Technology news

UK finally gets online accounting software

Company accounts including payroll can now be processed automatically following the launch of online accounting software by Xero last month. The programme links bank and credit card transaction details directly to companies’ accounts, removing the necessity for the time-consuming data entry of bank reconciliation.

The technology for the application has existed for 10 years in the US, where it is connected to 28 million accounts, but Xero is the first company to bring it to the UK. Here it is already linked to over 55 financial institutions including HSBC, RBS, Lloyds TSB and HBOS, and a further 80 banks will be added in the first quarter of 2011.

Gary Turner, Xero’s UK managing director told Payroll World: ‘Manually keying transaction lines into accounts software is a pretty tedious job.’ He added: ‘Xero securely obtains bank transactions over the internet from your banks, loads them into Xero for you, then makes a guess based on previous history which transactions belong to which categories.’

When questioned about the security of the system, which shares sensitive data online, Turner said Xero was satisfied with the protection provided by Yodlee, the software used by the programme to access bank accounts. ‘Five out of the top ten US banks use it,’ he said. ‘We’re satisfied that if it’s good enough for American Express and HSBC, it’s good enough for us.’

In the first two weeks following its launch, the software was adopted by hundreds of UK companies, and Xero expects thousands more to join next year.