Xero is a public technology company founded in Wellington, New Zealand. The company has offices in New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Africa. Xero offers a cloud-based accounting software platform for small and medium-sized businesses based on the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model and sold by subscription. With Xero, you can automate everyday business tasks, get up-to-date financials, and run your business from wherever you are in the world.
Its key features include automatic bank feeds, invoicing, accounts payable, expense claims, fixed asset depreciation, purchase orders, bank reconciliations, and standard business and management reporting. Xero has more than 200 secure connections with banks and financial service partners around the world. Additionally, the company offers a mobile app for iOS and Android devices called Xero Touch, as well as a free API that has enabled the integration of more than 700 external applications with Xero so far.
Xero was founded in 2006 by the former director of Trade Me, Rob Drury and Hamish Edwards in a studio apartment in Wellington (ironically, the number of the apartment was 404 – the ‘page not found’ error code on web browsers). Creating a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product was admittedly a perilous move. Software that is stored and delivered over the Internet rather than being installed on the customer’s computer was scarce for small business use – Xero’s targeted clientele – at the time. The term ‘cloud computing’ was to be introduced to the business world only a few months later at the 2006 Search Engines Strategies Conference, by Google’s then-chief executive Eric Schmidt.
Xero started its public life on the New Zealand Exchange in June 2017, supported by hundreds of retail investors that believed in Dury’s skills and vision, through a $NZD 15 million initial public offering (IPO). Nowadays, the company employs more than 2,500 people around the world and in 2019, Xero announced that they reached 1.8 million subscribers, as well as achieving positive free cash flow for the first time. Xero also supports the UK Government’s ‘Making Tax Digital’ initiative. In March 2018, Dury stepped down as CEO of Xero, continuing as a non-executive director. He was replaced in April 2018 by Steve Vamos.
You can read more about Xero’s success story and company values in this very interesting Forbe’s article by Hal Gregersen and try Xero’s word-leading online accounting software for free.
Print shipping labels directly from Xero using Shiptheory
Shiptheory provides direct integration of your Xero account with the world’s best carriers, including FedEx, DPD, UPS, Hermes, Royal Mail and more. Unlike other shipping software, Shiptheory connects directly to Xero, meaning that synching your account is hassle-free.
Within Shiptheory, you can create shipping rules to process your Xero shipments automatically and speed up your labelling process. You can give your rules specific requirements that need to be met for a consignment to fit into that rule, like weight, value, destination, SKU, and a lot more.
Shipping labels can be automatically created from Xero invoices and printed instantly using the Xero interface or our integrated desktop label printing software. At the same time, tracking numbers are emailed directly to your customers.
No more manually entering orders. Integrate Shiptheory with Xero and save time and money while eliminating human data entry errors.
See how Shiptheory's integration with Xero works in this post or watch the video below.
If you have any queries about setting up Xero, please do not hesitate to reach out to support, visit our Xero set-up guide, or create a free Shiptheory account and connect your Xero account to ship smarter and faster today!
