We held our 8th Annual Meeting on Wednesday, 22 July, 2015, at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington, New Zealand. We always look forward to the opportunity to meet our shareholders and introduce them to our Board members and our Global Leadership Team. A special thank you to all who attended Wednesday – including a few folks who have been with us since the beginning. The Board and our leaders provided an update on what we’ve been doing over the past year, how the business is tracking, and shared our plans for 2016 and beyond.
Meeting Results All resolutions presented at the Annual Meeting were accepted. We were delighted to confirm the re-elections of Craig Elliott and Craig Winkler, and election of Graham Smith to the Board. We are fortunate to attract such high calibre Directors. They bring a wealth of experience and knowledge of international markets to guide Xero on the next phase of its journey. Sadly, we bid farewell to Graham Shaw. Graham joined our Board in 2006, shortly after Xero’s incorporation and prior to its listing on the NZX in 2007. Our Chairman, Chris Liddell, acknowledged that Graham has been instrumental in bringing Xero to the world stage, from a handful of employees in an apartment back in 2006, to over 1,200 employees across 20 offices today. Graham’s contribution to Xero, both as a Board member and Chair of our Audit and Risk Management Committee, has been immense, and I would like to personally acknowledge the incredible contribution he has made to Xero and wish him all the best. Presentations It was fantastic to introduce three of our Regional Leaders to our shareholders – Russ Fujioka (U.S.), Chris Ridd (AU) and Victoria Crone (NZ) – to present an overview of their regional performance highlights. (Gary Turner (UK) wasn’t able to attend in person). Our Chief Marketing Officer, Andy Lark, also joined me on stage to talk about our immense global growth opportunity and how we can leverage the market network effect to become the financial platform small businesses thrive on. The Chairman’s and CEO’s presentation slides and media release are available on our website xero.com. Growth Our strategy remains firmly focused on high growth. I’m proud of our team’s ability to execute at scale and we well on the way to building a small business platform that will help millions of businesses thrive. In FY2015, we passed through the NZ$100 million revenue milestone, and at the Annual Meeting we provided guidance that we expect subscription revenue for the full year to exceed NZ$200 million in FY2016, based on June 2015 FX rates. We explained how SaaS businesses need to expense the cost of customers acquisition in the year we incur them but this creates future long term margin. AMSlide We were also excited to announce that we have achieved a significant milestone of more than 150,000 subscribers in New Zealand, and over 540,000 subscribers worldwide. To all our valued shareholders – we thank you so much for your ongoing support. We’re especially excited about our momentum for FY2016, and we look forward to sharing more with you as we continue on this #beautiful journey. How many hours are you putting into your business weekly? 40? 50? 60? 70-hour weeks? Sometimes even 80-hour weeks don’t feel like they’re enough to tackle the enormous to-do list you’re facing.
There’s a quote that says, “Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t so you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t”. Put simply, put the hard yards in now and reap the rewards later. Here’s something I tell my 100+ business coaching clients that may surprise you. “Take a holiday”. You’re probably thinking the same thing they do. “What? But I’m busy enough as it is – things will fall over if I go away! How will I get stuff done?!” I’m not saying you need to go during your busiest period, or that it needs to be six months in France. But trust me when I tell you that a few days away from the business will actually improve it. Here’s 5 reasons to take a holiday right now You get the space to think. It’s very easy to get caught up in your everyday tasks when you’re at the office. Your brain is only focussed on what needs to be done. But the important thinking – the pie-in-the-sky, big picture thinking that will improve your business – needs a bit of head room. Plonk yourself next to a pool, turn your phone off and let the thinking begin. Where do you want your business to be in 5 years? 