One of the things I dread most about running my business is dealing with the administrative hassles of the day to day, but so important, aspects of running it.

I love organizing events, but even more, I love sharing with the attendees of the event.

But to do an event means you’ve got to deal with contracts, invoices, bank accounts, credit cards and so many other things.

Out of all these things and more, one of the things a business owner must constantly do is mange their income and expenditures – financial management.

A large part of this financial management hassle is to enable one to pay taxes every April – all the deductions and forms need to go through an accounting program to be properly accounted for.

Another reasons is to manage payroll.

And yet another reason is to know what products are selling best, what products are most profitable and etc. But all of this is centered around your bank account – the money in it and the money leaving it.

To properly manage your bank account you MUST have a financial management program.

Intuit’s QuickBooks is the leading software that many small businesses use. Sage’s PeachTree has another swath of this fragmented market, and other vendors such as Outright, Indinero, GreatWave Accounting provide accounting solutions for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Into this ecosystem comes Xero.

Xero is a New Zealand based company who has recently expanded its footprint to the USA. Jamie Sutherland is the President, US Operations, before Xero, Jamie worked at Sage.

A few weeks ago I was able to speak with Jamie (see the interview below) about Xero and his plans to dominate small business accounting. Here’s few highlights from our conversation:

• Xero is first and foremost beautifully designed online software. I’ve seen many online applications and few are designed with the features and rich interface that make you think you are using a traditionally software, installed on your computer.
• Accountants are a huge part of Xero’s connection to small businesses and Xero is making a concentrated effort to partner with accountants. Jamie said that in Xero’s discussions with accountants he finds although it is the defacto standard, that many accountants don’t like QuickBooks Online. Xero hopes to leverage this to Xero’s advantage.
• Xero is simple but also very robust for mature and growing businesses – hence double ledger (or entry) accounting and multi currency conversions.
• Working well with other software is fundamental to Xero as well – demonstrated by their membership in The Small Business Web
• Accountants will find Xero’s value proposition very compelling as Xero is not just giving them a product to resell but also a platform to run their accounting practice and better manger their small business customers.

Check out my interview with Jamie here (or below) and more videos at http://www.youtube.com/smallbiztechnology

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We all know that Ford churns out plenty of cars for America, as well as pickup trucks, but they did suffer a dip in popularity Stateside when the Japanese invaded the US with cheaper and better built vehicles. Well, Ford has more or less remained in the picture much of the time, and has done reasonably well for itself, too. The company looks to the future in the form of an open source car, and has just announced OpenXC, their open-source connectivity research platform. Having rolled out beta test kits already, those will be shipped to developers and universities worldwide.

Basically, this is an exercise to encourage developers to create apps for the car just like how they would churn out app after app for a smartphone. Of course, the dynamics on how a vehicle app works would be very different from that of a smartphone. To view a vehicle as the equivalent of a software platform for a smartphone is definitely an evolutionary step.

Berlin, February 14, 2012 – The Document Foundation announces
LibreOffice 3.5, the third major release of “the best free office suite
ever”, which shows to end users the improvements derived from the
development strategy adopted since September 2010. LibreOffice 3.5
derives from the combined effort of full time hackers – the largest
group of experienced OOo code developers – and volunteer hackers,
coordinated by the Engineering Steering Committee.

During 16 months, an average of 80 developers each month have provided a
total of over thirty thousand code commits, introducing new and
interesting features:

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Exciting day for our Xero team with a few big announcements.

Firstly we’ve raised $20 million from existing Directors and major shareholders. We are thrilled with the internal support. This allows us to continue to accelerate our growth plans.

We have also launched a Share Purchase Plan (SPP) that allows other shareholders to participate on the same basis.  SPP’s are a mechanism that allows listed companies to raise capital inexpensively. We particularly like SPP’s as small shareholders are looked after – which is very important to us.

Share purchase plans allow a company to issue up to NZ$15,000 worth of shares to existing shareholders utilising a fairly short, simple offer document. The rationale for the Exemption Notice is that a full disclosure document, such as an investment statement, is not necessary given that issuers are subject to the continuous disclosure requirements of the NZX and thus existing shareholders will be fully informed about the company.

If you are a shareholder on the 14th of February you will receive SPP information in the mail.

Click here for the full Capital Raising and SPP announcement.

Our next bit of news is we have acquired leading Xero Partner WorkFlowMax.

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When we launched PaymentEvolution Payroll almost 2 years ago we wanted to give micro and small businesses the tools they needed to quickly and easily pay their employees. Since then, thousands of businesses across Canada have joined us in solving their payroll frustrations.

We’ve taken a complex problem and made it really simple for small business owners, entrepreneurs, accountants and bookkeepers to get payroll done – in a as little as 30 seconds. Oh, did I mention? It’s free.

Photograph by Martin Cathrae

It’s full-featured payroll – and you won’t get stuck in the waves of a payroll service that can’t grow with you. We built the service with super-advanced functions that are always available when you need them – but not, when you don’t.

We’re honest about pricing and we don’t sell your data or target you with ads. After all, we’re one of the earliest advocates of the data portability movement and have a strict privacy policy. We know we’re dealing with sensitive financial information and treat your data with the respect it deserves.

And we’re serious about features – stuff that you need now and stuff you’ll need as you grow your business. For example, we have simple integration with online accounting services – your payroll transactions can be posted in your bookkeeping service. If you’ve ever run your own books, you’ll love this automated posting.

More advanced features are also included at no extra cost:

• Always up to date tax calculations – no more “updates”, patches etc
• True reverse or “gross-up” calculations – very useful if all you want to do is pay someone and determine your tax obligations. If you’ve ever had a pay a nanny, you’ll love the feature.
• Secure, online employee portal with their full pay history, electronic paystubs, tax information etc
• T4 slips, records of employment and many other advanced services – all included and easy to do
• True calculations of your remittance amounts – and automated payment to the government if needed
• Fully flexible available payment services including direct deposit. Pay your staff the way they want to get paid for less than the cost of a stamp. No more cheques!

If you’re serious about payroll and integration with your books, you’ll love our simple to use service with all the features you need and none of the complexity you don’t.

Get it now and let us know what you think

http://host.bicourse.com/site/?page_id=188

The release is available on SourceForge:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/erpbi/files/