As the benefits of digital transformation are realised by more small businesses, Xero, the global small business platform today announced the early release of Xero Go, a new mobile app designed to serve the increased number of sole traders over the last two decades that is available for iOS download today.
According to HMRC, there are around 2.6 million sole traders in the UK and the freemium app will make it easier to access accounting software for small self-employed businesses including sole traders, tradespeople, freelancers and gig workers, expanding Xero’s offering to provide a more cost-effective entry point into cloud accounting and digital record-keeping.
Anna Curzon, chief product officer at Xero, says: “This is a product that caters to the entry-level accounting needs of the self-employed – a growing area of demand. So we wanted to offer early access to a product that caters to the basic accounting needs of self-employed businesses in the UK, the number of which has increased over the last 20 years, and also those of their advisors. Xero Go helps businesses streamline the manual, time-consuming elements of being self-employed, while also providing accountants with accurate, clean financial data they need to service these clients.”
Xero Go will also support the self-employed to get ready for one of the largest changes to the UK tax system — Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment (MTD for ITSA).
From April 2024, self-employed individuals earning above £10,000 will be required to keep digital records of income and expenses on MTD-compatible software, and to make more frequent submissions. The app will give those impacted by the government legislation one easy tool to capture and track expenses digitally on-the-go and manage invoices. Expenses are recorded throughout the year and available in one place at tax time, reducing the need to chase up missing information.
Xero Go will enable the self-employed to:
- Record expenses on the fly using the Quickscan feature, powered by machine learning. Quickscan extracts expense information from receipts, imports them into Xero Go and auto-suggests tax categories for them, saving time on manual expense record gathering and tax coding around submission dates and supports better accuracy.
- Create, send and track customisable invoices — including customer reminders for late payments — and add Stripe payments to invoices to streamline invoice management, get paid faster and feel more in control of their finances.
The app will initially launch as an early release for UK subscribers on iOS from 20 July 2022, with an Android app and additional functionality to be added in the months ahead in the lead-up to MTD for ITSA. The sole trader Xero Go app will be free to download with paid add-ons that bring additional capability available within the app.
For more information on Xero Go and prices, please visit the sole trader page here and the partner plan page here.