation have twice the revenue and produc tivity than other SMEs that do not focus on digital development.

“Financial management” and “human re sources management” are one of the big gest pain points and difficulties of SMEs. One of the fastest ways for companies to fo cus on business growth and profit is to “go to the cloud”.

Find out more

N ORDER TO REDUCE COST, MANY SMES ARE RESTRICTED TO MANUAL FINAN CIAL,

AND

TIVE EFFORTS. THIS LEADS TO THE HIGH DEMAND OF SME DIGITAL TRANSFORMA TION.

Xero – the most popular and cost-effective cloud-based...

By Mark Rees, Xero

By Calen Olesen

By Faye Pang

•

1. Getting paid quickly

Through a strategic partnership with Infosys, a global digital services and con sulting company, we’re setting up a Xe ro-managed centre of technical talent at an Infosys campus in India.

Over the coming months and years, we plan to grow our technology team in India, focussing initially on attracting engineers and developers to fill roles which will help accelerate our delivery of products and features to benefit our customers.

This is an important step in our stra tegic approach to increase our team of world-leading technical specialists, to sup port our continued sustainable growth...

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All about Unmatched Transactions

The new Unmatched Transactions tab in Audit enables you to identify unmatched bank transactions in the Xero bank feed in the past 4 months per bank account. Un matched transactions are pulled from the “Reconcile” tab in Xero and are waiting to be matched or allocated to invoices, bills, or the chart of accounts.

Pro tip: You can navigate to the Cleanup view on Oversight to see how many un matched transactions there are.

This is located in the Bank section of Audit and you can toggle between the old unrec onciled and the new unmatched transac tions if the company is Xero.

Note: Only 4 months worth of data rela tive to current date. Fixes... Find out more

• Chaser – Automate your invoice chasing and streamline your processes so you can get paid faster and more consistently.

the power of hard working accountants

bookkeepers: bridge the skills gap

promote their crucial role in sup porting small businesses.

4. Equip firms with the right digital skills: write off digital tech investments to help small businesses move online or to remote operations.

Alex von Schirmeister, UK MD, Xero, said: “Small...

New to Fathom: An additional financials layout, control over residual drawdowns, a sleeker import experience

I’M EXCITED TO SHARE THAT WE’RE ESTABLISHING A XERO BASE IN INDIA, WHERE THERE IS DEEP TECHNICAL TALENT, TO ENHANCE OUR EXISTING HIRING AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS FOR TECHNOLOGY ROLES.

November 2022 |

Recurly Product launch summary

By Nicole Baptiste

How Xero and DBS are digitalising small business lending in Asia

ASK ANY SMALL BUSINESS OWN ER WHAT THE KEY TO RUNNING A SMOOTH OPERATION IS, AND CHANCES ARE, THEY’LL ALL TELL YOU THE SAME THING – POSITIVE CASH FLOW. BUT WHEN CONTENDING WITH PRES SURES LIKE LATE PAYMENTS, RISING EX PENSES AND SEASONAL SLOWDOWNS, MANY NEED EXTRA SUPPORT TO STAY OUT OF THE RED.

This is where safe and secure borrowing becomes a lifeline. However, traditional loan applications weren’t designed with small businesses in mind – something Xero and DBS Bank have set out to change.

Earlier in 2022, we deepened our partner ship with Asia’s leading financial services...

Find out more

THE NEXT STEP IN OUR JOURNEY TOWARDS NET-ZERO

By Steve Vamos

Joiin becomes a Xero staff pick with 100+ 5-star reviews

The climate crisis is affecting all of us, and every business has a role to play in supporting the transition to a net-zero economy.

At Xero, we take our responsibilities as a sustainable organisation seriously, and we’re committed to taking meaningful ac tion on climate change. This is...

Read more

At Joiin, we’ve

By Alex Hoffman

A

GLOBAL LEADER

IN PRAC TICE MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS FOR MODERN ACCOUNTING FIRMS, TODAY ANNOUNCED THE APPOINTMENT OF JACK NEWTON AS A NEW MEMBER OF ITS BOARD OF DIRECTORS.

