Our Story
Our Company
Xero is a global company with offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand and customers all over the world. Our mission is to materially improve GDP globally by making small businesses more productive.
Xero was founded in July 2006, is one of the top 20 companies on the New Zealand Stock Exchange and is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. We are a new type of multinational with teams around the world united in our passion to revolutionize small business.
As the emerging leader in online accounting software, we connect small businesses to their advisors and a myriad of other connected services. Xero provides business owners with real-time visibility of their financial position in a way that’s simple, smart and secure. For advisors such as accountants and bookkeepers, Xero forges a trusted relationship with clients through online collaboration and gives them the opportunity to extend their services.
We’re thrilled with the impact we’re making globally. We have so many customers telling us that we’ve removing many aspects of running a business that are hard, boring or frustrating. We’re often told we’ve made accounting fun! That delights us as we love technology and making business better.
Our Service
All small businesses need effective financial planning and accounting to achieve growth and profitability. Xero is based on the principle that small businesses are highly sensitive to shifts in their balance sheet and cashflow. Their ability to monitor financial performance in real-time and plan ahead is crucial. Small businesses make up more than 90% of all businesses by number across OECD countries, so their success or otherwise has a direct effect on the greater economy.
At its core Xero is an easy-to-use but powerful online accounting platform designed from the ground up for the cloud, not adapted from desktop software. Xero provides a growing family of connected solutions:
- Client accounting for small business available anywhere, at any time and on mobile devices
- Accountant tools for management reporting and final accounts production
- Personal financial management
The Xero Software as a Service business model – where software is hosted securely on the Internet – allows Xero to address the large and fragmented small business market. Xero releases new features frequently. Additions and extensions to functionality are developed in response to the needs of new customers and new industries.
The size of the small business market is second only to that of all consumers. Typically the consumer Internet has reverted to non-direct, usually advertising based, revenue models. In contrast, we believe the small business market provides the greatest opportunity for monetization on the Internet and Xero is proving itself to be the leading innovator in this market.
Underlying technology
Xero software is developed using Microsoft’s .NET development environment, over resilient SQL Server databases, on a Windows application server infrastructure. We host over 150 application and database servers with Rackspace, a tier-one NASDAQ listed hosting provider, which monitors our servers and firewalls 24/7/365 at guarded facilities. Xero utilizes the global Akamai Content Delivery Network for faster performance to customers around the world.
Xero has a strong technology and database team. We took the time to rethink accounting software in the cloud and build the world’s most powerful accounting engine. We have the powerful accounting engine we’ve always wanted – relational, double entry journals, multi-user with strong audit controls, multi-currency, multi-tenanted, multi-sharded for horizontal scaling, with a powerful API and parallel business intelligence engine. Xero should be compared more with SAP than Quickbooks – but designed and packaged to be easy for small business owners.
Global locations
United States – San Francisco, Los Angeles
Australia – Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth
United Kingdom – Milton Keynes
New Zealand – Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch