Empowering Singaporean SMEs with Xero’s digital tools

The company wins at the 2022 SBR Management Excellence Awards.

Every economy rests on the shoulders of its small businesses, including  Singapore, where 99% of all businesses are SMEs which also employ 65% of the country’s total workforce and contribute 48% of the country’s GDP. Xero understands the needs of SMEs and is committed to helping them succeed by harnessing the power of technology. This commitment has won Xero Innovator of the Year - Financial Technology Award for the second year running at the 2022 SBR Management Excellence Awards.

The awards programme recognises key players and major innovators and companies in Singapore, and Xero is a frontrunner in the accounting tech space, establishing themselves as a trusted small business platform for SMEs and their advisors.

With over 3.3 million subscribers worldwide since its inception in 2006, Xero provided SMEs with access to their financial data and coupled with Xero’s powerful and extensive ecosystem, enables them to run their businesses anywhere, anytime without the need for software installations or set-ups. Xero’s commitment to Singaporean SMEs saw the product teams working tirelessly to ensure Xero was PEPPOL-ready, in line with the IMDA’s Invoicenow initiative and the business remains at the forefront of digitalising Singapore businesses.

Two new acquisitions in the e-invoicing space last year have continued to push Xero at the forefront of the government’s vision for Smart Nation through InvoiceNow, as adding Tickstar Invoici makes it easy and hassle-free for SMEs to take advantage of digital technology to stay competitive, as well as helping them in their digitalisation efforts for their workflows to speed up their payments.

Tickstar’s infrastructure and Invoici’s app will enable customers to easily comply with future legislation while enjoying the benefits of e-invoicing, as the Singaporean government’s Smart Nation vision will bring in new demands and innovations along the way.

Xero has also partnered with IRAS and ACRA to develop a seamless tax filing solution that can automate the process of preparing and filing statutory filings, allowing users to create IRAS Corporate Income Tax Return forms and file Annual Returns with Financial Statements to ACRA all within the Xero platform, and recently launched direct filing of GST F5 forms.

Xero continues to work in partnership with the Singapore government towards a smarter, digital Singapore, and stay committed to serving the Singapore market via their community of accounting partners, corporate secretarial firms and small business customers. Aligned to this, Xero works to ensure our customers and partners stand to benefit from the adoption of the platform through government support, including the Digital Resilience Bonus (DRB) and Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG). For example, Xero is a pre-approved vendor under the PSG, which allows SMEs to claim up to 70% in funding support to adopt digital solutions that improve productivity. Xero also has coverage across all four banks who have partnered with the Singapore government for Start Digital, namely DBS, OCBC, Maybank, and UOB. Offered in collaboration with Enterprise Singapore and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), the SME Go Digital programme will provide eligible SMEs referred through these banks will get six months’ free access to Xero’s Starter Business Edition.

Xero’s commitment to their local customers, robust ecosystem of financial and app partners, and intuitive platform have cemented their dominance in the cloud accounting space.

The SBR Management Excellence Awards is presented by Singapore Business Review Magazine. To view the full list of winners, click here. If you want to join the 2023 awards programme and be acclaimed for your company's employee engagements and management initiatives, please contact Julie Anne Nuñez at [email protected].