Newton is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Clio, a company that has trans formed the legal experience through cloudbased and client-centered legal technology. In 2021, Clio became the first legal practice management platform to earn unicorn sta tus with a Series E funding valuation of $1.6 billion USD. As a pioneer in cloud-based technology, Newton brings a wealth of ex perience to Karbon. Find out more

BGL CORPORATE SOLUTIONS, AUS TRALIA'S LEADING PROVIDER OF SMSF, INVESTMENT PORTFOLIO AND COMPANY COMPLIANCE MANAGE MENT SOFTWARE, IS PROUD TO AN NOUNCE IT HAS BEEN RECOGNISED ON THE 2022 AUSTRALIA'S BEST WORK PLACES™ FOR WOMEN LIST.

"This is a fantastic achievement for BGL and recognises the teams' passion and commitment to fostering an inclu sive and equitable workplace culture" said Ron Lesh, BGL's Managing Director. "BGL is one of only 30 organisations to receive this recognition following a survey of more than 20,000 female employees from Australia's Great Place to Work ® Certified™ organisations."

Presented by Great Place to Work®, the inaugural Best Workplaces for Women™ List highlights organisations across the country committed to fostering equity in...

FYI continues UK expansion with another strategic hire

FYI, THE LEADING DOCUMENT MAN AGEMENT AND AUTOMATION PLAT FORM FOR ACCOUNTANTS, AN NOUNCE THE CONTINUING FOCUS ON THE UK WITH ANOTHER OF THEIR STRA TEGIC POSITIONS BEING FILLED. MEG GARLICK WILL BE JOINING THE UK TEAM TO SPEARHEAD THE ONBOARDING AND ONGOING SUCCESS OF OUR CUSTOMERS.

“We targeted growth in the UK for 2022 as one of our strategic goals. We’re really excit ed to announce another key position that’s going to help improve the entire client expe rience,” said Rob Cameron, CEO of FYI. “One of our guiding pillars is making sure account ancy firms have a great first impression once they’ve chosen FYI. We offer easy...

Find out more

As someone who has had the opportu nity to watch our South African business grow - as the country’s first certified Xero partner and then joining the team in 2016 - I wanted to reflect on our progress and commitment to the market.

In the last few years we’ve delivered on important product features like launch ing South Africa’s first fully digital bank feed with Nedbank and a number of other banks including Investec following. We... Read more

Jack

Newton, CEO & Founder of Clio, appointed Board member of Karbon

KARBON,

By Bridget Snelling

WINNERS OF THE CUSTOMER SER VICE ORGAN ISATION OF THE YEAR (SMALL), THE FATHOM TEAM ATTENDED THE PRESTIGIOUS 2022 CSIA AWARDS WITH AUSTRAL IA’S BEST SERVICE EXCEL LENCE ORGANISATIONS. READ ON FOR OUR FULL WRAP.

Fathom joined an out

standing group of Australian organisations representing a broad range of sectors at the recent Customer Ser vice Institute of Australia’s (CSIA) prestigious Service Excellence Awards. These awards recognise best prac tice, performance, and inno vation in customer service.

We are thrilled to an nounce that Fathom took...

Find out more

By Pedro Sampaio

IAM THRILLED TO SHARE THAT CHASER HAS BEEN SHORTLISTED AT THE CICM BRITISH CREDIT AWARDS FOR A SECOND YEAR RUNNING. CHASER IS SHORTLISTED FOR THE INNOVATION & TECHNOL OGY AWARD, FOR THE RE SEARCH, RELEASE, AND RESULTS OF THE SMS PAY MENT REMINDERS FEA TURE.

After being shortlisted for B2B Supplier of the Year and the Innovation & Technology Award in 2022, and winning the B2B Supplier of the Year Award in March 2022, it is an honour to again be recog nised by the CICM.

The Chartered Institute of Credit Management (CICM) is the world's largest rec

ognised professional body for the credit management community. The CICM Brit ish Credit Awards recognise stand-out achievements of the most deserving individu als, teams, and organisations in the international credit in dustry.

The Innovation & Technol ogy Award recognises the impact of applying new in formation and communica tions technology across the credit management spec trum. It recognises solutions that help to achieve greater efficiency, enhanced qual ity, better customer ser vice, lower error rates and/ or effective implementation within agreed budgets and timetables. Read more

By Sean Woods

THE WORLD OF AC COUNTING IS PIV OTING WITH IN CREASING GOVERNMENT REQUIREMENTS AND EVOLVING CLIENT NEEDS.