10? How are you going to get it there? What steps and direction do you need to take? You get time to read. Pack those books that have been gathering dust on your bedside table. Finally read those business blogs you’ve been dying to read. Try Sam Hazledine’s Unfair Fight or Richard Branson’s Losing My Virginity. Be inspired by the stories of other people’s success. You get some perspective. What’s your biggest problem in business right now? Are your overheads skyrocketing? Your team morale is low? Your latest product has been a bit of a flop? Sometimes in business you need to get out of the forest to see the trees. On a holiday you can remove yourself from the situation and give yourself some time to mull. You may just find the root cause of your business troubles. The answers will come. Holiday mode makes you creative. Escape from routine, new sights, smells, experiences, and culture can all instigate change. It boils up to a new perspective, which brings new ideas and creative solutions and innovations. It recharges your batteries. Most people can’t sustain 60 to 80-hour work weeks for long. Yes, the body will keep going, but you won’t be operating at the top of your game. Plus, you need to be refreshed on your return from holiday in order to implement all the amazing business ideas you’ve had! holiday-fiji-business I strongly believe a holiday is just what the doctor ordered. Which is why I prescribe it to my business coaching clients. It’s also why I co-founded the Nurture Change Business Retreat with Steve Pirie. It’s a five day “bizcation” in Fiji. The speakers and attendees we have on board will give you the jumpstart you need for your business for the coming year. You’ll get to improve your business, and life, while fitting in some much needed R&R. And we’re giving away two spots to lucky Xero New Zealand customers. Visit the Nurture Change Facebook page to enter. Your next challenge? Keeping yourself accountable in implementing all these awesome new ideas once your return from your holiday. It’s been just under three months since we launched New Zealand Payroll in Xero. We wanted to share with you what’s happened over the past few months and what’s coming in the short term.
When we launched, a few key expected features were not quite complete, including the pay run payments report and the monthly filing reports. These didn’t stop employees being paid or taxes being filed and paid. They have now been released, along with fixes for a few teething issues. Here’s what we released over the past few months in New Zealand payroll: · EDF, EMS and KED files for uploading to ir-File and submitting to Inland Revenue · Request a call back from Xero Support option when you’re setting up Payroll · View all payslips for each employee without going from pay run to pay run · KiwiBank, Westpac, ASB and BNZ payment files · Pay run payments report · Report showing all details included in the EDF, EMS and KED files · Automatically assigning annual leave to new employees · Allowing negative leave requests to be submitted · Calendar to show dates including employee birthdays, leave requests and payment dates · Ability to record the total paid as at the opening balances date for any leave in advance taken We move pretty quickly at Xero and for Payroll we release updates every two weeks. You’ll see constant improvements and features all designed to make Payroll more powerful. And we have a list of updates coming soon including: · Automated final pay calculations · Employee files to store contract or other documents against each employee · Emergency contact details and associated report · Allowing employees to edit their own address and information from the employee app · ‘Xero Me’ iOS and Android mobile app for employees · Showing annual leave available to be taken in advance · Additional Relevant Daily Pay calculation options · Additional Reports (starting with Leave reports) · Ability to override default tax calculations for lump sums and final pays Long term we are working on a number of larger projects to improve the payroll experience in New Zealand, including seamless payments direct to your online banking and powerful web and mobile timesheets. No matter how good a payroll system is, if it is not set up correctly, it will not perform optimally and result in unnecessary issues down the track. Here are some of the common things we have noticed when we’ve been contacted for assistance: · Setting a maximum to accrue for Annual Leave. Legally there cannot be a maximum. We will be removing this field for Annual Leave to prevent a maximum being entered. · Setting a schedule of accrual for Annual Leave other than On Anniversary Date. To be compliant it must be On Anniversary Date, so we will be locking the ability to change it. · Setting a maximum to accrue for Sick Leave that is less than the equivalent of 20 days. The maximum legally must