Alison at Silicon Bullet has been working hard learning all about a relative newcomer into the accounting market in the UK – Xero.

Xero was founded in July 2006 in New Zealand by Rod Drury and Hamish Edwards as they wanted to revolutionise small business accounting.  The beauty of Xero is that it connects small businesses with their business advisers through a cloud based system in a way which allows real time visibility of their financial position in a way that simply isn’t possible with traditional software.

The Technical Stuff

Xero software is developed using Microsoft’s .NET development environment, over resilient SQL Server databases, on a Windows application server infrastructure.

In effect your accounts are saved on Xero servers and you can access them through a web browser on a pc, laptop or even phones and tablets.  Cloud based solutions don’t suit everyone, which is why we still recommend Sage 50 in many cases, but with fibre broadband being rolled out it is becoming more popular, especially when companies use outsourced bookkeeping services.  You, your bookkeeper and your accountant can all log in to Xero without having to take backups to email between each other.  It means you can all always be looking at the live data.

Xero Certified

Alison at Silicon Bullet has been studying for her Xero Certification exam, and in December 2014 passed with flying colours.  We have been using Xero to produce VAT returns for a couple of years now, but following the certification exam we are now able to offer Xero hand holding training and bookkeeping services to a wider audience.

So if you want to take a look at Xero, or want to see how it compares to Sage Accounts, then come and talk to the experts.