IF YOU DON’T MANAGE CHANGE IN THE COMING YEARS, CHANGE COULD MANAGE YOU—LEADING TO A CAREER FOREVER ON THE TREADMILL. TAKE CONTROL NOW AND EN SURE THE COMING YEARS ARE EVERYTHING YOU WANT THEM TO BE.

The pandemic showed how accountants are the true superheroes of the business world.

Yes, there was significant extra work. But a door was opened. As accountants performed tasks like helping clients prepare reporting to access government assis tance, clients were educated about a closer relationship with an advisor they could trust.

Similarly, Making Tax Dig ital in the UK has indicated that client relationships can evolve as accountants focus more on additional service offerings, such as periodic financial check-ups, and less on basic compliance now that the government de

mands technology do much of that work.

All of this is becoming the norm, rather than the excep tion.

In the very near future, more and more taxes will be digitalised—everything from income tax to corpo ration tax. Simultaneously, governments worldwide are increasing business regula tion.

that’s right for everybody. But it’s wise to jump off the treadmill for just a few min utes and plan your route. The focus should be less about the specific and unique challenges. Instead, look at the ways you can navigate through the challenges in a way that will create a future perfect for you.

Scaling up, scaling down, specialising or more rad

Scaling up

As the philosopher Alan Watts said, the only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

For accountants, this means scaling their practice to exploit challenges in the coming years.

But while basic growth is simple—do more of what

decade, resulting in an in evitable fight to the bottom when it comes to pricing and profit. Nowadays a high street accountant competes with online services.

Providing more of the same is unlikely to be effec tive. Instead, fresh service offerings and increasing your practice’s understand ing of client needs must be central to any plans to scale.

clients being able to cope with the increased demands of at least quarterly reports for each trade and landlord income, plus discrete end of period statements (EOPS).

And that’s before we discuss the requirements for digital record keeping and digital linking.

Clients that scribble down income and expenses as they occur, then hand this over to their accountant each January along with a bag full of receipts, are in for a huge shock.

But some accountan cy practices are seizing the chance to manage this change and in doing so, they illustrate perfectly the mind set needed for practices looking to scale.

Client accounting services

You need to choose how you and your practice will fit into this new world.

The issues are the same as they ever have been: ensur ing you’re relevant to clients, pricing services optimally, remaining profitable, and so forth, all while being guided by your values.

There isn’t a single path

ical options—all must be explored, and a destination selected.

And that’s perhaps the most important point. All journeys start with a single step. But less often men tioned is that all successful journeys start by choosing the best destination for you.

you’re already doing—ac countancy practices have opportunities to instead evolve what they do, driven by aforementioned increas ing government require ments and changing client demands.

After all, basic account ing services have become commoditised over the last

For example, Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment (MTD ITSA) ar rives in the 2024/25 tax year, with the expectation that many businesses will signup to the pilot programme ahead of time as of the 2023/24 tax year.

There remains indus try-wide incredulity about

MTD ITSA’s quarterly re porting requirement in par ticular means some business owners and managers will need to have much more contact with their account ing.

Because of the obvious re luctance of those clients to do so, some accountancy...

Find out more

READY FOR MTD FOR ITSA

By

AS YOU’RE NO DOUBT AWARE, MAKING TAX DIGITAL (MTD) FOR INCOME TAX SELF ASSESSMENT IS COMING. FROM APRIL 2024, APPROXI MATELY 4.2 MILLION SOLE TRADER BUSI NESSES AND LANDLORDS WITH TURNO VERS ABOVE £10,000 WILL BE INCLUDED. HMRC HAS BEEN DRIP-FEEDING INFOR MATION ABOUT MTD FOR ITSA TO THE ACCOUNTANCY INDUSTRY FOR SOME TIME NOW.

We hear from our customers that they’re finding it difficult to keep on top of the guidelines. Yet we are still over eighteen months away from the introduction of MTD. How will things progress as the deadline draws closer?

Why accountants and their clients must prepare for MTD now

At Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting UK, our customers face similar challenges. They’re already dealing with a lot of informa tion and complexity, and trying to maximise productivity. MTD adds another dimension to the race to understand how accountants can embrace technology to move forward in their profession.

