What’s New in the World of Xen – Q2 2014 Update
Dear Xenthusiasts,
Things have been moving rather fast here at Xen and I want to personally give an update about what’s going on internally and where we’re heading. For a young firm, we are seeing a ton of traction and the way we are delivering our services has been resonating very well with business owners who are sick and tired of the status quo in their accounting for the past few decades.
Our most notable change at Xen has been to bolster our team in March with the addition of our new Cloud Accounting Guru, Helene Petoussis, CPA, CA. Hailing from Pricewaterhousecoopers’ tax division, Helene brings many years of technical tax experience to the team and has quickly been adapting to an environment that is as far away from a traditional accounting firm as possible.
We have also totally revamped our accounting packages and pricing plans. Our new plans are fully priced around the external value that we provide to our clients rather than the time we spend on them. There are no timesheets and our clients are never on “the clock.” Each plan includes various features which allows us to:
- Be a lot more proactive.
- Be much more accessible.
- Give business owners better insight into the numbers.
Our fixed fee pricing model forces us to innovate and move towards a system of processes that are as effective as possible. Each new plan includes a hand picked suites of apps, a number of necessary and proactive accounting services and various levels of easy, accessible support throughout the year.
In the last 3 months we have further solidified ties with our valued partners, such as Xero, Intuit, Freshbooks, Wave Accounting and many others in the cloud accounting space. Recognized as leaders in our field, we have been involved in beta programs, product testing, scope groups and more. Our goal is to push the industry forward as a whole and contributing to our partners’ success is important to us.
Bitcoin has also been a space that we have delved deeper into. We are quickly becoming seen as the go-to accounting firm for advice when it comes to the accounting and taxation issues surrounding bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies. While I won’t lie and say that this area is a cakewalk, we are however fully up to date with what the government is saying and continuing to closely monitor for developments. Bitcoin isn’t going away in our opinion. With the recent addition of travel giant Expedia starting to accept bitcoins as a form of payment, it’s only a matter of time before mass adoption strikes.
We are constantly striving for ingenious ideas to be more engaged with the public. As social media is often perceived as the gateway for conversation, we see this as a perfect opportunity to connect with other businesses and individuals. As a result, we, in collaboration with Xero, launched an innovative contest in May to offer 1 year of free cloud accounting services plus 1 free year of Xero. News of the contest was picked up by Techvibes.
Lastly, we have implemented a brand new help desk to better track our clients requests and questions. While the initial implementation was nothing short of a nightmare, we are absolutely loving the increased visibility of our clients questions & requests on our end and we think our clients will be truly pleased with an even better customer experience.
While there has been a lot of positive changes in the last quarter, we still have a lot of work left to be done and a lot of areas that still need improvement. Our very purpose at Xen is to offer the best customer experience humanly possible and we will stop at no end to achieve this. At the end of the day, we want every customer interaction with our firm to be a positive one. If this has not been achieved, then we are not doing our job.
The accounting industry is stale and outdated in Canada. In recognition of this, we at Xen Accounting will continue to innovate in order to move cloud accounting as a whole forward. We have some pretty big things in the pipeline and we can’t wait to share them with you.
We immensely value the suggestions and opinions of our clients. If there is anything you think that would result in us serving you better, we would love to hear it.
Thank you for your continued to support.
Yours,
Ryan Lazanis, CPA, CA
Xen Accounting / Xen Master
