Xero has reached the milestone of 200,000 paying customers globally, announced at the company's Australian Xerocon conference in Sydney today.
The small business accounting software company reports that figures are up from 157,000 at 31 March 2013, up even further from 100,000 13 months earlier, and 50,000 just 10 months before that.
The company’s strong Australian momentum also continues with paying customer numbers for the country reaching 75,000, up from 51,000 at 31 March 2013.
As a result of the boost, Xero now employs 90 staff in Australia across Melbourne, Sydney Canberra, Perth, and Brisbane.
“It’s fantastic to achieve a new Australian milestone of 75,000 customers ahead of our largest Xerocon ever,” says Chris Ridd, MD, Xero Australia.
“The second half of FY2014 promises even greater growth as we commence our first advertising campaign in Australia. We expect to see increased industry adoption and expanded market share.”
Executive appointments
Xero continues to build up its head office management team in Wellington to support its growth plans and announces the following senior appointments:
• Jonathan Allan – GM Marketing
Allan will lead the marketing team at Xero Headquarters, providing global marketing services to the regional teams and driving marketing automation. Allan spent five years as VP, Demand Generation for SAP in both Europe and Asia Pacific.
Prior to that he held senior management positions with both Salesforce and Cisco Systems before relocating to New Zealand last year.
• Mark Rees – Head of Platform Architecture
Xero says Rees has extensive IT strategy experience both in New Zealand and the United Kingdom and was with Microsoft New Zealand since 2006, most recently as CTO since 2010.
• David Wills – GM Operations
Wills joins Xero from the UK where he has held a diverse range of technology leadership roles with European organisations including CIO at the telecoms regulator Ofcom from 2007 to 2012.
Among the other announcements at Xerocon in Sydney are:
• Successful launch of the first phase of the Xero Australian tax solution. Over 8,000 TFN declarations have already been lodged to the Australian Tax Office using Xero Tax released on August 5.
• Xero has added a further channel to address the Australian market – over 100 Financial Advisors are already on board who use Xero to manage their wealth management clients with Xero Cashbook.
• Xero is expanding its implementation channel partners to support the deployment of Xero‘s fast growing Practice Studio platform to accountants.
Xero welcomes Change GPS (a fully owned subsidiary of Change Accountants & Advisors), who are a consultancy practice to the accounting profession, as a Practice Studio Implementation partner.
Xero has also announced new partnerships with Microsoft certified partners Combo and Paradyne to assist accountants with migration and deployment of Office 365.
• Xero is providing corporate sponsorship to the Foundation for Young Australians to support the “Worlds of Work” program.
The partnership aims to attract high school age children into the accounting profession and arm young commercial and social entrepreneurs with financial literacy skills and confidence to succeed with new ventures.