Today, Xero Accounting rolled out some exciting new features that the Xero community has been asking for.

First on the roll out is Smart List, an advanced search over your existing customer base, using the accounting platform as the search engine. This search lets you generate highly targeted lists that you can then use to sell to, chase for payment, gather information about, or basically anything else you want!

Many small businesses don’t have Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. With Smart Lists, you’re able to communicate with organisations that are already your customers, using the data you’re updating everyday – it’s far less hit and miss.

You can use Smart Lists to create a targeted list for a campaign by filtering by people who have bought a certain product, or who have been invoiced for a certain amount.

Here are some ideas:

• Identify customers who have purchased a product from you, who may be interested in a new product you now have available.
• Find all those customers who haven’t paid an invoice in the past few months, so you can follow-up with them and improve your cash flow.
• See how many customers you have in a particular city or region, helping you understand your customer base and use as the basis of a targeted marketing or sales effort.

Once you have created a list of customers you can export it to a CSV file (at which point you can do whatever they want with it, such as sending the customers an email from your email system), or directly push it to a third party email engine.


This new function will bring Xero Online Accounting to a new level featuring a basic integrated CRM function which few Online Accounting and solutions includes. 

Second on the roll out is the support for 4 decimal place unit pricing. This will allow you to create invoices with items priced to 4 decimal place, providing more precision for pricing.

Xero is rolling out a number of updates planned to introduce a brand new method of running reports in Xero. These new reports are designed from scratch taking into consideration the feedback received by the Xero team and they’re looking wonderful.

For a start, a brand new set of Aged Reports are launched and the Xero team is currently working on a new Depreciation Schedule, Disposals Schedule, Account Transactions, and Profit and Loss reports.

Where are the new Xero reports?
As the new reports are being rolled out throughout this year, they're going to become available from a whole new report centre, accessed through the existing report centre.

It will be made easier for navigation between the existing and new reports, until then, usage of the new reports is provided at the earliest opportunity.

What’s new with the Aged Reports?

These reports are actually rebuilt from stratch to ensure that Xero can provide you with more comprehensive features. There are five reports, a summary and detailed report for each ledger – receivables and payables. A separate Expense Claim Detail report is also created.

But the real magic is in what Xero users be able to do using these reports. Check out each of the options available when you open up the report settings section.

Let’s have a closer look. Remember, while the first reports you see will be the aged reports, all of our new reports will have these sorts of  features available on them.

More data, and more ways to control it
One of the first things you’ll notice is the ability to control how how many ageing periods to include and whether to age monthly, weekly or daily. This is particular useful for industries where short payment terms are common, so if four ageing periods of a week is a better way to manage your suppliers – well your Xero reports just got a lot better!

Convenience dates
Most reports require you to select a date or date range. New reports will have a preconfigured set of convenience date settings for you to select from. They are clever too – if you save a template (see below) where the date is set to ‘End of Last Month’, the date automatically changes each month you run the report.

Columns – selecting, sorting and reordering
All new reports will have a selection of predefined columns for you to select from. Check the ones you want to appear on the report, press update and voilà!

Not only that but all columns are sortable (just click the header) and if you don’t like the order which they show in, you can drag the column header to where you want it to appear.

If you want to keep the selected columns and sort order next time you run the report, make sure to save a template.

Grouping
You can group data on these reports in many different ways, so for example if you want to group a collection of receivable invoices by their reference, you now can!

Saving drafts, publishing and templates
As with existing reports, all new reports can be saved as a draft and accessed at a later date from report centre. You can publish reports for a permanent record of a report and there is a new publishing screen which allows easy renaming of reports as well as controlling the appearance in pdf form.

A new option is to save a report as a template. Once you have a report which suits you, which could be the dates it runs for, the columns it shows or any of the other configurable elements, simply save as a template and next time you run the report it will use these settings. Unlike, drafts, saved templates change based on dynamic parameters like convenience dates.

What’s not available yet, but coming?
Xero is still working on a few things that will be added to the Aged and future reports over the next few months. These include,

Filtering options – to restrict the information displayed in a report, Xero will allow you to create filters. For example, you will be able to filter records by tracking or by invoice amount so you only see invoices of a certain value.

Saving templates by name – in today’s release, you can save one template and it will be the default each time that type of report is run. In the future, you will be able to save multiple templates, giving each a name, and these will appear in the report centre under the associated report. For example, you could create a template called “Aged Payables – weekly with contact details” or “Aged Payables – grouped by region”.

Favourites – you will be able to favourite both existing and new reports shortly
Footnotes – a new clearer way of footnoting information in a report is coming
Text sections – you will be able to add blocks of text to any report, similar to the summary blocks available currently, however you will be able to move these and have more control over the presentation of them on new reports.
 What reports are next in line?

Xero is currently working on a new Account Transaction report with the ability to report on multiple accounts at once. Xero is working on a pair of new depreciation reports and a completely redesigned Profit & Loss with an improved layout editor. The P&L has lots of great new features that will apply to all other account based reports (Balance Sheet, Movements in Equity and Trial Balance). Xero will save this for a future post, but to whet your appetite a little, it will include things like:

• Formulas – ability to create your own formula rows – for example EBITDA or Gross Profit %
  
• Header groups – you can create top level groups to get detailed breakdowns of accounts
  
• Improved layout editing – much simpler to use and with lots more options
  
• User set timeframes – be able to run the report for nonstandard periods such as after a change of settlement date
  
• This release is a foundation release, it establishes the platform which will support all new reports. Moving forward Xero can start to release reports much quicker than previously in the past so you can expect to see more and more reports showing up in the report centre this year. The end goal for this work is to release a new version of report packs which allows you to capitalise on all these new features in your templates.
  

