Xero Gets Direct Bank Feeds in the US (and elsewhere)
US customers have been waiting for automated bank feeds from Xero for awhile now. In New Zealand, Australia and the UK Xero build relationships directly with the banks and many were waiting to see what strategy they would adopt in the US market. This morning Xero announced that they have entered into an agreement with [...]
Intacct Winter 2010 – More Strings to the Bow
Last week I had a briefing from Dan Druker, SVP Marketing from Intacct (more here) on their forthcoming winter release and a review of their 2009 performance. First a recap of the past year: 80% quarter to quarter growth in Q4 Over 3300 customers with over 30000 users Massive uptake from accounting firms with their [...]
Intuit and Microsoft Sign Deal to Serve SMBs
Huge breaking news this morning is that Microsoft and Intuit (see disclosure here) have agreed to work together on the Intuit Partner Platform to bring a host of products and services to a greatly expanded customer base. This really is massive news for anyone involved in small or medium business – be it as a [...]
It’s Multi-Currency Month
I posted awhile ago when Xero rolled out multi-currency so it’s only fair to do a wrap up of the latest multi-currency entries. Both FreshBooks and FreeAgentCentral announced this month the availability of their multi currency functionality. The FreeAgent offering is really slick, including on the fly calculation of daily unrealized and realized gains and [...]
SaaS, Accounting, Microsoft Money and Hyperbole.
Over on Accounting Web, a right royal stoush was started when Aqilla’s Hugh Scantlebury wrote an op ed piece opining what the withdrawal of Microsoft’s Office Accounting product means and, more importantly, what is behind the move. For those who need the history, Microsoft discontinued its Office Accounting product line, having determined that; existing free [...]
MinuteDock Makes Every Minute Count
Services businesses life blood is their ability to track time. As such it could be argued that any accounting application that is focused on the services market should have time tracking built in as a core feature. Having used SaaS accounting application Xero for years and growing tired of copying and pasting hours from time [...]
Billflo Powers (Almost) Seamless Invoicing
Back in April I reviewed the newly launched service that billFLO provides. In their own words billFLO; billFLO focuses on eliminating invoicing friction for SMBs. We work with the likes of Quickbooks, Freshbooks, Less Accounting, Harvest and Blinksale to enable users to send and receive machine readable invoices straight into their accounting system. At the [...]
The Customers Asked, Xero Answered. FreshBooks Integration…
Go to market strategies are an intensely interesting topic of conversation. In the very early days of its existence, I was a little dubious with the strategy that Xero took – that is partnering with accounting practices and using them as the channel. I had several issues with that – the issues around revenue sharing, [...]
The iPhone and Business; Netsuite Banks on a Happy Union
It was only a couple of years ago that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, fatefully dismissed the iPhone as a device and as a concept – for those who haven’t seen it, check out (for posterity’s sake if nothing else) the video below; Fast forward two or three years and we have the situation where an [...]
Xero Goes Personal – This Changes the Game
An announcement from Xero today that I’ve known about for awhile but not been able to discuss publicly. From the media release; Online small business accounting software provider Xero (XRO) will launch a personal money manager in early 2010. Xero Personal will allow consumers to have a complete view all aspects of their finances. They’ll [...]
Your Business Cloud – Holy Grail Anyone?
I’m a cloud evangelist from what I believe is a totally pragmatic perspective – I believe the cloud in general, and SaaS in particular, deliver significant added value merely by virtue of the fact that they’re connected, connectable and able to leverage aggregate knowledge. I’m not however completely dogmatic. While I understand the arguments for [...]
Pastel My Business Online – Review
Accounting 2.0 at CloudAve In an ongoing series of reviews and analysis pieces, CloudAve will be taking a deep look into accounting software for the new world. See the other posts at this tag Introduction & Background SoftlinePastel is a South African software house owned by Sage PLC. Pastel was founded in 1990 by Steve [...]
Software+Services…. Intuit Bets that Desktop Software Ain’t Dead Yet
Considering CloudAve’s core thesis is the move to cloud computing, and given this authors penchant for cloud applications, one would have thought any development in the desktop software space would be dismissed. The truth is somewhat different however. I’m a major user of web apps but I’ve also got installed software on my machines – [...]
Coda2go and Salesforce – Oh the Irony
There is some poetic irony in the news today as the originator of the SaaS acronym, salesforce.com, announces an investment in one of the copybook examples of moving from on-premises to SaaS, Coda2go. (More on Coda here). Here we see a marriage between salesforce – the king of the on-demand world, and Coda, a traditional vendor [...]
SaaS and Coffee – They’re Both All About Granularity
It seems fitting for a morning post to include coffee themes – no doubt many are reading this post with a brew in hand, and in that spirit I’ll admit that I’m writing it with a supreme C4 Coffee long black sitting next to me. Xero (disclosure – Xero is a past client) announced yesterday [...]
