As 2024 comes to an end, I wanted to send you all a personal note, reflecting on the year past at Xero, and our journey to become an even stronger partner to you and your business. We are privileged to serve 4.2 million subscribers globally at Xero, whether that’s small businesses directly on Xero, or through the 200,000+ accountants and bookkeepers using Xero in their practices. This opportunity is what gets us excited to come to work every day at Xero.

As we started this year, our focus at Xero was to:

• Create a vision for the next 3 years as a company, on how to Win on Purpose – for the benefit of our customers, partners, shareholders, and Xeros globally. This strategy helps define how and where we focus our efforts to deliver even more value to all of you.
• Increase our product investment and velocity in the most critical jobs to be done by our customers. From enhancing our bank feed and reconciliation experience in the US and launching partnership tax in the UK, to adding more ways to pay and get paid in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the US and around the world, I'm so excited by what we were able to announce and launch throughout the year to help unlock more value from Xero.
• Increase our pace of innovation substantially for customers, taking advantage of the accelerated technological trends happening all around us. The private beta launch of Just Ask Xero – our GenAI pilot to help assist in invoicing tasks – Tap to Pay, and the announced acquisition of analytics leader Syft, are just a few examples of new services we brought to life this past year that we can't wait to innovate even further on next year.
• Simplify our plan offerings so we could introduce more functionality to new customers as they join Xero. Between May and September, we announced and launched simplified packages, bundling more of our services in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. We have been working with our existing customers in these markets to migrate to the new offerings.
• Keep investing in the communities of which we are a part, whether the small business community, the accounting and bookkeeping community, the app partner community, or the local communities in which Xero operates. The Xero Beautiful Business Fund, in its second year, awarded over NZ$750,000 to 28 businesses across the globe, with over 5,000 entries received. At Xerocon London and Nashville, we connected with around 4,000 of our accounting, bookkeeping and app partners showcasing Xero’s latest product launches and plans for the future. And earlier this month, nearly 1,200 Xeros around the world went out to volunteer in each of the local communities where we live and work in our first ever Xero Volunteer Week.
• Further enable our own team – Xeros as we call ourselves – to do the best work of our lives for the benefit of all of you. From running multiple hackathons to building more internal tools, to investing in new performance systems for feedback, development, and recognition, to launching a new internal wellbeing initiative for our own employees, our goal was to help support Xeros in supporting you.

As you can tell, it's been a year of tremendous investment and a year of tremendous change. Thank you for your support and feedback throughout; we know change is not always easy today, even for the promise of something better in the future. We are listening, and will keep listening to your feedback as we go, and strive to keep getting better, as a platform for your business, and as a purpose-driven company.

2024 was a big year for Xero, but more importantly it was an even bigger year for you, our customers and partners. Collectively this year, Xero businesses across more than 180 countries reconciled over 2.4 billion statement lines, facilitated over NZ$5.6 trillion in trade, and processed more than NZ$213 billion through Xero payroll. We remain in awe of your contributions, your ingenuity, and your resiliency, this year, and every year.

We are excited to see all that you do and achieve in the year ahead, and to be your partner in that journey. Thank you for being part of the Xero community.

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy
CEO, Xero