One major differentiator between competing SaaS accounting products is in their ability to work in multi-currencies. Beyond the simple yes/no answer however is the degree the vendor goes to in order to allow every possible use case for multi currency.
I’ve been invited to spend some time with Xero in a couple of weeks doing some video interviews with some of their people in advance of the release of the multi-currency part of their application.
They released today however a video (see below) of the design prototype for multi currency, perhaps in answer to an increasing number of enquiries from international users about just what functionality multi-currency will support. The video is a design prototype (more on the methodology around their design process here) and some of the functionality may not see its way into the first version.
The functionality that the video suggests is impressive – every use case seems to be covered including such outliers as invoicing multiple currencies to one customer, receiving multiple currencies to the bank account, inline bank fees (ie not as part of a separate statement line) and multiple methods of calculating the forex rate.
Multi-currency is a critical issue for those who need it, but the percentage of users who actually need it is pretty slow. Strategically however multi-currency is a no brainer. Giving users full multi-currency options screams “robust, full featured and serious” from the mountaintops.
Of course there’s a bunch of stuff that Xero need to roll out to fulfil that claim, but having seen the amount of time and effort that multi-currency has taken up, and knowing the number of development staff that Xero is recruiting, I’m expecting the cool stuff to come rolling out thick and fast.
Multi-currency Prototype from Xero on Vimeo.
Do they have any plans to launch a US specific version?
This would be a great addition to the lineup of SaaS accounting packages available for the US market. It seems as if Xero could rival QuickBooks online in terms of functionality, and beats it in terms of ease of use… A US specific version with Freshbooks integration (Basecamp integration too would be great) and US specific Sales Tax capabilities would be awesome…
Brandan – my sources tell me that yes, a US version is in the works
@Brandan – we have quite a few customers in the US going strong with the global version of Xero.
Most of those US customers are switching over from Quickbooks.
We’ve had some basic requests (like address formatting) that we’re adding.
Some people are also requesting check printing, which we’re exploring.
Since all those requests are globally relevant, we’ll be updating the global version to handle them.
Signup for the global version – most likely it does everything you need and please let us know if there’s anything else you need.
Cheers.
Philip Fierlinger
Head of Design, Xero