Accountants need to be on top of MTD so that they can advise their clients. It is often small business owners who may struggle with the transition. The new provisions need to be understood sooner rather than later, or the scope for misunderstanding may in crease. Accountancy practices will also save time in the long run by preparing for the up coming changes now.

Migration to new HMRC-approved soft ware is likely to run more smoothly if ac

countants don’t put MTD to one side. The sooner accountants reach a clear under standing of MTD, the greater the benefit will be for practices and their clients. Below, we’ve provided our answers to some key questions that we continually hear from our customers.

What key steps will ensure compli ance with MTD for ITSA?

1. Digital records must be maintained in HM RC-compatible software, or software that is digitally linked to HMRC-compatible software.

2. For each qualifying business, quarterly up dates will need to be submitted to HMRC, as well as an end-of-period statement.

3. A final declaration that includes all other taxable income should be submitted by the usual 31 January deadline.

4. Tax should be paid as usual by the same deadlines that exist today.

What information needs to be recorded to be compliant?

For each transaction, the following data points must be recorded digitally.

1. The date of the transaction

2. The transaction amount 3. The category of expenses the transaction relates to

4. The trade or property business the income relates to

If the business is retail, daily gross... Keep reading

Economic Turmoil vs Christmas Parties

How To Manage and Process Festive Entertainment Spending As Expenses

Are Expected To

By Sunil Nigam, ExpenseOnDemand

ALMOST THREE YEARS HAVE PASSED SINCE THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEM IC STRUCK, AND THIS HAS HAD A HUGE IMPACT ON BUSINESSES ACROSS THE GLOBE. THIS YEAR IS SET TO BE THE FIRST FESTIVE PERIOD SINCE 2019 WITH NO COVID RESTRICTIONS INTERRUPTING CHRIST MAS FESTIVITIES WHICH IS EXPECTED TO CAUSE A SURGE IN TRAVEL AND ENTERTAINMENT EXPENS ES AS OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTIES ARE BACK.

As a global expenses app, ExpenseOnDemand moni tors trends in business ex pense management to en sure that our cutting-edge technology always com plements business require ments and helps control and manage employee expenses throughout the year.

Since September our data has shown that mileage and travel expense and claims have increased by 21% and entertainment claims by 15% showing that employees are spending more time visit ing contacts, clients, and colleagues. As we enter the festive period, we are ex pecting these trends to in crease further meaning for many businesses Christmas entertainment spending is expected to reach pre-pan

Eclipse

Pre-Pandemic

demic levels for the first time.

Travel expenses have in creased by 21% and enter tainment claims by 15% as trends show employees are spending more time visiting clients and contacts.

Many businesses are also expected to host staff Christmas parties for the first time since 2019 and with many workers now working remotely employee expense claims are expect ed to eclipse pre-pandemic levels as millions of workers leave their homes to meet work colleagues and cele brate the festive period.

Over the Christmas pe riod, increased client and staff entertainment mean that there is an influx of employee entertainment claims that can often be hard to monitor. If your business doesn’t currently automate expenses this is a good period to implement a solution such as Expen seOnDemand.

Beware of Bogus Claims

Employee claims have al ways been difficult to mon itor and manage especial ly when you have a larger workforce with a manual

Levels

process and in today’s en vironment. Many employees also favour using their per sonal bank and credit cards for expenses to benefit from rewards and Air Miles. Our innovative tech is helping firms automate processes, spot duplicate receipts, and easily authenticate claims often saving them thou sands or even millions in costs every year.

Whether you employ 5 or 200 people, it has become imperative that you source the right tech to automate as many business process es as possible to protect your business and staff for problems that remote work ing can cause. One of these issues has been the rise in ‘bogus’ employee expense claims and we have pub lished some of the dubious expenses that have been uploaded to our app to il lustrate how our leading au tomated tech solution has handled these and flagged these to our clients, saving businesses thousands every year.

Businesses around the world are losing billions in employee expense fraud but cutting-edge expense management tech is rapidly helping alert firms to false claims and put an end... Find out more

Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting UK

• Revolut celebrates £20m in total cus tomer donations to a variety of char itable causes through its Donations feature.

