Last year, we reached a significant milestone in our data journey when we built machine learning algorithms that worked to accurately predict your transactions’ contact and account codes. Whenever we invest in machine learning, our vision is always to give you more meaningful time back in your day, so we’re thrilled that this work in bank reconciliation has been recognised as a top 10 innovation in the 2022 AFR BOSS Most Innovative Companies list for just that.

Xero placed #7 on the technology industry list out of 700+ nominations, and is a direct result of our teams’ labour of love on helping reconciling transactions to become a more beautiful experience. Alongside some other fantastic innovations, we were recognised for the unique way that we built our machine learning algorithms, and for the accuracy at which they surface predictions. That is, by using the learnings of millions of past reconciled transactions.

Our ongoing commitment to reducing toil

While viewing and accepting these predictions is now hopefully just a normal part of your reconciliation experience, the machine learning logic that powers them remains an incredible tool that is designed to get better and better the more it keeps learning.

By predicting the ‘contact’ and ‘account code’ fields of each bank transaction, not only is less manual data entry required during the reconciliation process, but thanks to the collective wisdom of the whole Xero community, the knowledge base will only continue to expand.

For example, if lots of small businesses shop at Officeworks and code those transactions to ‘office equipment’, over time Xero’s algorithms learn to associate transactions from that company with that account code. For businesses that frequently have to reconcile those transactions, it has the potential to be hugely time-saving. But that benefit extends to customers new to Xero, too.

Imagine never having reconciled before – or being new to entrepreneurship – and being able to learn from those who have paved the path before on how and where to categorise transactions.

We’re passionate about ethical, data-driven AI

As we continue to grow, we’re excited to see how we can continue to create seamless experiences for customers just starting off in bank reconciliation for the first time.

This acknowledgement as a top innovator in the AFR BOSS Most Innovative list shows that automating the way folks do business is important, meaningful work – and like everything data-centric within Xero, we remain aligned to the Responsible Data Use Commitments we set out while we do it.

I’m so proud of our teams and the way they continue to delight with insight, and I’m particularly delighted in the way that we’re able to keep innovation in our DNA even as we scale. We’ve always had a vision to change the game for accounting and we are excited to continue injecting beautiful machine learning experiences into how you balance the books, and everything else that comes with that.