Xero Adds Quadient’s AP Capabilities to Cloud-Based Accounting Software

Xero has integrated with Quadient’s accounts payable (AP) capabilities to add intelligent AP automation to its cloud-based accounting software.

With the companies’ new strategic partnership in North America and the United Kingdom, small and midsized businesses (SMBs) using Xero’s software will gain these capabilities, Quadient said in a Tuesday (Dec. 19) press release.

“By partnering with Xero, we are expanding access of Quadient AP to more accounting teams so they can focus on deeper, more strategic decisioning rather than manual invoice and payment processing,” Chris Hartigan, chief solution officer, intelligent communication automation at Quadient, said in the release.

Xero has 3.95 million subscribers worldwide, according to the release. The company’s software helps these customers run their business accounting online and in one place.

The AP automation solution of the company’s new partner, Quadient, eliminates the need for manual data import or export in everything from receiving invoices and purchase orders to inputting payment data, the release said.

With the new integration, data can be collected and inputted into Xero using Quadient’s optical character recognition (OCR) capability, eliminating 83% of data entry and reducing the average cost of processing an invoice from €15 to €2, per the release.

“We are excited to welcome Xero to our growing partner program,” Hartigan said in the release. “Quadient’s strategy is to establish partnerships with the world’s major enterprise resource planning and accounting platforms to bring industry-leading technology solutions to our mutual customers.”

PYMNTS Intelligence has found that digital technologies that support AP automation have streamlined the source-to-pay cycle.

Eighty-three percent of the CFOs surveyed for the report said payment integration between buyer and supplier has reduced payment friction, according to “Solving Accounts Payables’ Top Frictions With Automation,” a PYMNTS and Corcentric collaboration.

The news of this new partnership comes one day after Xero said it has teamed up with open banking firm Flinks to enhance banking data access for small businesses. In that collaboration, small businesses in Canada and the U.S. that use the Xero platform will be able to access streamlined bank feeds that will save time and improve the accuracy of their banking transactions.