Square Simplifies Accounting by Adding Xero

The Square mobile payment platform is one of the most innovative POS solutions created for smartphones. Since the company was founded in 2009 by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey it has grown considerably by partnering with Starbucks a little more than year ago and announcing another national partnership with Whole Foods almost two months ago. Now that businesses around the world are aware of the technology, the company is adding another accounting feature by partnering with Xero, a global online accounting service provider with over 200,000 paying customers in over 100 countries.

Although the Square mobile payment platform has simplified the payment process for businesses of all sizes, when it came to doing the books it still left much to be desired. Businesses that use Square still have to manually input each transaction into an accounting software, a time-consuming process no one really wants to undertake.

As of now Xero customers can connect their Square account and their daily sales data will be automatically imported into the program. The transaction of each day will import, summarize and populate the Xero general ledger in the proper account.

The Xero accounting platform is designed to simplify the process of managing your books by allowing businesses to view the cash flow in real-time anytime and anywhere.

Some of the options Xeros provides include:

• Bank reconciliation – to automatically import and cold bank transactions
• Invoicing – for creating invoices automatically and getting paid online
• Dashboard – that allows users to instantly see balances, recent sales and upcoming bills
• Inventory – for tracking stock movements and simplifying invoices with inventory items
• Mobile – allows functions to be carried out on the go with invoicing, expenses and tracking cash flow

Additionally the platform provides expense claims, purchase orders, multicurrency, payroll and free online support to handle personal expenses as well as reviewing and approving receipts.

Xero is hosted in the cloud and delivered through a SaaS (News - Alert) (Software as a Service) model making it accessible anywhere where there is an Internet or wireless connection. Users don't have to download or install any application on their device and there is no setup fee, upgrade costs or contracts. To get started all you have to do is sign up, login and start using the accounting software anytime and anywhere.

This is the second accounting integration for Square, the first being with QuickBooks last Fall. The company is looking to make its platform widely available across many applications so merchants don't face any compatibility issues when it comes to performing accounting tasks while using the Square mobile payment system.