Making a Splash: Xero Summer Series Perth, 2025
/In the latter half of February – just ten days out from the BAS deadline for the second quarter of the Australian financial year – a few members of the QiBalance Bookkeeping team had the pleasure of putting aside our GST reconciliations for an afternoon to attend an event both distinctly unique and immensely inspiring.
QiBalance Bookkeeping team members at Xero Summer Series Perth, L-R: Susan, Will and Geraldine
Held this year at Optus Stadium, Perth Xero Summer Series puts a twist on the typical conference experience, inviting four industry experts to talk to attending accountants and bookkeepers on topics designed to provoke thought and encourage personal growth. This is followed by networking drinks accompanied with ice cream and sorbet provided by The Boozy Scoop (incorporating or excluding alcohol, per personal preference) to a soundtrack of hot beats provided by the live DJ.
Our team relished the opportunity to connect with accountant and bookkeeper friends and acquaintances both new and established. Building and strengthening meaningful relationships is a key component of our work at QiBalance Bookkeeping, and Xero Summer Series Perth provided an excellent opportunity to do so. A member of our team was able to reconnect with a former TAFE classmate, and it was discovered that one team member’s gym friend was in fact another team member’s former coworker!
The team also delighted in opening our minds in contemplation of the intriguing information shared with us by the day’s MC (Aly Garrett FCA, a member of the Australian Xero Partner Advisory Council and one half of the ripper accounting podcast All Aussie Accounting Adventures) and speakers.
The topics presented were:
Xero’s present and future trajectory – Angad Soin in conversation with MC Aly Garrett FCA
Architecting long-term success in a digital environment – James Bergin
Demographics and statistics behind business – Bernard Salt AM
Focusing in a world of distraction – Jay Pottenger
We would like to share with you some insights gleaned from each of the day’s speakers:
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Angad Soin: What do the Present and Future Look Like for Xero?
Angad Soin is both Australia and New Zealand Managing Director and Global Chief Strategy Officer at Xero.
Soin identified three important areas of focus for Xero:
To build the product that is needed
To ‘reignite’ the community
To push boundaries and continue to drive innovation for the industry
Building the product that is needed
‘Get it done, and do it well,’ Soin affirmed.
He shared that Xero has launched two times more product in the past calendar year than ever before, upholding its commitment to growth.
Xero has been developing tools for practice owners, investing in workpapers. They have also launched client insights for Xero Practice Manager, including a dashboard and snapshot of key metrics.
Soin spoke on the rollout of new invoicing and retiring of classic invoicing: ‘Could have been done better, [we] totally get it. At the same time… we had to do it. We were running two invoicing platforms – [it was] not sustainable.’
And the new invoicing platform offers an array of exciting features that the original one could not: progress payments, tap to pay, partial payments, recurring invoices.
Xero has also acquired Syft Analytics, which focuses on reporting, insights and analytics, and enables multiple entity consolidation.
Reigniting the community
Soin confirmed that community engagement remains central to Xero’s priorities.
This is demonstrated with Xero Product Ideas, a platform accessible through Xero Central where community members can publicly post requests for new Xero features or changes to existing ones. Users can also vote and comment on ideas that others have posted.
‘Capacity is reserved to close off those things,’ Soin explained.
In the last year, Xero has increased the number of Product Ideas that were closed off.
Pushing boundaries and driving industry innovation
Soin pointed out that for a company to be sustainable in the long term, good foundations and continued innovation are both required.
In other words, Xero must both look after the health of the platform and push boundaries with new innovations – ‘Even if they do not always immediately work the way we want them to.’
On what is coming, Soin noted that Xero’s AI ‘JAX’ (Just Ask Xero) has been launched in beta.
‘We are now working on what are the use cases for JAX for accountants and bookkeepers… I can tell you we are actively working on it.’
Xero believes that it will be a combination of people and AI that will drive success going forward: while automation undoubtedly changes the way many tasks are completed, it is people who provide the insurance that checks are implemented to ensure that the right thing is being done and someone is there to give advice if something should go wrong.
Advice for Xero Partners
When asked what advice he would offer to partners on the theme of success for the coming year, Soin cautioned against the comparison game.
‘Don’t… define your definition of success based on what you see out there,’ Soin advised.
‘Success is highly personal… Define what you think is going to make you happy, and then make sure that is what you focus on.’
James Bergin: Architecting Long-Term Success in a World of Digital Disruption
James Bergin is Executive General Manager – Technology Research & Advocacy at Xero.
