'Awesome' inventory management arriving soon in Xero

Stephen Withers for IT Wire writes:   Xero finally delivered a simple quoting mechanism last month, something its customers had been anticipating for years.

Now the company is preparing to check off another big item on its to-do list: inventory management.

Inventory management will appear in Xero within 90 days, Xero Australia managing director Chris Ridd (pictured) told iTWire at the company's Xero Evolve roadshow in Melbourne today. And he's clearly pretty pleased with the work that's been done: "for 80% of the market, it's an awesome solution."

The other 20% with specific requirements can still turn to the inventory add-ons available from third party developers through the Xero Marketplace.

So how does Xero manage the tension between customers' expectation of a complete and functional accounting system on one hand, and the need to foster a broader ecosystem?

"We've always been transparent about the roadmap," said Ridd. "You've got to be transparent."

So where appropriate, Xero exchanges information with outside developers under non-disclosure agreements.

When Xero added some KPI tools last year, it still left room for the "phenomenal KPI dashboards" offered by its partners, he said.

Similarly, Files (the ability to upload an arbitrary file for storage within Xero and then link it to transactions) was recently added to Xero and while there are tentative plans to improve searchability, Ridd implied that the company has no plans to compete with partners such as Receipt Bank which extract data from documents and process it into Xero data.   SNIP, the article continues @ IT Wire, click here to continue reading.....