Lance Wiggs posted about a SaaS accounting service he found in the states – Lance’s post can be seen here.

I always said that I had concerns about the revenue expectations articulated in the Xero IPO and whether or not the product constitutes a sufficiently unique selling proposition to gain significant uptake.

While I love Xero and want to see it succeed, as an SME owner who runs the accounting for half a dozen or so enterprises with a currently deployed MYOB solution, I need a compelling reason to change. A robust open source (free!) solution would be compelling but $100 per month with limited functionality (and yes I understand that this will change with Xero development) is not sufficiently compelling.

The other issue is that MYOB will IMHO have a SaaS product ready to role very very soon. Incumbents advantage????

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.

3 Comments
  • All valid points, especially your last one. However, I saw those US products in the article are limited personal book-keeping and budgetting tools rather than SME accounting solutions, so not really Xero competitors The one exception I’d pick is Mint: looks more promising for those with more than a current account, savings account and credit card to manage. Again it’s aimed at personal rather than business users, but so was Quicken when it started.

    Disclosure: I have shares in Xero.

  • Jim – It’s taken me three months to have you reply to one of my posts – nice to have you on board.

    There are two business development paths here – a low-brow SaaS solution deciding to step up to the full SME space or a high brow client/server offering going down the SaaS path. Both are viable and have their own strengths and weaknesses.

    This is before you even look at the open source boys (and girls) further developing the existing but somewhat unrefined CRM/ERP solutions.

    Either way I’m still a little dubious about the turnover projections.

  • Yep, we did the numbers on the xero plans too and thought it was interesting… lots of puns about zero/xero as you would expect, not so much as capital growth but dividends.

    We still wish our NZ based competitors all the very best though because a) they are helping to educate the market in SaaS and SaaS accounting in particular and b) we hope they help us break the MYOB stranglehold.

    Anyway, our product was established in 1999 and for the last few years has been really taking off like a rocket, NetAccounts by Saasu is probably the ‘real deal today’ solution you are looking for.

    Personally, I think Saasu have the lead in Australasia and probably SEAsia at least for the next 12-24 months.

    Main focus is SME accounting and we have a limited transaction version for free.

    Aussies are the core of the user base today but this is changing rapidly, beta testers for the NZ launch are welcome to register now but plenty of Kiwis already love it.

    Cheers, Peter.

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