be at least 4 times the annual entitlement. · Creating earnings types as Regular Earnings rather than Other Gross Earnings. Regular Earnings are for those that are used as the employee’s base salary & wages, based on hours. Additional Regular Earnings pay items only need to be created if the employees’ base earnings need to be coded to multiple ledger accounts. Where possible we recommend using tracking rather than multiple Regular Earnings pay items. Other Gross Earnings allows pay items to be created that are not based on hours, are a multiple of the employee’s base earnings (e.g. time and a half) or a fixed amount. · Not entering Opening Balances for employees who started prior to the Opening Balances Date. The previous 12 months opening balances or pay history is required to ensure that annual leave rates are calculated correctly. Also so that Holiday Pay is reset correctly on the Annual Leave anniversary date. These can be entered or corrected at any time, but ideally should be set up correctly prior to staff taking annual leave, and prior to any anniversary dates. Published in Accountants, Bookkeepers, Business on 01 April 2015 by Guest
Today’s guest author is small business and finance expert, and co-host of Sunrise, David Koch. I’m a huge fan of new technology and the ease and flexibility it brings to work. I can video call in to Port Adelaide executive meetings, bring up the latest finance figures on my tablet for Sunrise and access my small business’s accounting files from the couch. So you can understand why I’m so enthusiastic about new technology. This is also why I say that your business really needs to consider an online accounting system if it’s not using one already. Here’s why. Peace of mind I don’t want to scare you, but all it takes is one office disaster and your files are compromised. A dodgy employee, fire, flood or break-in and you’ve got a problem. Hard copies of old accounts are often irreplaceable, and a lot of the time businesses don’t fully recover from disasters for this reason. Using online accounting gives your business access to the latest software and data security that’s safer than the lock on your front door. Simple as that. Incredible convenience Having the books in the cloud means our accountant can log in to her work without coming into the office. We can keep a finger on the pulse with staff raising invoices and expenses as they need to. It also lets everyone run project numbers when they’re on the road. Being able to check accounts and invoices from anywhere is invaluable for businesses that aren’t office based like tradies and others on the road all the time. It’s like having an office in the palm of your hand. In my small business, Xero automatically imports information from our bank accounts. This means there’s no need to manually reconcile accounts aor for hard copy statements. The latest transactions are categorised, bills are scheduled, and time sheets, inventory and customer relationship management are easily tracked. It’s made a world of difference to our systems. And it works the other way too. We can easily pay bills online and store any receipts in the cloud. I used to get an outstanding debtors list printed for me at the end of each week, but now I can log in and check up on client accounts whenever I want. Time and cost savings Online accounting obviously means saving on paper, printing expenses and storage costs. There’s also the time saving of not having to sift through reams of paper. Unlike the old days of expensive software packages, there’s no big capital outlay required for this convenience. This more streamlined, accessible system means the dreaded two-hour sit down on a Sunday night to tackle the accounts no longer exists. This is a huge change from the world of accounting when I started in business. Creating new quotes, copying previous quotes, and turning them into invoices has all been streamlined. This means the process is fast and crystal clear from the beginning, something all businesses will be happy to hear. Work-life balance Despite the belief that being able to work from anywhere means it’s harder to switch off, I find it allows me to be more productive in those previously unworkable pockets of time. Even five or ten minutes sitting in a taxi or waiting for a meeting can be used productively. Technical debt accrues for many reasons. Sometimes as developers, we are pushing to get features out of the door, and speed trumps elegance. Sometimes, technology moves on and choices which were good at the time and just don’t age well. Other times we’re working with technology that is new to us and we’re not up-to-date with all the best practices yet.
