Xerocon Updates

Part 1: Xerocon Updates 2016

3 Part Series:

1. Active Updates
2. New Releases
3. Mindful Takeaways

Part 1: Active Xerocon Updates

Everyone interested in cloud based accounting knows Rod Drury. He’s the jovial visionary carrying the Xero torch. This was my 2nd Xerocon, the unconventional convention for Xero accounting software and partners, and I met Rod at Xerocon Denver 2015. He shares a contagious enthusiasm for the direction of the accounting industry.

When I met him last year, I wanted to tell him in as little words as possible what he has done for not only the accounting industry, but for small businesses worldwide. I said, “thank you for changing our lives.” It still rings true today.

The organized simple focus of Xero uses technology to make our lives easier. We take fewer steps to record transactions. we have anywhere-anytime access. We support the paperless lifestyle.

Last year, we laughed impressed during an extraordinary rain thunderstorm as we watched accountants and developers break it down on a dance floor happy and free. Whether they were shaking it off or this level of liberation is normal for them is unknown, but what we did see was that this was a very unconventional accounting conference.

This year, during pre-con, where I was learning the Art of the Sale with Miriam Olin, Rod & I walked towards each other down a hall with big smiles and he said he remembered me from last year, which is always a nice thing to hear when you’re just a small baby accountant.

What I continue to learn about Rod is that I am drawn to his laid back intelligence. He’s accessible and fun while also being serious and focused.

In the jewelry world, I am attracted to relaxed luxury, the ability to be fancy pants while not wearing fancy pants.

So, Xero is quite a great fit for this other part of my brain. Could I say he has single-handedly infused an entire scope of the accounting industry to be accepting of mobile, jeans-wearing brainiacs? Probably not, but his role is notable.

On Day 3 of Xerocon, Rod walked up to me while I was sending an email to a client and had their Xero account open in order to answer a question.

I was in the middle of the expo hall standing at my computer on a secure vpn using the conference wifi to help my clients remotely. This spoke directly to the core purpose of Xero:  Flexible and reliable, beautiful accounting software.

He asked me what I like about these conferences and as I began to answer he says “oh, wait, wait, let’s post this.” So here’s my answer:

Most @xero app partners send their senior tech people to Xerocon, which our accountants love @TheHeartDept pic.twitter.com/4qy8TZOWLJ

— Rod Drury (@roddrury) August 17, 2016

Proof in Point: Work Flow Changes and Updates in Action

Proof in point to this video is that I come to these conferences armed with all of my issues that are either unresolved or changes in the programs I would like to see. My approach with myself is that there is always room for improvement and I appreciate that developers are also open to changes and modifications.

After speaking with Xero support in person about the status of an open ticket, I gave a rundown of my top 3 requests that are known items to see if they are on the roadmap for being done. One is being addressed and one was no where on the list. She winked and pointed out 3 guys over in a corner and said go talk to them.

I walked up excited and open, but was greeted with guarded annoyance.

One man wouldn’t even turn 30 degrees to the left to acknowledge my presence, so I made a joke of it and apologized for interrupting. I asked if they were the Xero tech developers and they corrected me and said “Development Team.” I’m so sorry for my ignorant lingo. One of the three was the most receptive, we’re going to call him Mr. Receptive, so I asked him if I could find out when 3 known issues would be addressed. With a nod, I began:

1. The Xero Inbox: I love this feature, but when will it get OCR?

   1. Mr. Receptive says, oh I built that and leans back a little defeated. I want him to know I’m blown away, “You built the Xero inbox?” yes. Wow, thank you, it’s amazing. Did you know Wave Apps has OCR for free? I understand we can add on Receipt Bank or Hubdoc, but sometimes that is just not necessary and it’s obvious the technology is readily available. He says he already wrote the code for OCR for the inbox, but it uses humans and they’re looking into machine recognition. It won’t be next month, he assures, but it will happen. It’s on the road map. Cool! I’ll take it.
      • Open

2. Also regarding Xero Inbox:  Will it be able to recognize text and html within an email? (Currently, it only picks up attachments.)

   1. Nods all around. Yes, this is coming too. We’re working on it. They’re definitely annoyed by me.
      • Open

3. Moving on, Invoices. Can we have Inventory Items as a checkbox default item on the Invoice template, so Item codes (skus) can be included on invoices without customizing the docx?

   1. He responds: “Is that not on there? Why is that not already on there?” He pulls up the Invoice template edit, and says, “Oh, yea, I’m sure you want an option to not have to include Descriptions too?” Yes, please. Done, he says, that’s simple.
      • Resolved As of Sept 27,2016 this feature is LIVE!

4. Also regarding invoices, can there be a button to add 20 more lines at a time?

   1. “Why would you want to do that?”  he asks. Well, I say, I work with jewelers and some sell wholesale and they have large PO’s with hundreds of items. Some we use the import template, and for one specifically I’d like Reptime to build an integration, but sometimes, it would be nice to enter it in Xero directly and not have to click “Add one more line” every time. He points to the guy to the left and said I just made his life harder because he works with reports. Mr. Reports says, why can’t you just tab at the end and it will add new, I reply, “well, when you’re using Inventory Items, and they have all of the fields defaulted to the correct price, account and tax rate, you would have to press tab 4x just to add one more line. Boom. They understand.  Receptive says, “yes, ok, so we’ll add a button. It’s going to be a drop down like the Save button and you can have options to add 5, 10, or 20 more lines at a time.” I say great, life changer. My clients will love this.
      • Resolved

Perfect. While these guys didn’t necessarily enjoy me coming to them directly instead of their gatekeepers in support, they were there and so was I and I have a GSD degree. So happy they made so many things so much easier!

Who was Mr. Receptive?

Craig Walker, Founder, CTO and 1st employee of Xero. That explains a lot. I feel a little bit dumb for not knowing who he was.

Thanks, man! Much appreciated interaction and many thanks for seeing the unmet needs.

See, the way Xero works is there is a Community support area where issues can be posted and voted on by other users that are experiencing the same problems. However, each user has a limited number of votes and unless you start a petition to get people to go vote on a specific topic, the issue may not get more than 20 votes. It’s also possible there could be multiple versions of the same issue with different wording. For example, my OCR inbox receipt issue is also under Invoice scanning and Bill scanning.

The more votes an issue gets, the issue then is pushed to the development team and a timeline for the release is outlined.

The greatest advantage to coming to Xerocon is that these development teams are present and excited to stay at the forefront of the industry. They can’t do that if they aren’t open to change and kind critiques.

By bringing my little day to day workflow issues to #xerocon, I was able to have 2 of them resolved on the fly. He would have been able to activate the checkbox in the Invoice while I stood there, but like any well-run company with a solid organizational structure and procedures in place, he will follow protocol and not make anyone mad. It isn’t that they don’t want to help, it’s that they are doing so many amazing improvements and innovations on a much larger scale, and sometimes little things to them get slipped through the cracks and they can be really big things to some of us little guys in our daily workflow.

Jordan Dorris of Turner + Cleveland in San Antonio, TX enlightened me on the phrasing of this type of issue: “Competing Priorities.”

Indeed.

When it isn’t a priority to the development team, it’s completely off their task list and target goals, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

Hopefully, they appreciate that I was so excited to have something so little and easy for them to make happen be so valuable to me.

Part II New Releases Part III Mindful Takeaways