The In-house Finance Team’s Guide to Xerocon

This year's Xerocon is in Sydney, Australia at the ICC on Wednesday 23rd and Thursday 24th August.

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If you’re an in-house CFO, Finance Lead or Financial Controller attending Xerocon, at first it might feel as if the event’s not built with you in mind. You’ll be surrounded by attendees from accounting firms and many of the talks will be about ‘how to build your practice on Xero’, something that – for you – doesn’t apply.

But, if you make the most of your time there, Xerocon can transform how you work day-to-day.

We’re Xerocon veterans here at Mayday. Our CEO David Tuck alone has been to 10 Xerocons over the last 10 years. 

So we thought we’d help you get the most out of the event. Read on to learn more about which exhibitors, demos and talks might be the best use of your time as someone who works in-house.

Exhibitors

Xerocon will be hosting over 80 exhibitors this year, all set up to showcase their products and demo their apps.

It’s here that we’ve found our in-house customers find the most value from their time at Xerocon. One told us:

“We get the most out of the vendor stalls rather than what Xero releases. We look for solutions that can enhance our work, reduce time or streamline cumbersome or repetitive processes.”

That’s the real opportunity when reviewing exhibitors. Out of the 80+ at the event, there may well be a handful of services or products that can save your finance team significant money and time. As in-house finance teams scale, the more you can rely on technology and automation, the better. There may well be solutions to those headaches you’re experiencing out there – solutions that prevent you having to think about migrating off Xero to a much more complex and expensive ERP system.

So the core question is, ‘Which of the 80+ exhibitors should I be spending my time with?’.

We’re here to help.

Although we can’t run down all 80, here are the app partners we think could work well for the majority of scaling in-house finance teams and why.

Global expansion and multi-entity

• Mayday (we'll be on stand G4): For multi-entity Xero-using groups, Mayday’s got tools for intercompany recharge automation, simple cross-entity bank rec, and auto-balanced loan accounts. Mayday’s intercompany module for Xero enables finance teams to efficiently close their multi-entity month end.

• Spotlight: Need to create great-looking performance reports across your multiple Xero entities? Spotlight Reporting enables accountants and business owners to create dashboards, cash flow forecasts and advanced consolidated reports for multi-entity businesses.

• Airwallex: For multi-currency businesses, Airwallex makes it easy to accept multiple payment methods across the globe and in any local currency. This app enables you to accept debit card, credit card, and ApplePay payments from customers online in 50+ currencies across 170+ countries and bypass foreign transaction fees.

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Insight and analytics

• Castaway: Use Castaway to enable more savvy business decisions. It’s a smart cashflow forecasting tool which offers 3-way reports and business modelling. You can create budgets and forecasts to test the strength of your business strategy with various market scenarios.

• Fathom: Looking for an easy, all-in-one reporting tool? Fathom combines insightful reporting, cash flow forecasting and actionable financial insights into one easy business management solution.

• Syft: For an interactive and collaborative financial reporting tool, look out for Syft. From simple reports through to integrated forecasts, businesses use Syft to create, collaborate and explore financial reports.

• Xpna: Big fan of Excel? Xpna enables you to leverage the functionality and and flexibility of Excel, but adds more connectivity and control. Consolidate multiple ERPs into a single chart, manage currency conversion, eliminations, create allocations and build what-if scenarios.

• Calxa: For businesses, not-for-profits and accountants that want to automate better business insights, check out Calxa. Leaders in not-for-profit reporting, they help businesses with detailed program budgets to acquit grants, keeping CEOs informed and delivering monthly board reports.

• Spotlight: See description above, under global expansion/multi-entity apps.

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Inventory, supply chain management and manufacturing

• GoJee: Keen to maximise business performance? GoJee, an Aussie business management app, handles tasks like job management, project tracking, inventory, scheduling, timekeeping, invoicing, payments, POS, quotes, assets, and more.

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Spend management and accounts payable

• ApprovalMax: In-house finance teams use ApprovalMax to replace paper and email approvals with fully automated multi-role and multi-tiered approval workflows. This app streamlines the accounts payable process, ensuring spend control and regulatory compliance are adhered to.

• Lightyear: Does your businesses want to combine their data extraction from supplier bills and approvals workflow into one platform? Lightyear has a suite of tools for Purchasing & Accounts Payables with line-item data extraction, approvals and collaboration.

• Weel: Weel is an Australian business card and spending management platform. It helps finance teams oversee and simplify spending throughout their organisation. Features include instant company cards, bill payments, spending controls, real-time transactions, and automated expense reports.