Whatever the reasons, technical debt accrues, and few if any developers have ever looked at a codebase and said “Wow. That team back in 2008 really nailed it”. Every organization carries at least some technical debt. Acknowledging it and tackling it is a mark of a forward thinking organization. What is technical debt Ask ten developers to define the term “technical debt,” and you’ll get ten different answers. At Xero, for the last while at least, we’ve defined it as “code which works, but which is hard to work on.” We’ll be expanding the definition as we increase the amount of time we spend working solely on the health of our code base. We’ve experimented with a number of different approaches for tackling technical debt. We use the boy scout principle of leaving a campground tidier than they found it. We do by encouraging and supporting our developers in refactoring code to be better as part of their day-to-day work. Setting their own scope for each sprint allows teams to build in the time they need for this sort of work. It also gives senior developers the time and mandate to pair with those who are less experienced. They can teach them good patterns and practices that builds both the capability to improve code and the mindset that it’s a good thing to do. This is effective at dealing with classes which have gotten a bit fat over the years. It doesn’t however cater for larger pieces of work – updating an old version of a framework. Tackling large pieces of work We run cross functional agile teams in a model very similar to the one made famous by Spotify. We encourage each team to dedicate a percentage of their time to technical debt – typically one sprint in N (where N is generally from 6 to 8). This is advantageous because teams work on areas of the code they are very familiar with. They’re cleaning up code that has an impact on them. We have found, though, that teams find it hard to take time out from delivering features, particularly if they’re responsible for a program of work. They have a high level of ownership of the product and are keen to keep shipping. We’ve also tried establishing a team whose remit is to work exclusively on technical debt. Initial fears that other teams would accrue new debt willy-nilly and throw it over the fence to this team proved to be unfounded. Developers recognize that an organization that invests in a team to work on technical debt exclusively, highly values code quality. and so hold themselves to even higher standards as a result. The disadvantage of this approach is that there’s a disconnect between the developers whose pain is being solved, and the developers who are doing the solving. It can be hard to figure out which is the most relevant stuff to work on. That said, if there are ten things you could work on, and it’s hard to determine which is most important – does it really matter? Pick one, tick it off, and you’re left with only nine. Rinse and repeat. Having a technical debt team Forming the dedicated technical debt team highlighted some interesting things. Firstly, the team was oversubscribed with people within Xero who wanted to work on technical debt. Secondly, they were all quite senior developers. This makes sense – those who have dealt with the downside of technical debt are most likely to want to strike a blow back. An advantage of a highly senior team is the experience they bring to the problem. A disadvantage is the difficulty of transitioning them out of their existing roles in the organisation. Also, with junior developers less keen to work on technical debt, there’s a wasted opportunity for seniors to pass on their skills. We’ll be looking at rotating junior developers through this team to try to deal with that. Our next experiment will be to give selected feature teams longer than one sprint in N to work on technical debt. More like six sprints back-to-back. This should give them the time to tackle really meaningful pieces of work. In future articles I’ll explore the following topics: – The business rationale for tackling technical debt – Measuring technical debt and your progress in tackling it – Strategies for tackling pieces of technical debt of various types and sizes What is it that makes us truly successful? Renowned psychologist, best-selling author and happiness guru Dr. Robert Holden believes our definition of success has changed over time.
While many of us were brought up to believe that success will make us happy, Robert says we’re now looking at success differently. “In fact, I think many of us today believe happiness actually increases our chances of success,” he says. Speaking at Wednesday evening’s Xero Happy Hour workshop for entrepreneurs in London as part of the Business of Happiness project, Robert challenged us to think about what our own image of success really looks like. Happiness is a great way of measuring success, Robert says. “When we’re happy, it brings out the best in us. We think more clearly, we perform better, and we’re much more fun to be around… when we’re happy, people want to work with us.” “When you truly know what makes you happy and when you really follow your joy, that’s what increases your chances of success.” “What is the point of success if we’re not enjoying it?” “In the past, I really think work was just about making money, buying stuff and increasing your net assets. Now work is about expressing yourself and being creative. It’s about making a contribution, showing the world who you are. “So for a lot of us, we don’t have a job, we have a purpose and our work is meaningful. A meaningful job, a meaningful life, that’s a huge key to happiness.” After surveying more than 1,000 UK entrepreneurs and working alongside a panel of experts in business and psychology, we identified five tips to help you build a happier business. Five tips for a happier business Have a vision: Knowing what you’re working for helps you take pride in your work and focus on your goals. Good relationships: Honest and clear communication with your employees, clients and customers helps to keep them happy. Freedom and flexibility: A good work life balance and being able to enjoy free time or family occasions with flexible hours allows you to manage your workload and do your best job. Growth and investment: Learning new skills and helping others to do the same encourages engagement and excitement. Creativity: It’s not just about coming up with new ideas, but also allowing yourself and your team to be creative and using the right tools to do so. |
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