MYOB Goes SaaS…. Again
I wrote almost a couple of years ago now about MYOB’s (see disclosure statement) first foray into the world of SaaS. I wasn’t overly impressed, saying at the time that: MYOB has the experience, the money and the clout to bring a product to market with the features that users need. Under this measure MYOB […]
For SMBs, Automation is King. Saasu Delivers Some
Small and medium businesses are inherently time poor. As such any tool that automates their processes is a good thing. Those who aren’t involved in business would look at automatic bank feeds (such as those offered by Xero) as a fun toy, but little more than that. This fails to appreciate just how much of […]
Online Finance – Rigid Segmentation Doesn’t Work
Recently ReadWriteWeb started a series taking a very high level look at online finance. One of the posts discussed the evolving online finance ecosystem. In the post, RWW editor Richard MacManus interviewed CEO of Xero (see disclosure), Rod Drury and repeated Drury’s assertion that online finance can be separated into four distinct types of markets: […]
Multi-Currency – The Maelstrom Continues
Disclosure – One of my specialties is accounting software – I quote half a dozen vendors in the below post, some of whom I have past or current consulting relationships with. Full disclosure of all my industry affiliations can be seen here. A little while ago I posted discussing the recent introduction of multi-currency functionality […]
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 […]
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 […]
Carry The One – E-Commerce Integration FTW
I’ve spoken many times before about the power of integration and what it can bring to businesses. I’ve also whined about the inefficiencies caused by separate, integrated services – one of my own businesses is a good example of this pain – having to receive e-commerce orders, manually enter them into and accounting package, manually […]
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, […]
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 […]
OAuth Beginning to Rock the World
OAuth, or Open Authentication is “an open protocol to allow secure API authorization in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications”. Basically it’s a way to allow one web application to utilize another without the need for users to worry about pesky authentication keys or the like. It also allows for data […]
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 […]
Please Articulate the Value Add, Not the Substitution for SaaS
Over on the Xero blog, co-founder Hamish Edwards is running series with the not-too-modest title “The Future of Accounting is Online”. In the first post Hamish introduces the first key theme for accountants to look for in a software solution “Access to the clients’ accounting systems and the ability to collaborate in real-time, anytime, anywhere […]