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Launched in late 2010, Vend now has more than 10,000 active users in over 100 countries and is seeing continued rapid global growth right throughout 2014.

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With Purchase Orders you can:

• Create fully customisable purchase order documents
• Email these documents to your suppliers
• Easily generate bills by copying existing purchase orders
• Copy purchase orders to new purchase orders and even to new sales invoices for on-charging
• Follow an approval workflow in the same way you do for invoicing
• Manage and search your purchase orders from their own dashboard

Watch the video below to understand how the Purchase Order function can help you in your business process.

Today cloud accounting moves beyond transactions and reports to include files and documents as part of the full financial data picture. Welcome to Files in Xero.

Traditionally, the files you create and receive as part of your business have been stored away in filing cabinets, shoe boxes or in some hidden folder on your computer. While many of these are directly related to your business, it’s not always easy to locate them when needed. With all your business data in Xero, it no longer makes sense to store your financial data and files separately – and this will make collaborating with your advisors even easier.

Files lets you attach multiple documents to almost anything in Xero and have them right at your fingertips, exactly where you expect to find them. Files can be associated with invoices, transactions, expense receipts, fixed assets, contacts, chart of accounts, bank accounts and even manual journals.

Xero has had single file attachments on bills and receipts for a while – but that was really only the beginning.

How will Files change the way you work?

• What about attaching contractual documentation associated with one of your clients, loan documents for a bank account, or a picture of a fixed asset. Or even attach a photo of a client?
• Store company incorporation documents for easy access by your accountant or bookkeeper.
• If you’re a startup looking for funding or to be acquired, why not create a contracts register so you’re always ready for Due Diligence?
• Accountants with not-for-profits, how about encouraging them to upload their source financial documents for you to make the audit process more cost effective?
• Bookkeepers – win new clients by making Accounts Payable processing central to your service offering.
• If you’re a franchisor, ask franchisees to upload their full business reports each month so all performance information is available.

We knows you’ll find plenty of reasons to bring all your important business documents into Xero.

Xero will let you store 1GB to begin with – that’s about 20,000 typical Word docs and enough to keep the average small business going for many years. We’ll provide for increased storage in the future.

Behind the scenes we’ve worked with leading providers to deliver the same security, reliability and availability you’ve come to expect from Xero. Your files are fully encrypted and using geo-replication, are stored in multiple locations so you can rely on them being available when you need them – anywhere, at any time.

You can also look forward to being able to email files directly into your Files inbox – for example, you will be able to create a forwarding rule whenever any of your suppliers email you an invoice to have this automatically appear in your inbox from which you can quickly create a bill. We’ll be adding email support over the next few weeks.

Files is one of a growing list of features that make cloud accounting compelling. Like Bank Feeds, when you see Files you’ll wonder why it hasn’t always been this way. We think eventually all online accounting software will work like this. If you know people that are still working in a desktop disconnected fashion, show them Files.

The scheduled update have concluded and Xero has rolled out a new inbuilt calculator. Allowing easier data entry in value fields where formula can be used instead of calculating the amount on your own calculator and entering it into the fields. 

However, it is currently available in the Manual Journals accessible only by the Financial Advisor role - which is now called Advisor. This is an initial test drive and we hope that Xero will soon roll it out to all user role and functions of the software.

Students wanting to qualify as certified accountants will have to sit for a new mandatory accountancy post-graduate qualification programme come July. 

The new qualification program, dubbed the Singapore QP, is a three-year program that will cost S$5,100. Open to all post-graduates, it will become a prerequisite for students wanting to become certified accountants after July 2013. 

The programme is a one of the newly-established Singapore Accountancy Commission’s (SAC) cornerstone objectives.

SAC hopes that the programme will raise the capabilities of the accounting profession, and added that the programme will also open up overseas working opportunities.

All this is part of Singapore's drive to transform itself into a leading accountancy hub in the Asia-Pacific region, said the commission, adding that it wants to grow Singapore's accountancy profession through stricter regulations and higher standards.

“Training is not only becoming a lot more rigorous, it's becoming much more formalised... Your work has to be certified and reviewed that you have obtained the right level of work,” said Michael Lim Choo San, chairman of SAC.

Mr Lim pointed out that more than one-quarter of the 400 registrants that attended a Singapore QP information and networking session two weeks ago were students from non-accountancy backgrounds.

"This demonstrates the enormous potential that we at the SAC hope to develop," he said.

SAC also said that the new qualification will also be internationally recognised, allowing Singapore accountants to work abroad, something that they are not able to do now.

“This opens up opportunities to them that didn't exist before and I think it's this growth and opportunities that is exciting, and will create the momentum for the accountancy sector to grow further,” said Minister of State for Finance and Transport Josephine Teo.

Certified accountants and existing students are exempt from the qualification programme. However, they will not be internationally recognised.

Certified accountants will also undergo a name change. An accountant - now known as a CPA - will soon be called a Chartered Accountant of Singapore. All CPA Singapore holders will be automatically converted to the CA Singapore designation in July 2013.

Students who matriculated in 2012 or earlier will be given until 31 December 2016 to complete their studies and the current Institute of Certified Public Accountants examination or ICPAS. If they pass, they will be given the CPA designation. They will then be automatically converted to the CA Singapore designation.

Male Singaporeans who have been accepted into the accountancy degree programmes and are currently serving their full-time National Service will be given an additional 2 years until 31 December 2018 to complete the ICPAS exam.

Holders of recognised professional qualifications, including full members of Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and CPA Australia will have until 31 December 2016 to complete the ICPAS examination.