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 be able to see ALL their bank accounts in one place; accurately track where their money is going; set savings goals and monitor the progress toward these – all in a way that’s not been seen before.
Early this year I wrote a post espousing my view that, for small businesses at least, there is a very blurred line between personal finance and business finance. CEO of Xero, Rod Drury concurs, saying that;
There’s an increasing blur between consumer and SME services and personal/consumer finance literacy is a hot topic on the global stage, recent evidence of this is US financial and business solution giant Intuit acquiring Californian based online personal finance service Mint.com for US$170 million.
When the Mint deal went down, I dived in early surmising that the deal, beyond customer acquisition would, over time, see a blending of the personal and business finance products to reflect the real world reality (disclosure – despite Intuit being a client, I have no visibility over the strategy for Mint).
Xero have posted a teaser video of the product (see below);
The video shows similar functionality to that which another New Zealand startup, Pocketsmith, provides. However I can see this morphing much more into a hybrid dashboard approach. Given the blurred lines between business and personal finance, it would make sense to create a dashboard that allows an individual visibility into both their business and personal expenditure at the same time, one that allows transactions through personal accounts to automatically be posted to the business ledgers, and one which allows tracking of both the business and personal goals and helps in balancing the two.
In New Zealand Xero is partnering with the Bank of New Zealand (who is a fairly significant shareholder in the company) to deliver the application for a reported “less than $5 a month”. What is really interesting is that the BNZ seems poised to market the product overseas, something of a rarity seeing a traditional bank branching out into new services in new markets. Update – It was rash of me to say that the BNZ will be marketing the personal edition overseas – apologies for any confusion caused…
Personal addition, as I suggest in my post from the start of the year, is a complete no-brainer, what remains to be seen is the strength of the bonds between Xero for business and Xero personal
Thanks for the blog post Ben, we’d just like to clarify one point. You say BNZ seems poised to market Xero Personal overseas. Our partnership with BNZ is for New Zealand customers only.
Sara Goepel
Xero Personal Product Manager
Great move – If they can seamlessly deal with Xero Business < -> Xero Business, Xero Business < -> Xero Personal and also Xero Personal < -> Xero Personal it will be a great way to run a household. As both my wife and I have our own accounts, joint accounts and both run small businesses this would be a godsend.
Very interesting times indeed. Mint, Wesabe et al are great products, but hamstrung by their inability to link to local Aus/NZ banks easily. If Xero can come out of the gates with live links to BNZ, ANZ and other major banks then they will be able to gain a very strong foothold with local users.
I already use Xero for my business, so adding Xero Personal is really a no brainer.
@Sara – apologies for that, I inferred it from your market announcement – will update post now
@Glen – absolutely – intra entity visibility is critical here
@Devan – yup – good time indeed… not sure on the Aus thing though…
Question… People know they should manage their finances…but do the WANT to?
From memory Quickbooks did this a few years back and it failed for this reason….
@Paul – mint has got quite a large amount of momentum as has quicken (both online and desktop). Given the bank partnership I think it’s a winner…
@Paul
I agree – personal finances are a chore. Unless of course you tie it to buying a tv, house, holiday, retirement. HAng on – sounds like a goal. Wait a minute –
Rod’s an investor in Plan HQ. A company that is all about planning to achieve goals. I’d say a combo of code is on the cards.
Personal accounting software is necessary to manage all the financial flows. It estimates the budget and helps us spend it in an optimized way. Whether it’s free or not, it will be really helpful. Go to http://www.personalaccountingsoftware.org/ to learn more.