This article origitanted from Xero. You can read the original update here.

The final Xerocon of 2022 brought together our Australian, New Zealand and Asia-based accounting and bookkeeping partners, and Xero app partner community, to get inspired, learn and most importantly to reunite as a community.

Xero launches ‘Changing world of work’ reports

Managing a workforce in today’s ever changing regulatory environment is taking its toll on small business employers, with 47% in Australia and 36% in New Zealand stating managing employee processes is negatively impacting their mental health, according to our Changing world of work reports launched at Xerocon Sydney.

The reports shine a light on the workforce challenges that small businesses face, the workplace experience of their employees, and the critical role of technology in this changing world of work. They show how important our suite of employee management tools are for business owners, and what a vital role advisors play in helping them create an empowering and positive experience for employees. 

Planday beta unveiled for Australian businesses

To help make essential employee-related processes more seamless for Australian small businesses and their people, Xero is building an integration with Planday. The beta marks an important stage of Planday’s entry into Australia where it will enhance Xero’s broader set of employee management tools including Xero Payroll, Xero Expenses and Xero Me (a simple self- service app for employee timesheet, leave and expense management).

Xero Payroll plus Planday empowers small businesses with accurate employee time and attendance data and seamless scheduling, to help support payroll compliance and rostering, while also enhancing the employee experience through a range of intuitive people management tools. The Planday beta is available now for eligible small businesses using the Retail and Clerks Awards in Australia.

New features introduced in Xero to simplify payroll compliance

At Xerocon, we showcased our recently- added start, end and break times functionality in Xero Me. This feature helps small businesses capture accurate employee timesheets, save time on manual processes for a faster pay run, and support timesheet record-keeping requirements.

Also showcased was payroll history — a comprehensive, accurate, and trustworthy audit trail of updates made to employee details in Xero Payroll (Australia only). This new feature allows all payroll administrators in Australia the ability to identify, audit, and reconcile their payroll quickly and accurately.

XSBI special report highlights late payments challenge for small businesses

Cash flow continues to be an issue for small businesses, according to our latest Xero Small Business Insights (XSBI) special report. Crunch: Cash flow challenges facing small businesses, Part II, released at Xerocon Sydney, found that almost half of all invoices owed to small businesses in 2021 were paid late.

Prepared by Accenture with the support of Xero, the report analyses comprehensive inflow and outflow data from over 200,000 small businesses across Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom to understand ‘cash flow red flags’ – the early warning indicators that a small business is heading for cash flow trouble.

New pilots announced for Xero Analytics Plus

We announced two new pilots at Xerocon Sydney to help small businesses and advisors understand their business’ health and plan for the future with confidence. The first, available exclusively to Australian businesses, involves the addition of BAS and PAYG payments in Xero Analytics Plus’ short-term cash flow tool, to help customers get a more accurate forecast of their cash flow.

The second beta will allow Xero Analytics Plus users globally to predict upcoming payments for bills and invoices (including payroll) over the next 90 days. These betas will be available to select Xero customers in the months ahead, and extend on other recent updates, including the ability to provide bulk management of planned and expected payment dates for overdue invoices and bills.

Refreshed job manager released to Xero Insiders

Xero has redesigned the job manager tool in Xero Practice Manager, to help advisors easily find and track jobs, their status and due date — all in one place. It will also help them monitor progress, assign and prioritise client jobs, and see where budgets may be exceeded, helping them efficiently manage client jobs from end to end.

The redesigned job manager has already been released to a small number of accounting and bookkeeping partners via early access in Xero’s Insider’s Program. It will be available to all Australian Xero partners later this year.

News

Xero’s Diversity Pledge to nurture more female inventors

When it comes to how we deliver our commitment to innovation, we believe that patents are a proxy for it. That’s why we’ve signed the Diversity Pledge. It’s an exciting step, and a move that symbolises a meaningful focus for us on ensuring the innovative contributions of more females are recognised in the patent applications we file each year.

By signing the Diversity Pledge, we’ve committed to identifying, nurturing and showcasing to a neutral third-party our efforts

in bringing more female inventors to the fore. The three-year pledge timeline (of which we are currently in year two) offers us a robust framework in which to collate our baseline inventor data, pilot proposed ways we can improve on it, before finally submitting those metrics for external analysis.

Latest product news

We’ve made a number of updates to Xero over the past month, with a focus on helping customers manage their compliance needs.

In Australia, we’ve introduced new earnings categories in Xero Payroll to support Single Touch Payroll (STP) Phase 2. In the UK, we’ve launched document packs in Xero HQ, which allows accountants and bookkeepers to easily collate documents and get them electronically signed by clients.

For more details on our latest releases, check out the blog.

Ecosystem

Xero partners with Procore, offering cloud construction management tools

We are pleased to partner with global construction management platform Procore, which joins the Xero App Store in the USA, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand markets. The new Procore integration helps solve some of the biggest challenges small and medium construction firms face by enabling them, and their financial advisors, to connect field and back office teams with real-time, accurate, financial data in the cloud. This in turn supports the delivery of multiple complex projects on time, and on budget.

Xero partners with Cogo to help small businesses take positive climate action

We’ve partnered with Cogo to launch the Cogo Business Carbon Manager app in the Xero App Store, to help our Australian customers understand, measure and reduce the carbon footprint created by their businesses. The app is free, with enhanced paid features launching later this year. Xero and Cogo will also continue to collaborate to educate and support small businesses on their sustainability journeys.

New additions to the Xero App Store

Last month we welcomed over 15 new apps to the Xero App Store. These include AI-powered advisory platform interVal (US and Canada only), B2B payments solution Libeo (UK only), and business intelligence and reporting app GoSimplo.