Xero Graduate Programme launches today
Today we’re really excited to announce the launch of the Xero Graduate Programme in New Zealand!
What is the Xero Graduate Programme?
Xero has made a big commitment to finding and developing great talent. This programme will support graduates making the transition from study to full-time work. It includes tailored onboarding, training and mentoring.
We want to bring exceptional junior talent into a fun, supportive environment. Then we’ll help turn their ideas into reality. Simply put, we’ll work to help graduates build an excellent skill set with which to start their career. At the center of it all is a dedication to living the company values and celebrating the start of a new career in a fun, engaging way.
Who will benefit from the Xero Graduate Programme?
Graduate roles will be available in both the Auckland and Wellington offices. Grads with a wide range of qualifications will be eligible to join the company. There will be roles available in Product, Platform Services, Internal IT and Design.
“Junior talent is extremely important to Xero,” says Solutions Architect Chris van Reenan (Platform Services). “We need to think outside the box. It’s exciting to have grads with fresh ideas working for Xero and helping us move forward.”
How can you find out more?
The Xero Graduate Programme will see our team at career fairs and events around the country. Staff are really excited to get out there and talk to students, hear their stories and tell them all about Xero. They are also look forward to helping mentor them when they come on board.
Development Team Lead Rowena Joe (Product) believes Xero is a great place for juniors to come along and learn. “People here are so experienced, but they’re also so willing to teach. Everyone’s really excited to see our junior developers grow and develop. Eventually they’ll become leaders themselves,” she says.
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New release: Cheques in Canada and Quotes improvements
Today’s release delivers a collection of improvements to Xero. For the first time we’re delivering a feature for a country other than the US, UK, Australia or New Zealand: support for Cheques in Canada.
Here’s a quick update on what’s new in Xero this release.
Support for Cheques in Canada
We’ve provided support for US Checks for a long time, but with this release we move north. We’re delighted that small businesses in Canada can now account for cheque payments in Xero.
Cheques can be made on any outgoings from a business – everything from paying bills to refunding credit notes. After recording the payment you can style and print the cheque – even use your own chequebook or cheque printing software.
Improvements to Quotes
Following our release of Quotes, we’ve made a few more updates to improve how quotes are embedded in Xero. These include:
- Quickly create a quote or purchase order from within a contact’s record. A small but useful improvement, making it more efficient to keep your business moving. You can now quickly create a quote or purchase order while you’re in a contact’s record. Look up a contact, click ‘New’, and you can now create a new quote or PO just as you can for other items.
- Set a default expiry date for your quotes. If you usually send out quotes with the same expiry period, you can now set up a default quote expiry date which will automatically populate when you create a quote. You can override this if you need to when you create a quote.
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Spreadsheets!
An excellent podcast here from NPR on the history of the spreadsheet. An accountant was the first user of VisiCalc.
Planet Money. Episode 606: Spreadsheets!
Would have liked to hear about the product history. Lotus 1-2-3 and then how Excel came about. Maybe they’ll do a sequel.
Was great to hear the same issue repeating that accountants face in the cloud today. The nature of work changes. The podcast reported that 400,000 workers lost their jobs to spreadsheets but 600,000 new jobs were created.
I remember the first time I used spreadsheets on an Apple II and then Lotus on a PC. They still seem magical.
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NZ’s high performing partners sought for 2014 Xero Awards
If you’re a high-performing New Zealand Xero Accounting, Bookkeeping, Industry or Add-on partner, we’d love to receive your nomination for the 2014 Xero Awards.
Celebrating the success of our high achieving Kiwi partners throughout 2014 (1 January – 31 December), the Xero Awards are the perfect opportunity to showcase your firm’s performance and enhance your professional recognition.
There are 10 categories up for grabs for performance in 2014:
- Accounting Partner of the Year
- Bookkeeping Partner of the Year
- Emerging Partner of the Year (new)
- National Practice of the Year
- Add-on Partner of the Year
- Emerging Add-on Partner of the Year
- Xero Industry Partner of the Year
- Marketing Innovation Award
- 100% Xero Award
- Xero MVP Award (not eligible for entry)
Partners can nominate themselves or an Add-on, Industry, Accounting or Bookkeeping Partner for an award. There is no limit to the number of categories entered, however, the Xero MVP Award is not open for entry – this is selected by the Xero team. It’s a really open process this year. You can nominate yourself or someone else – providing you meet the criteria in the nomination form. Continue reading ›
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February Roadshows: it’s been another great ride
From the top to the bottom and from coast of coast of Australia, our Evolve February Roadshows have rolled into town across all over Australia. Registrations have been off the charts (to put it mildly) – we managed to fit in around 7,200 partner attendees. This easily makes it our biggest rollout of roadshows yet. We were keen to start 2015 in a big way, and attendance numbers like these are certainly a good sign.
This week we wrapped up the #xeroroadshow in Perth after visiting 20 cities and towns across the country, so I was keen to check in and have a look at the wonderful feedback from our accounting and book keeping partners:
It is great to see so much excitement for cloud accounting in the market. @xero strategy validated. Feel the tipping point is very soon.
I attended the Xero Roadshow yesterday and I just wanted to say a massive thank you for your time and your knowledge. I have only recently ventured out on my own and I found the information you and James discussed very interesting and gave me some great ideas for my business. Continue reading ›
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Panel discussion: mobilising the small business economy
During Xerocon London 2015, we pulled together a panel of business and technology experts to talk about the importance of tech. Specifically, how it will mobilise the small business economy in the UK.
