Our newest benchmark for accounting technology in the UK

Today we announced something special – our UK business has just passed the milestone of a quarter of a million subscribers.

A quarter of a million subscribers…that’s pretty jaw-dropping when you think that as recently as 2012, Xero employed just seven staff members in the UK. Xero now employs more than 200 staff in the UK and more than 1,800 globally, across 21 offices.

As proud as I am of our team, I know this phenomenal uptake is not about us. The significance of what we’ve built stretches far beyond Xero and deep into our economic environment. And that’s the whole point.

This level of growth is about the value derived by a quarter of a million accountants, bookkeepers and small businesses who thrive on a connected platform.

Because in 2025, the role of the accountant simply won’t be the same – and not just because of cloud accounting. There’s so much regulatory change coming down the line that advisors have to undergo a significant shift just to service their clients. We’ve gone beyond incremental adjustments to real infrastructural evolutions.

In order for the industry to navigate that shift, it needs deep, open and ongoing relationships. It needs those conversations to happen at scale: across a connected community of thousands of advisors, businesses, financial institutions and government departments.

Making space for the connections that matter

As subscriptions to our global platform continue to accelerate – and the significance of cloud accounting is felt in our market – Xero has the opportunity to build more and more relationships to help our economy weather the perfect storm ahead.

We’ve already seen it happen over the past 12 months, as Xero established technical partnerships with every major bank in the UK – all with the aim of digitising the finances of small business. Next we’ll watch as those connections become of utmost importance as the wave of digitisation continues and the Government implements its Making Tax Digital legislation.

A product that looks ahead

Here’s the really exciting part. None of this means we’re slowing down on the pace of our product development. Quite the opposite. As any of the 2,000 delegates in London for Xerocon this week will soon see, we will showcase our biggest wave of new products this year as Xero evolves from online accounting software to a global small business platform that can help grow millions of businesses around the world.

Accountants and bookkeepers are the go-to advisors for small businesses, and small business is changing. These are the tools and solutions that will stand you in good stead for the months ahead – and we can’t wait to share them with you. All 253,000 of you.