Introducing Xero’s Business Finance Pack: Moving quickly to help ease cash flow worries

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At Xero, our purpose is to make life better for people in small business. With COVID-19 still putting pressure on small businesses, solving our customers’ problems in simple and beautiful ways is more important than ever.

That’s why we’re proud to launch Xero Business Finance Pack. Available for free to our New Zealand customers on the Xero app marketplace, this app gives small businesses a simple and faster way to produce financial reports which could help applying for funding.

With only a few clicks, Xero Business Finance Pack allows you to create nine financial reports, using the most up-to-date data you have in Xero –including those commonly requested when applying for a business loan. It can save valuable time by automatically collating key financial information for you to share with lenders. This means you have more time to focus on your business, which is even more important in a time of uncertainty.

Helping ease cash flow concerns

During the first wave of lockdowns in New Zealand, many business owners faced mounting bills. With little cash coming in, some were forced to look to finance options to survive.

But pulling together the right documentation for government backed loan schemes and other borrowing options can be time consuming. Many businesses were struggling to provide the right information first time, and forced to reapply, slowing down the process further and adding more pressure.

Working with banks and lenders, via our NZ Banking and FinTech Partner Manager, Chris Barton, we recognised a lot of the necessary and up-to-date information to apply for finance is stored in Xero. This allowed us to build a solution to collate the financial information, helping to ease the burden on small businesses and their lenders.

Solving for our customers

This work formed part of our internal ‘ShipIt’ challenge. Rather than tackling big, complex solutions, the ShipIt challenge looked at creating small innovative solutions with a meaningful impact for small businesses in light of COVID-19.

According to Xero’s GM of Product Data, Sagi Adiv, who led the product development – a dynamic situation demanded a dynamic response.

“Once we understood the problem, we chose an approach that allowed us to build a meaningful solution in a timely manner for our customers. The secret sauce was a highly engaged team who had the autonomy to choose what technology and methodology to use, early engagement with customers and business stakeholders, and shared ownership across the whole team which drove us to this solution at speed.” Sagi said.

A seamless solution you can get up and running quickly

Coming together to help solve a problem for our customers is something we pride ourselves on at Xero.We’re proud to bring our New Zealand customers this free app that can genuinely make a difference for small businesses. And now that New Zealand is facing the threat of further lockdowns, making this app freely available to our small business customers is more timely than ever.

Connecting the Xero Business Finance Pack app to your Xero organisation is seamless. You can use your existing Xero login details to connect the app via the Xero app marketplace, using our ‘Sign In With Xero’ feature. Once connected, the app will guide you to quickly surface the relevant financial information – and in the format – that the lender will likely need.

The Business Finance Pack app:

Can save businesses time manually compiling the data
Helps to provide a more complete picture for lenders
Can lower the risk of having to go back and forth with the lender asking for more information – which could delay a decision on any assistance

Now available on the Xero App Marketplace, the Xero Business Finance Pack is free to all New Zealand customers.

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