How to plan for the future when everything is changing
Bergin explained that, rather than one static future, there are many differing futures with different levels of probability. These range from ‘projected’ – simply business-as-usual – to ‘preposterous’ – impossibilities.
When using strategic foresight, Bergin advised against being too preoccupied with ‘predicting’. He instead recommended the following:
Focus on signals – what can you identify, and what is that telling you?
Look back to see forward – what can past events tell you about what may happen in the future?
Identify patterns – what keeps coming up, and what does that indicate may be possible?
Build community – change is often collective, so how can you create and nurture connections to further your shared goals?
By following these steps, you can create visions of scenarios to anticipate, and subsequently, create a plan for future success.
Signals of change for small businesses
Bergin identified personalization, technological integration and interpersonal connection as signals of note.
Personalisation: The You-niverse
Technology is becoming increasingly personalized, driven by individual tastes and preferences and facilitated by AI and big personal data.
‘We’ve been talking about [big data] for a long time,’ said Bergin, ‘except now it’s really, “huge” data, or “gargantuan”.’
‘People are using technology to personalize their physical environment [in addition to their digital environment],’ Bergin told his audience. ‘We [as consumers] are looking for the external world to reflect our personal tastes, and we are turning to technology to do it.’
There is growing market demand for consumer personalisation: many consumers are choosing to shop around if a business does not offer one of their preferred payment options, and brands that excel at personalising their products, services and platforms are reaping rewards.
Integration: the world as your interface
Technology is becoming ubiquitous and more integrated. As our smart devices connect to the internet and to each other, and AI technology facilitates an ease of interfacing, user interfacing is extending beyond individual devices.
‘It’s plausible that we’re looking at futures where the user interface is not a single device, it’s the world we’re living in,’ Bergin said. ‘This is augmented reality or extended reality at work.’
Connection: the ‘cozy web’
How we use technology to connect with each other is changing. As AI capabilities increase, affecting content curation and connection, consumers are increasingly desiring more meaningful, less intrusive engagement.
‘People of all ages are feeling the desire to retreat into private chats and communities,’ Bergin noted.
Content oversaturation and AI-produced misinformation causes many consumers to struggle with trusting what they see or read online. As a result, small businesses may find it increasingly difficult to reach new customers.
Bergin recommended small businesses looking to connect with wary customers take the following approach:
Create an authentic relationship – consumers increasingly value authenticity and connection
Set AI to complete tasks on your behalf – you can use AI to interact with other AI
Prioritise word of mouth – word of mouth recommendations are more important than ever before
Consider – what futures do you want?
Bergin challenged his audience to work with clients towards futures they want to see happen.
By considering what success means for you, and noting what futures are hinted at by existing signals, businesses can ask the question, ‘Is this going towards a future that I want?’ and then use technology to proactively avoid undesirable futures.
To start laying the foundations, ask:
What can I do today, to work towards my preferred future?
What will I do more, better, different, and less of?
Can I make one small change every 90 days?
Bernard Salt AM: The Business of Business
Widely regarded as one of Australia’s leading social commentators, Bernard Salt AM founded The Demographics Group, which provides advice to businesses on demographic, social and property trends.
Australia’s global position
Salt encouraged audience members to have faith and confidence in the small business future of Australia.
UN global population data through to the end of the 21st century projects global population will peak at approximately 10.3 billion in 2084. This is a 25% population increase – and market demand is expected to increase proportionally.
In particular, demand is expected to increase for:
Food
Energy
Resources
Commodities
Space
Security
Lifestyle
And Australia is well positioned to potentially capitalise on this demand.
‘We are in the right place at the right time offering the right product,’ Salt affirmed.
However, economic culture and environment also have a role to play in determining Australia’s small business future. ‘We need to admire entrepreneurship and creating a business from scratch to create wealth for the common good,’ said Salt.
The importance of lifestyle
Salt identified lifestyle as the cultural truth of the Australian people, and a driving factor in consumer decision-making.
He used demographics to indicate changes to Australian life stages over the decades as life expectancy increased.
These changes to Australian life stages and lifestyles have opened up opportunities for small businesses to focus on cultivating their products to meet demands.
Accountant and bookkeeper statistics
Salt presented data from the 2021 census comparing average accountant and bookkeeper milestone ages with the general Australian population.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed the following:
Peak de facto relationship age:
Australia: 23
Accountants: 28
Bookkeepers: 31
Peak income for full time work:
Australia: 43
Accountants: 54
Bookkeepers: 52
Peak divorce for female workforce:
Australia: 50
Accountants: 50
Bookkeepers: 59
Peak business owner - manager:
Australia: 50
Accountants: 49
Bookkeepers: 58
Peak workforce religious belief:
Australia: 50
Accountants: 39
Bookkeepers: 57
Salt noted the close correlation between peak divorce and business owner ages and humorously speculated that women may be finding the confidence to shuck the weight of subpar relationships as their business success rises.
