Xero announces platform improvements to supercharge bank reconciliation

By Gaia Lamperti

Xero, the global small business platform pioneering cloud-based bank reconciliation since 2007, announced today the most comprehensive improvements to its platform in a decade.

The firm reconciles banking transactions in a fast and simple way to provide a real-time, accurate picture of a business’ financial position without needing to spend hours manually checking transactions. The feature is specifically designed for small businesses and advisors.

“Ever since we introduced bank reconciliation in Xero, it has become one of the most fundamental and well-loved features of the platform. By gamifying this business-critical yet time-consuming task, we’ve been able to turn it into a simple and seamless workflow for business owners and bookkeepers,” said Craig Walker, Xero Executive General Manager Product Payments, Billing & Automation.

With more than 1.7 billion transactions processed in the past 12 months, the additional improvements will create an even easier and efficient experience for Xero’s over 2.7 million subscribers around the world.

The platform’s upgrade leverages powerful artificial intelligence capabilities to save time, reduce data entry and increase accuracy. These insights will particularly cater to small businesses and advisors, with greater insights to help make better decisions about their business, plan for the future, access capital and ensure they are always compliant.

The improvements include:

• An all-new design and interface – to more easily manage bank rules and reconciliation, making bank reconciliation a more beautiful experience, not just a simple one
• Smarter matching algorithms– powered by artificial intelligence, that make more accurate suggestions faster than ever
• Memorisation for transfers – which intelligently remembers customer transfers between bank accounts, reducing data entry for recurring transfers
• Suggestions for contacts and account codes – coming soon for new transactions entered into Xero that haven’t been reconciled previously, giving businesses and bookkeepers a starting point and further reducing data input
• New search capabilities – coming soon to help businesses easily find and manage the right bank rule in seconds

“Much has changed at Xero over the past 15 years, but our vision remains the same: we want to make life better for people in small business, their advisors and communities around the world,” Walker said. “The concept of bank reconciliation hasn’t changed either. With more than 1.7 billion transactions processed in the past year alone on Xero, we’re able to make the insights it provides even more powerful while saving crucial time for business owners.”

Xero offers an ecosystem of over 1,000 third-party apps and a network of connections to 300 plus banks and other financial partners around the world giving subscribers access to rich, real-time banking data automatically fed into its platform.  In recent times, the company has been expanding internationally by teaming up with South African bank Nedbank and with the acquisition of Stockholm-based e-invoicing infrastructure business Tickstar which has customers in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.