• To receive a Poppy card, Revolut cus tomers must donate at least £5 to the Royal British Legion through the Revo lut app - the RBL receives 100% of the donation.

Revolut, the global financial superapp with more than 20 million customers worldwide, and more than five million retail customers in the UK, has released its Poppy card in partnership with the Royal British Legion and Visa. The card provides Revolut’s UK customers with a unique way to show their support for the RBL’s Poppy Appeal.

Last year, 10,000 Revolut customers got their hands on the Poppy card and raised more than £100,000 for the RBL. This year the Royal British Legion is recognising the extraordinary service of our Armed Forces community and how they risk everything to protect you, de spite having never met you. Taking part in the Poppy Appeal shows the whole...

Keep reading

Tide Toolkits:

Most Popular Xero Add-Ons For ECommerce Stores

XERO IS AN INVAL UABLE TOOL FOR ECOMMERCE MER CHANTS. AFFORDABLE, EASY TO USE AND 100% CLOUD-BASED, IT IS EASY TO INCORPORATE INTO ANY DIGITAL INFRASTRUC TURE. AS WELL AS BEING ARGUABLY THE BEST AC COUNTING PLATFORM ON THE MARKET, IT ALSO HAS ROBUST INVENTORY MAN AGEMENT CAPABILITIES.

A2X is arguably the best Xero add-on for ecommerce merchants to manage their books and reconcile pay ments across multiple plat forms including Amazon, Shopify, Walmart, eBay and Etsy.

up on a tiered basis.

We’ve handpicked some of our smart fea tures that can support you and your busi ness in the fight against rising prices. Spoiler alert: they’re ready and waiting for you to add them to your account in your Tide app.

Get paid on time

Rising inflation and energy prices are a key concern for many small businesses. If you’re among them, it’s likely that you could do with ways to ensure your customers pay their invoices on time.

“Making sure you get paid promptly and chasing payment for unpaid invoices is vital.”

– Philip King, former small business commis sioner and Tide Cash Flow Expert

1. Invoice Assistant

Chased invoices often get paid faster. In voice Assistant does the hard work for you by automatically chasing late invoices and matching the payment to the correct in voice.

2. Direct Debit with GoCardless

Collect recurring or one-off invoice pay ments as soon as they’re due. Simply set up a Direct Debit mandate, and your customer will be notified before each payment is...

Find out more

Not to mention a suite of integrations that can sup port, enhance and elevate your operations. Whether you’re just starting out with a little side hustle, or you already run a thriving ecom merce empire, Xero’s 700+ range of add-ons help you to simplify your operations, re duce admin time and make your business more profita ble.

Let’s take a look at 5 of the most popular add-ons for ecommerce retailers on the Xero add-on marketplace.

A2X

One of Xero’s staff picks,

A study by the Depart ment for Business, Ener gy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) reveals that just un der a fifth (18%) of UK retail er businesses use third-par ty online platforms as well as their own website. If you want to grow your customer base by supplementing your sales with other trusted plat forms, A2X is a great way to sync and automate directly to Xero for total transpar ency, no matter how many other online marketplaces you use.

Airsquare

If you want to bring a di verse offering of products or services to market, Air square is the tool for you.

It is especially useful if you want to offer products or services on a subscription basis, as pricing can be set

You can also set up tiered pricing for physical and in tangible products, e.g. retail and wholesale, member and non-member. Airsquare also natively supports the sale of physical products, tickets and donations.

Airsquare provides you with everything you need to set up an online store, man age inventory, accept pay ments and process orders.

Amaka

If you’re looking for a resource to simplify your ecommerce operations, look no further than Ama ka. Amaka can save grow ing ecommerce companies a great deal of unnecessary admin time by automating data entry, document exe cution and bank reconcilia tion. This handy tool is used to connect your preferred ecommerce platform with your POS and e-signature systems, which sync auto matically with Xero on a dai ly basis.

Keep reading

WE'VE ADDED AND UPDAT ED FEATURES ON THE AZUPAY CLIENT DASHBOARD

• There is a new role for the Azupay client dash board called ‘Finance operator’ which allows users to view the fol lowing pages within the dashboard: Home page, Reports, Trans actions and Payment Agreements. This is a read-only role and does not have access to make refunds or add users to the dashboard

• The Daily Transaction Report V2 now includes a new field “local time” to allow for easier recon ciliation of transactions.

