I’ve spent the past 15 years being in sole-charge of the accounting function for a number of different SMEs. Now I’m not an accountant by any stretch of the imagination (I can tell a joke which precludes me already) – but I believe I’ve got a pretty good handle on what accounting is like, and what it should be like.

The way I look at it the accounting world is still mired in a pre-release beta stage and there’s a new class of product which will drag it along, bypassing 1.0 and straight into the 2.0 world.

I was stoked to see that Xero has reacted to the buzz from its being awarded the distinction of being judged one of the top 10 UIs of the year. Their reaction was to announce that;

by early 2009 it will release a global version of its award-winning online accounting software

Now this is exciting on a number of levels – firstly as a proud Kiwi it’s great to see that we’ll have a global accounting solution created back here in New Zealand. Secondly Xero heralds the dawn of a new age of accounting. And it’s the dawn of this new age that gets me all fired up.

I was pleased then to be asked to moderate the Accounting 2.0 panel discussion at the upcoming Office 2.0 conference. The participants at the panel include;

  • Aaron Forth (Mint.com)
  • Marc Hedlund (Wesabe)
  • Rene Lacerte (Bill.com)
  • Mike McDerment (FreshBooks)

It’ll be great to assess each of these participants view as to where accounting is going – and their vision for what Accounting 2.0 will look like.

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Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

4 Comments
  • Hey Ben. you go!
    will they be web casting the session? I’d like to catch the wesabe input

    good luck too with the scoble run/non run efforts too

    well done

  • @ninefish – yes I believe it’ll be vidcast
    will let y’all know

  • days new cust/day
    1/04/2007 0
    30/07/2007 204 120 204 1.7
    1/02/2008 500 186 296 1.591397849
    1/04/2008 950 60 450 7.5
    10/05/2008 1406 39 456 11.69230769
    21/08/2008 2000 103 594 5.766990291

    Nearly 6 customers a day during the quiet part of the year, 3x what was achieved last year…
    average of 25 a day from here on in to achieve the magical 35000 customers in 5 years, with this exponential growth it is possible

  • And with only two countries live at this point! It staggers me that “analysts” haven’t yet grasped what is happening to the little company at the bottom of the share table.

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