Jay Pottenger: Focus in a World of Distractions
Jay Pottenger is an accredited Mindfulness & Meditation coach and is General Manager and Speaker at EQ Minds, a company dedicated to mental health and wellbeing education and empowerment.
Closing out the talks, Pottenger gave his audience a prudent reminder to prioritise wellness, as without taking care of oneself first, taking care of anyone or anything else is made that much harder.
‘You cannot pour from an empty cup,’ Pottenger said, using metaphor to drive home his point.
At the core of Pottenger’s recommended approach to improving focus, mental health and wellbeing is mindfulness: a deliberate focus of one’s attention on the present moment, without judgement.
The hazards of phone use
A study has shown that the average person clicks, taps, or swipes their phone 2,617 times a day. For heavy phone users, this could be upwards of 8,000 times.
Phone notifications – each vibration and chime – trigger a release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain, producing a sense of reward and reinforcing the pattern of checking your phone.
Phone use is distracting: it pulls our attention away from other tasks, interrupting our flow and making us less efficient. It also incurs a ‘switch cost effect’, causing fatigue, decreased speed, decreased memory and an increase in errors.
Additionally, media multitasking (such as using a computer and phone simultaneously) has been shown to impact brain structure over time. It decreases grey matter volume, reduces cognitive control, and is associated with increased socio-emotional difficulties.
How to ‘own your phone’
If phone usage is such a concern, what steps can we take to ensure it is we who own our phone, and not our phone that ‘owns’ us?
Pottenger suggested the following:
Turn off notifications: when you do not need your phone notifications to be on, switch them off so they will not disrupt what you are doing.
Use focus mode: your device may have a feature where you can set specific activities (e.g. work, exercise) and hide unrelated notifications, reducing distractions.
Create phone free zones: set designated times and places where your phone will not accompany you.
How to manage stress
Taking strategic breaks during work can improve focus and stress recovery. It is important to take breaks without phones, as phone use induces cortisol. (Cortisol is a steroid hormone that is released by the body when stress is experienced and affects nearly every organ in the body as well as multiple key body functions.)
When we stress, we mentally travel backwards and forwards in time, thinking on what went poorly or anticipating future problems.
Mindfulness – deliberately and nonjudgmentally focusing our attention on the present - is a powerful tool of stress management as it helps us to stay in the moment and manage our emotions. Emotions can be contagious, so emotional regulation during times of stress is valuable for both individual and team wellbeing.
Parasympathetic breathing is a simple mindfulness exercise that activates the parasympathetic nervous system, naturally decreasing heart rate and facilitating rest and digestion.
The following is an example of a simple parasympathetic breathing exercise:
Inhale deeply for 4 seconds
Exhale fully for 5 seconds
Repeat as many times as desired
Even one minute of parasympathetic breathing can have a positive impact on anxiety and stress levels – making it a good mindfulness exercise to practice during a work break.
Sleep is key
Sleep is a vital component of stress management as well as physical and emotional wellbeing more broadly.
Using your phone within 1 hour of the time you go to bed decreases REM sleep and causes sleep quality to plummet. To avoid this, you can set a wind-down alarm 1 hour before you go to bed – or, if that feels like too much, you can try 15-30 minutes to begin with.
How you wake also makes a difference: the first 14 minutes after you wake affect your mood for the day. If you wake up and immediately look at your phone, your body will be producing cortisol while your cortisol levels are already naturally high. On the other hand, if you avoid looking at your phone for at least 14 minutes, your emotional wellbeing will benefit.
Walking, journalling and having a chat with someone are some nourishing alternatives to consider trying in the first few minutes after waking.
Carving out spaces of phone-free time, protecting your sleep, and managing stress through mindfulness are valuable tools for accountants, bookkeepers and businesspeople to practice. By making your health and wellbeing a priority, you are giving yourself the greatest possible opportunity for success.
It was wonderful to take part in an event that drew together so many members of the Perth accounting and bookkeeping community, a group of people who are commonly sequestered behind our computers in our respective offices and scattered throughout the suburbs.
Thank you to Xero, and to everyone involved in putting together Xero Summer Series Perth, for an excellent experience that has invigorated and inspired the team at QiBalance Bookkeeping!
