Xero is introducing its cloud-based corporate tax preparation tools into the UK.
They let users to file accounts directly to Companies House and HMRC – with electronic signing for approvals.
Among several upgrades and innovations announced at Xerocon London 2019, this was probably the ‘stand-out’.
Strategic thinking
The cloud giant’s strategic thinking is going down the road of putting its partners in control.
Xero is focusing on five key areas: accurate and fast data, end-to-end tax and compliance, real-time insights, connected services, and growing knowledge and clients.
Chief product officer Anna Curzon says: “Our accounting partners are at the core of everything we do at Xero.
“No single solution will suit every practice, but everyone can build their own set of tools from Xero’s solutions and ecosystem partners, with Xero as the single source of truth.
“We are investing heavily in developing the tools, and building our ecosystem partnerships to help every practice — from sole advisors to top-tier multinational firms — spend more time growing their small business clients.”
Here’s how the company describes its new offerings/features:
- Integrated, holistic compliance with Xero Tax: Xero is bringing its cloud-based tax preparation tools to UK accountants and bookkeepers. This will provide smarter, seamless tax preparation workflows to advisers processing annual tax returns and sales tax returns
- Xero HQ VAT: Xero HQ VAT provides an aerial view of their client compliance needs to easily manage compliance with making tax digital
- Real-time, smarter insights with Business Snapshot: A new tool that Xero will pilot early next year, Business Snapshot gives small business owners and their advisers an important, high-level view of their critical business metrics and important trends using visualisations to help them make decisions on immediate issues
- Bolstering technology with accurate and fast data: Xero announced it is nearing completion of the Hubdoc integration, with the teams also making progress on bolstering the machine learning capabilities
- Connecting Quotes with Projects to support job profitability: Easily estimate, quote and track job offers directly within Xero Projects for you and your clients, so all new work is accurately costed and projects are more profitable.
And here’s a bit more info on Xero Tax …
To confirm, Xero Tax is a new cloud-based tax and accounts production solution.
It’s built on the same Xero platform with the capabilities of Instafile, a group that Xero bought in 2018.
The company says Xero Tax will save accountants and bookkeepers significant time and reduce errors, by giving them a single ‘source of truth’ to work from for data collection.
By bringing Xero Tax on to the Xero platform, users will access a fully integrated tax preparation workflow, while being able to access the same support and learning tools available on the platform.
Xero Tax will be free as part of a partner subscription in the United Kingdom and the new features will include single sign-on with Xero, integration with Fixed Asset Register, document styling and electronic signatures, offering practices a simple workflow.
Advisers will also no longer need to rely on manual data imports with transactional checking of underlying bookkeeping data.
The corporation tax and accounts production module will be released in March 2020.
