Foreword
Small business is the largest contributor to a country’s economy — in all countries worldwide. We created Xero to help small businesses to be more productive. We figured that helping small business increase in scale is purposeful and worthwhile.
From our own experience, business can be fun. For most small business owners, it’s certainly all-consuming. While in our previous roles we liked building businesses, we didn’t like the drudgery of administrative jobs and working late into the night to meet a looming tax return deadline. As we talked to other business owners it became clear that we weren’t alone — for most, doing the books was the number one pain of running a small business.
Desktop-based small business accounting software hadn’t changed much in years and still operated in a similar way as when it was first designed, in a time well before we all had email! Yet the internet had delivered some amazing things — such as internet banking, eBay, Facebook and LinkedIn. The time was right to rethink accounting software and design it for the web, where everything can be connected.
By thinking hard about design, and about what small business owners actually do, we came up with a new model. A system where bank transactions can be loaded for you automagically first thing in the morning. Where your accountant or bookkeeper can log in to your files and help you, without you needing to send data around. Where invoices are living documents that show up-to-date outstanding balances. ...
