Registered tax and BAS agents will soon be able to offer their clients the convenience of sharing documents via Dropbox and with seamless integration with Xero Tax.
Xero Tax was introduced in June, and now the company has announced integration with Dropbox for Business so agents can use Dropbox to store and share documents with their clients.
Such documents include tax returns, letters, agreements, proposals, invoices and receipts.
This arrangement makes life easier for both parties, according to Charlie Wood, ANZ country manager at Dropbox, as it provides a single, shared place to store these items.
The integration uses the Dropbox for Business API, which means notifications can be generated by Xero Tax when new items - such as a smartphone photograph of a receipt - are added to a shared folder.
"We thought that was the best place to start," said Wood.
Chris Ridd, managing director of Xero Australia, said "Cloud accounting has already immensely improved the way that small businesses, accountants and bookkeepers manage finances, particularly at tax time. Our partnership with Dropbox will only improve this further, allowing the thousands of small businesses that use Xero in Australia to share and collaborate on their tax files with their tax agents, quickly, easily and efficiently."
Today's announcement is just the first fruit of a strategic partnership between the two companies. Other integrations and enhancements are planned, including the ability to access and share Dropbox files from within Xero.
Dropbox has 8 million registered users in Australia, said Wood. "We're getting a lot of traction in business."
"We have a whole team here dedicated to SMBs," he added, including Dropbox's only small business productivity advisor.
"Our partnership with Xero and the integration of Dropbox for Business with Xero Tax is just one way that Dropbox and Xero are helping small businesses stress less and do more, with a seamless and more collaborative way to manage the workflows associated with tax time," Wood said, and Dropbox has plans to improve the awareness and understanding of Dropbox for Business among the small business community before 2015 is over.