• When there are no transactions to display for the reporting period, the daily transaction re

port V2 will now show the current balance of your combined account.

We've added and updated features for azupayTO.

• NPP transaction ID is now included in the pay ment initiation API re sponse and webhook notification when a pay ment initiation has been successfully created.

• Mandate ID is now includ ed in the webhook notifi cation when an agreement is successfully created.

• Payee initiated amend ments are now han dled automatical ly by Azupay system:

- Payee initiated amend ments, authorised by the payer, will be reflected in the agreement’s record

- Payee initiated amend ments, declined by the payer, will not be reflected in the agreement’s record

- Payee initiated amend ments, which have timed out, will not be reflected in the agree ment’s record

Each scenario will gen erate a webhook notifica tion to merchants (com pleted, declined, timed out).

For more detailed infor mation on these updates, please refer to the Devel oper Portal.

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The smart products that will help you tackle the rising cost of doing business

LAST YEAR, 10,000 REVOLUT CUS TOMERS GOT THEIR HANDS ON THE POPPY CARD AND RAISED MORE THAN £100,000 FOR THE ROYAL BRITISH LEGION, THE UK’S LARGEST ARMED FORCES CHARITY DEDICATED TO SUPPORTING THE NEEDS OF THE ARMED FORCES COMMUNITY, INCLUD ING VETERANS, CURRENT SERVING PERSONNEL AND THEIR FAMILIES.

The cost of doing business across boarders

Wise Platform and Deel expand 3-year partnership with brand-new feature

By Liispet Kaisel

• Revolut now has more than 25 million retail customers, following Revolut’s 20m announcement in July

• Founded in London in 2015, Revolut’s customer base now makes more than 330 million transactions each month

• Revolut to launch in Brazil, India and New Zealand in the coming months

• Revolut Business welcomes more than 2,000 new active businesses every week

Launched in the UK in 2015, Revolut offers money transfer and exchange. Today, over 25 million of its retail cus tomers around the world use dozens of innovative Revolut products including peer-to-peer payments, Saving Vaults, <18 accounts, Stays for holiday booking, and Trading.

Revolut has expanded its presence further in the US this year, where it has over half a million retail users and now employs over 150 people in North Amer ica. On top of that, Revolut is expanding into several new markets across LATAM, Asia and the Middle East. In the last year, Revolut has achieved the following:

1. India - Appointment of Paroma Chat terjee as CEO, Arjun Mehta as CFO and Saleem Arshad as CTO. We have built a team of 400+ employees in India and intend to launch the Revolut app in In dia soon.

2. Mexico - Appointment of Juan Miguel Guerra as CEO. Expanding our work force in the country, with plans to em ploy more than 250 new positions by 2025 between Mexico and Brazil

3. Brazil - Appointment of Glauber Mota as CEO of Brazil and Felipe Lachowski, Brazil Head of Strategy & Operations

4. New Zealand - The company is set to launch in New Zealand in the next few months, to complement its existing operations in Australia

Revolut is also launching a...

Read more

Today, we are announcing the launch of a brand-new deposit flow feature that will em power Deel customers to execute payments even more conveniently and efficiently.

Deel allows businesses to fast-track global expansion by handling worldwide compli ance, payroll and HR in over 150 countries. This means ensuring that teams are paid efficiently, on-time, and in the currency that works best for them.

Wise Platform and Deel have worked to gether for 3 years to allow customers to choose the best currency to pay employees around the world.

Starting today, our newest integration will further streamline global payroll for Deel customers by allowing customers to send funds via Deel using a simple email address, significantly reducing the time it takes to pay employees. This will simultaneously open up an additional 10 currencies to our integration, including JPY, MYR, NOK, PLN and SEK, bringing the total number of avail able currencies to 19.

With more companies chasing dreams of global expansion, and as international teams become more possible and popular, our partnership with Deel is among the best examples of how, when we work together, we can build a world in which money has no borders.