• Expensify: Expensify automates expense management from receipt to reimbursement, syncing data with Xero for real-time finance tracking. Employees capture receipts using Expensify's mobile app and Expensify automatically imports the merchant name, date, currency and amount onto an expense report.

Payroll and HR

• CloudPayroll: CloudPayroll (AU) and iPayroll (NZ) are payroll apps which work with businesses of all sizes. They’ve got features to breakdown wages, super and allowances over multiple costs centres for GL, various secure user access, and upload excel files in payrun.

• Employment Hero: Want to automate manual payroll processes? Employment Hero, the payroll, HR, workforce management and benefits platform, does just that. By managing compliance, reducing manual tasks, and streamlining employee data from timesheets to pay run in a single solution.

• Planday: Planday from Xero is a workforce management software that will streamline your time-tracking, rostering and payroll, all in one place.

• Rippling: Rippling consolidates HR, IT, and Finance tasks for businesses. It unifies systems which are usually scattered throught the business, like payroll, expenses, and benefits, to enable comprehensive management of the entire employee lifecycle.

• WorkflowMax by BlueRock (launching 2024): BlueRock has acquired Xero’s WorkflowMax brand and is developing WorkflowMax by BlueRock, a new product with similar features and functionality. The job management product will launch in February 2024 and you can visit them at Xerocon to see a demo and join the BlueRock partnership program.

Accounts receivable and payments

• Chaser: For accounts receivables automation and credit control services, check out Chaser. This app helps you to get paid sooner with end-to-end receivables automation and tools to credit check, monitor debtors, chase invoices via email and SMS, collect payments, recover debt and reconcile accounts, all from one platform.

• Paidnice: Paidnice helps finance teams to encourage on-time payments from customers, whilst preserving strong relationships with personalised, targeted and reliable accounts receivable automation. They’ve got features for configurable, and automated late fees, prompt payment discounts and invoice reminders.

• GoCardless: Looking for a lower-cost alternative to card payments? GoCardless is made for businesses that bill their customers on a recurring basis. It’s enables finance teams to collect payments for both intermittent and repeating invoices as well as subscriptions, retainers and instalments.

You can check out a full list of exhibitors on Xerocon’s official website.

Talks

There are back-to-back talks at Xerocon, but here are the ones we think will inspire you the most if you’re an in-house finance leader:

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Wednesday 23 Aug 

• 11:15am - 11:55am, Lisa MacCallum, an expert in purpose-led business transformation, Main stage.
• 2:30pm - 3:15pm, What's next for AI in accounting, Breakout stage 1.
• 2:30pm - 3:15pm, Master reporting and insights in Xero, Breakout stage 4.
• 3:30pm - 4:15pm, Making the most of emerging technologies, Breakout stage 1 – panel discussion.
• 4:30pm - 5:15pm, Finding the right apps for the job in the Xero App Store, Breakout stage 2.
• 5.30-7pm, Exhibition happy hour. A great time to hit the exhibitor stands and watch demos unfold.

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Thursday 24 Aug

• 10:15am - 10:45am, Main Stage, Mark Pesce, a leading futurist, inventor, entrepreneur and educator, is the perfect person to share his thoughts on AI and what it means for the accounting industry.
• 11:30am - 12:15pm, What's next for AI in accounting, Breakout stage 1 (repeat of Wednesday's session).

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Tips

• Visit exhibitors during the practice-focused talks. During the breaks between talks, exhibitor stands will be heaving with attendees from accounting and bookkeeping firms. Take advantage of the fact that you might not be the prime audience for most talks to go to stands outside of breaks. You'll be rewarded with quality 1:1 time with app partners.

• Wear comfortable shoes. With enough walking around the exhibitors, you might notch up to 20,000 steps, so dress comfortably. There's no need for a suit and tie at Xerocon.

• Set goals beforehand. Think about what you want to achieve for your business and make sure you're focused on the right things while you're at the conference.

• Pack a phone charger. You may need extra power if you're online all day. If you'd rather write things down the old-fashioned way you can always pick up a notebook and pens from one of the exhibitor stands. On that note, take a practical bag to carry any merch you pick up, too!

• Connect on LinkedIn then and there. It's easy to forget at the end of the day after you’ve met so many people, so make sure to make connections in the moment.

• Block out time after the conference. You'll want to book time to discuss next steps with your team, as well as time to go to exhibitor demos or set up app partner trials to find out more.

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Lastly, do come and see the Mayday team on stand G4. We'll be talking all about how we can help multi-entity businesses on Xero, handing out some very stylish t-shirts and more. We can't wait to see you there!

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