Bringing together our UK community at Xerocon London 2022

Wow. Simply wow! What an amazing couple of days it was reconnecting with our community at Xerocon London last week. Spending time with people face to face is unmatched. I learned yet again of the energy, enthusiasm and commitment of our accounting, bookkeeping and app partners - and I am still buzzing a week later!

When I think about how many small businesses our partners serve, I realised we had brought together a pretty significant representation of the UK and South African small business sector in one place. That’s pretty powerful!

My favourite story from Xerocon has to be the team from Bennett Kirkhope Smith, who had a number of failed attempts to arrange transport to Xerocon in the heatwave, so ended up actually purchasing a small Peugeot 208 and completing their journey to London. It really embodies the true dedication of our partners, and humbles all of us at Xero. What an outstanding commitment!

How small businesses are faring

At Xerocon we released important research and made some exciting announcements to help small businesses navigate the changing business environment that they’re in. On day one, I spoke about the state of the economy in my keynote, and how a lot of small businesses are seeing post-pandemic revenue growth, but they’re also really struggling to find good staff, and with cash flow. We released a Xero Small Business Insights report which found that the average UK small business faces negative cash flow for more than four months each year. Late payments are essentially unapproved debt, and we are urging the government to take action against big businesses on this issue.?

Another key topic was Making Tax Digital, which is a massive opportunity to help small businesses digitalise over the next few years. Xero has made the technology available with MTD for VAT and MTD for ITSA, so now it’s about ensuring accountants and bookkeepers have everything they need to help clients along this journey.

Responding to today’s workforce challenges

We were pleased to announce the early release of Xero Go, a mobile app for self-employed businesses and their advisors in the UK to streamline the manual, time-consuming elements of online accounting and help them get prepared for MTD for ITSA. As an early release, we are conscious it doesn’t yet have all the functionality we still plan to add, but we chose to release it early precisely to gather everyone’s precious feedback on it. Thank you to everyone who has started using it and is feeding back!

We also released our Changing world of work report which reinforces how critical it is for small businesses to adopt technology to help ease stress and frustration in the midst of massive workforce disruption. The report shows managing a team in the current environment is taking its toll on small business employers, who are oftentimes short on staff to run their businesses at capacity. Nearly half (49%) admit this is negatively impacting their mental health.?

In response, we showcased our suite of employee management tools that help small businesses manage their workforces more effectively and efficiently. These include Xero Payroll, XeroMe, Xero Expenses, and Planday — the workforce management solution Xero acquired last year that automates roster creation.

Hearing from our partners

On day two, Rachael Powell spoke to Alasdair McGill, co-founder of Ashton McGill, about why it’s important to be setting up your practice for the customer of tomorrow, and importantly the role of digital adoption in all of this. Ashton McGill is a firm that’s at the forefront of meeting the needs of the customer of the future, leveraging non-traditional business tools and thinking differently.?

There were lots of valuable discussions about how we can work together to help small businesses navigate the changing world, and importantly how Xero can continue to partner with accountants and bookkeepers to be trusted advisors to their clients. To me, this event was another display of how strong our purpose is and how far it extends beyond our people to our partners and communities.

This was my first Xerocon, and it was a fantastic experience. I’m inspired to continue to advocate for small business, and I already can’t wait to do it all again.