Our panel included:
- Founder and CEO of Mumsnet and Gransnet, Justine Roberts
- Xero small business customers and co-founders of the Cereal Killer Cafe, Gary and Alan Keery
- Xerocon guest speaker and Editor of Wired David Rowan
- Our own UK managing director Gary Turner.
Our experts discussed some important business advice and a call to government to provide a more accessible broadband service to small business. They also talked about how SMEs must run with the rapid progression of new technology and the need to keep pace with consumer behaviour change and evolving business models.
In a world moving fast towards ubiquitous connectivity, every business will become digital. Small teams of highly motivated entrepreneurs have a unique opportunity to evolve and adapt with new technology and position themselves ahead of large, slow-moving incumbent businesses.
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Service disruption: Xero API (resolved)
Due to a change in SSL certificate installations, we are currently experiencing disruption to the Xero Partner API, used by most Xero Add-ons, and products such as WorkflowMax, Xero Practice Manager and Xero Workpapers.
The team is working on a resolution to this issue and we will post updates as soon as we have them.
This incident was first reported at 23:09, Feb 24th UTC.
Developers should monitor progress on our developer status page and subscribe to be notified of progress via email / SMS.
Update 12:11, Feb 25th UTC.
This incident has now been resolved. Xero support and developer relations teams are now contacting all affected partners to advise that the API is now fully functional.
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Xero adds new Investor, Director and US President
Another big day at Xero this morning with three announcements that will excite our customers and partners.
Xero Attracts World-Class Investment + Talent To Fuel Growth
- Accel, one of the top US tech investors, has invested $US100m into our company. With other investors we have put another $NZ140m in the tank and will head into the 2016 financial year with over 1/4 billion in the bank to fund innovation and growth.
- Graham Smith, who was most recently CFO at Salesforce, has joined our board. It’s great to have Graham on the team.
- Russ Fujioka has been appointed US President. Russ is one of the smartest marketing and growth executives I’ve met. We’ve been working with Russ for five months and are thrilled to complete our US leadership team.
We’re already getting some great feedback – and we welcome any questions in the comments section.
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Xero API Developer of the Year 2014
Each year we like to recognize a person who has contributed significantly to the Xero API developer community. The API and Developer Relations team have the privilege of connecting with an exceptionally talented group of designers, developers and company founders all over the world. Like iOS and Android developer communities, the Xero Developer community is a big part of what defines Xero as the platform for small business. They make a difference in the lives of small business owners through the creativity and care they bring to their products.
As we thought about integrations launched in 2014, the one that stood out was developed by Julian Applebaum at Squarespace. Squarespace, a leading website design/hosting company, is very similar to Xero in its design-driven approach to product development. Squarespace decided to expand their e-commerce offering and chose Xero as their integrated accounting partner.
Continue reading ›
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Auto Enrolment: what does it mean for you?
Automatic enrolment (or auto enrolment) is government legislation that requires all UK employers to enrol certain staff into a workplace pension scheme and make contributions, starting on their staging date.
With an ageing population, the Government is implementing this legislation to help more people save for retirement. However, this means employers now have the responsibility to enrol certain employees in pension schemes and administer them on their behalf.
With UK Payroll in Xero coming soon we thought this was a good time to share some details on Auto Enrolment and how it will work in Xero.
When will auto enrolment affect you?
Your business must comply with the auto enrolment legislation by your staging date. You can find out the staging date for your company using The Pension Regulator’s staging date tool.
Staging dates are being phased in over a six-year period, and have been set based on the size of employer’s PAYE Scheme on 1 April 2012. Companies with a large number of employees had the earliest staging dates (e.g. those with 120,000+ employees staged in October 2012), and smaller businesses will start between now and 2018.
Modified staging dates
The Pensions Regulator (TPR) has stated that businesses can now change their staging date. You can bring forward your date by notifying TPR, or you can also move your staging date back to a later date if you:
- had fewer than 50 staff on 1 April 2012; and
- had, or were part of, a PAYE scheme that has more than 50 people in it.
The original staging dates for small employers who had fewer than 30 employees were set as soon as June 2015. The modified staging dates indicate that those who were originally set to stage at March 2015 or later, can now stage in April 2017 (or later, if you are an employer who set up after 1 April 2012).
| Original staging date | Date you can choose to move to |
| 1 October 2012 and 1 November 2012 | 1 August 2015 |
| 1 January 2013 and 1 February 2013 | 1 October 2015 |
| 1 March 2013 and 1 April 2013 | 1 January 2016 |
| 1 May 2013 and 1 June 2013 | 1 February 2016 |
| 1 July 2013 and 1 August 2013 | 1 March 2016 |
| 1 September 2013 and 1 October 2013 | 1 April 2016 |
| 1 November 2013 and 1 January 2014 | 1 May 2016 |
| 1 February 2014 and 1 April 2014 | 1 July 2016 |
| 1 May 2014 and 1 July 2014 | 1 September 2016 |
| 1 August 2014 and 1 October 2014 | 1 November 2016 |
| 1 November 2014 and 1 January 2015 | 1 February 2017 |
| 1 March 2015 and 1 April 2015 | 1 April 2017 |
Modified staging dates for some small employers from The Pensions Regulator
TPR has issued modified staging dates, and for the vast majority of small businesses this means they don’t have to comply until 2017, and have no legal requirement to even notify The Pensions Regulator that they have moved their staging date.
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