Dan Westgarth, Chief Operating Officer at Deel, said: “Wise’s new feature allows even more Deel customers to use their local cur rency and local payment system, expanding our capabilities and bringing the Wise expe rience to more businesses around the world. This is massively beneficial for our custom ers, who choose Deel to make hiring, on boarding, and executing payroll for overseas employees a breeze.”

Wise Platform works with over 50 banks and businesses to integrate the power of Wise into their existing infrastructure... Keep reading

FEW SMALL BUSI NESSES AND THEIR ACCOUNTANTS PRO ACTIVELY MANAGE THE COSTS OF DOING BUSI NESS INTERNATIONALLY. SOME TURN TO FINTECHS SUCH AS WISE, WORLD FIRST AND AIRWALLEX TO REDUCE THE COSTS OF INTERNATIONAL TRANS FERS AND COLLECTIONS, BUT THIS STILL LEAVES A WIDE GAP COMPARED TO HOW LARGE BUSINESSES GET TO MANAGE THEIR IN TERNATIONAL FINANCES. HEDGEFLOWS OFFERS A FLEXIBLE TOOLKIT THAT HELPS CROSS THIS GAP FOR BUSINESSES OF ANY SIZE.

Jonathan Gaunt (FD Works): "FX is becoming more and more important to our clients. We are dabbling with things like Wise but it is

not sufficient for this kind of clients."

LACK OF TOOLS

Starting with tedious payments and reconcilia tion processes, foreign cur rencies are a bug bear for many FinOps teams and book-keepers. Where other solutions have emerged to help streamline these pro cesses in one’s home curren cy, popular accounting sys tems don’t offer adequate tools to make foreign pay ments reconciliations or re mittances easy, for example.

“We're not taking advan tage of using things like batch payments that we would use for kind of UK, domestic payments”, adds Jonathan.

HedgeFlows is the first cloud-based solution that supports two-way integra

tions with Xero, Sage or Quickbooks and offers pay ments automation to easily process payment runs in up to 30 currencies simultane ously, with or without for eign conversions.

GAINS AND LOSSES

Understanding the true drivers of foreign curren cy gains and losses is also something that many busi nesses want to be able to do better. But for many, it is the lack of practical understand ing and easy-to-use solu tions that stops them from looking into this problem more proactively.

As Raz Miah (Gunberg & Co) explains: "When and where should they exchange their FX - they don't even think about it. Some of... Keep reading

Introducing Return Shopping: A New, Free Revenue Stream for Shopify Merchants

HAPPY RETURNS, A PAYPAL COM PANY, IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE RETURN SHOPPING, A NEW REV ENUE STREAM FOR SHOPIFY MERCHANTS. THIS FEATURE HELPS DRIVE SHOPPERS TO MERCHANTS’ E-COM MERCE STOREFRONTS WITHIN THE RETURN EXPERIENCE, HELPING RETAIN REVENUE WITH OUT THE ACCOUNTING CHALLENGES ASSOCI ATED WITH EXCHANG

ING ITEMS OF DIFFERENT PRICES.

“Now, more than ever, shopper re-engagement and revenue retention are key priorities for merchants. It's not enough to make re turns easy, merchants need to account for every dollar and bring shoppers back at every stage. We’ve creat ed a way to re-engage cus tomers at a critical point in the shopper journey, in an innovative way that keeps financial reporting simple.”

Free feature for Shopify merchants

Return Shopping is a free feature available to both current and future Happy Returns customers using the Return & Ex change Portal and Shopify. This optional feature can be enabled via the...

Find out more

-Sanaz Hajizadeh, DIrector of Product Management, Happy Returns

THREE YEARS AGO WISE PLATFORM PARTNERED WITH LEADING GLOBAL HR AND PAYROLL COMPANY, DEEL TO GIVE DEEL’S BUSINESS CUSTOMERS AN EASIER WAY TO MANAGE THEIR PAY ROLL ACROSS BORDERS.

REVOLUT, THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL SUPER APP, HAS SURPASSED 25 MILLION RETAIL CUSTOM ERS WORLDWIDE, AND IS NOW PRO CESSING OVER 330 MILLION TRANS ACTIONS A MONTH. THE COMPANY CELEBRATES THE MILESTONE AS IT CONTINUES ITS GLOBAL EXPANSION INTO SEVERAL NEW MARKETS.

tops 25 million retail customers as global expansion continues