Xero's integration with Square, a mobile-payments solution, has been enhanced to allow small-business invoices to be paid instantly and automatically recorded in Xero.
Small businesses using Square can now email invoices from Xero giving their customers the option to pay the bill instantly, using a credit or debit card.
Faster payment can help with cash flow, which is the lifeblood of a small business.
When a payment hits the business's bank account, the transaction will appear in their bank feed and be recorded in Xero.
The integration also creates a daily sales-summary invoice in Xero that captures the previous day's transactions in Square.
Business owners can choose to break down the imported data to the transaction level.
The enhanced features also capture all point-of-sale transactions including tips, surcharges and the relevant taxes.
Business owners can more easily report GST, saving time on admin. This is a step-change in functionality from the current Square-Xero integration.
“Better organised data gives owners the ability to drill down into their sales and simplify reconciliation,” says Xero Australia and New Zealand financial director Ian Boyd.
“This enhanced integration with Square ticks both of those boxes. And as with all payment services attached to Xero invoices, it can improve cash flow, which is the lifeblood of small business. We know from Xero Small Business Insights data that February can be one of the toughest months for cash flow in Australia.
Square Australia customer success lead Chris Rich adds, “Many of our customers love using Xero and have shared suggestions on how we could improve the integration. We have worked with Xero to ensure the new integration has the deep functionality our customers need for their payments and accounting platforms to interact seamlessly.
Small businesses on Xero using Square can take advantage of the enhanced integration from today.
New users can download Square from the Xero app marketplace.
Last week, Xero added the Vonto app into the Xero app marketplace.
The Vonto app, which is backed by Commonwealth Bank processes a small business' Xero data to uncover financial insights and delivers them in a daily news feed.
The addition provides insights such as daily, monthly and yearly financial trends and patterns; any anomalies or unexpected behaviour; and relationships between business drivers and outcomes.
Small businesses will be able to curate their daily news feed according to their preferences, with the ability to monitor certain aspects of their financials more closely. They'll also be able to click through from Vonto into Xero to action or respond to an insight.