Xero announces new compliance workflows to make tax season less taxing

Toronto — August 24, 2022 — Xero, the global small business platform, today announced at Xerocon New Orleans — one of the world’s premier events for cloud accounting leaders — a range of updates designed to make annual compliance significantly easier for Canadian accountants and bookkeepers, to better serve their small business clients.

Building on last year's acquisition of TaxCycle — a leading Canadian income tax preparation software company — Xero is extending and enhancing its tax offering. The updates will simplify year-end bookkeeping and income tax preparation to help Canadian advisors better serve and advise small business clients and grow their firms.

The expanded TaxCycle integration will include key forms required to complete T1 income statements. This supports fast, accurate, and efficient completion of the Statement of Business or Professional Activities (T2125) before this tax season, with additional T1 statements to follow. From September 1, Xero Partner Program discount rates for Canadian subscriptions will also apply to all TaxCycle products, for those with a standard license agreement with TaxCycle*.

To help further simplify the year-end compliance workflow, Xero announced Hubdoc Bank Statement Extraction, a new feature that makes it easier than ever to extract transaction data from digital PDF bank statements and import data into Xero. With coverage for several leading Canadian banks, and more to come, the feature will reduce the need for manual data entry and speed up time on year-end bookkeeping tasks.

“Before Hubdoc’s bank statement extraction feature was available we would send PDF statements to another program which would have a three hour, sometimes 24 hour turnover to process the data. Now it’s seconds. The accuracy and efficiency is seriously a game changer for end-of-month work,” said Melissa Lenos, CPB, PCP, Professional Bookkeeper.

Xero Workpapers, a crucial tool for year-end compliance workflows, is also improving to help make tax preparation more efficient for Canadian practitioners. The live beta for the Working Trial Balance is coming soon and will allow accountants and bookkeepers to generate a read-only Working Trial Balance report directly within Xero Workpapers, and easily view and validate all account balances and adjustments. It will be available exclusively to Canadian practitioners for now, with additional feature enhancements to come.

Xero also has a growing ecosystem of app partners to help accounting professionals use the tools that best suit them. This includes a new integration with Countable — a cloud-based, working paper automation and management solution — offering accountants greater optionality for working paper solutions to help streamline their annual compliance process.

“We know that managing clients' income tax compliance can be a complex and time-consuming process for accountants and bookkeepers,” said Anna Curzon, Chief Product Officer at Xero. “As part of our commitment to small businesses and their advisors in Canada, we’re laser-focused on building the products, partners and features that help improve their lives, make compliance a more seamless experience, and help them focus on what matters.”

Xerocon New Orleans is one of the world’s premier events for cloud accounting leaders. Delegates from the US and Canada are gathering on August 24-25, 2022 at the New Orleans Convention Center to hear the latest from industry leaders and gain expert insight into the newest Xero tools and features to help save time, grow their business and have a greater impact on their clients’ success.

*This benefit is only available to those on a standard license agreement with TaxCycle (i.e paying sale or regular prices, as listed on TaxCycle's website). The partner margin that will be applied to your TaxCycle license will be your relevant Xero partner margin at the time you purchase your TaxCycle license.This is an associated benefit of your ongoing participation in the Xero Partner Program and may be amended or withdrawn in accordance with the Xero Partner agreement. Get in touch with your Xero Account Manager for more details.

ENDS

Media Contact

Xero Canada | Kelly Kerr | americaspress@xero.com

About Xero

Xero is a global small business platform with 3.3 million subscribers which includes a core accounting solution, payroll, workforce management, expenses and projects. Xero also provides access to financial services, and an ecosystem of more than 1,000 connected apps and more than 300 connections to banks and other financial institutions. Through Xero’s open platform, small businesses can connect to a range of solutions that help them run their business and manage their finances. For three consecutive years (2020-2022) Xero was included in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index. In 2021, Xero was included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI), powered by the S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment. Xero has been named as a FIFA Women’s Football partner under FIFA’s new commercial structure.