SuiteFiles has been selected as one of three app partners in Xero’s new Practice App Pilot, a six-month cohort of the Xero Developer Growth Program built specifically for apps that serve accountants and bookkeepers.
It’s a short list. Xero chose SuiteFiles alongside Vinyl and BAS Ready to help shape how it supports practice apps going forward. And it comes in the same year SuiteFiles was named Xero Practice App of the Year in the US.
What the Practice App Pilot is
The Xero Developer Growth Program gives app developers more promotion, dedicated support and room to collaborate with Xero. The new pilot narrows that focus to practice apps: the tools firms use to run their own work, rather than the apps their small business clients use.
As Xero puts it, practice apps are discovered and adopted differently, so they need a different kind of support. Over the next six months, Xero will work closely with the three partners to learn what works best for apps serving the accounting community, and how to support them at scale.
You can read Xero’s full announcement on the Xero Developer Blog.
Why it matters
Earlier this year, SuiteFiles was named Xero Practice App of the Year in the US. That award recognised how firms use SuiteFiles day to day. Being selected for the pilot is a different kind of recognition: Xero is choosing to build its practice app approach alongside us.
The common thread is our integration with Xero Partner Hub (formerly Xero Practice Manager). When a new client is added, SuiteFiles creates their folders automatically. Workflows populate from Xero data, contacts are shared, Xero reports can be saved and opened from SuiteFiles, and Microsoft 365 documents link straight back to Partner Hub. Client work stays connected, so nobody has to rebuild the same information in two places.
What this means for your firm
If you already use SuiteFiles with Xero, nothing changes about how you work today. What changes is how closely we’re working with Xero on what comes next.
- A tighter connection between your workspace and your practice data. The pilot gives us a direct line to Xero’s teams as we keep building the Partner Hub integration.
- Your feedback carries further. What you tell us about how client work moves between Xero and SuiteFiles will help shape the pilot’s learnings.
- The same foundation underneath. SuiteFiles is still built on your own Microsoft 365, so your files stay in your tenant and your data stays yours.
From our team
“SuiteFiles started with a pretty simple idea. Accountants should be able to get to their client documents in the cloud, and it should work properly with Xero. Nearly 14 years on, that’s still what we care about.
Being named Practice App of the Year in the US was amazing recognition, and it was a real team game. Being picked for this pilot is something different. It’s a chance to work closely with Xero on what practice apps actually need day to day, not just what looks good in a demo. We don’t sell a dream, we sell a system that does what firms need. We’re looking forward to getting stuck in.”
Andrew Sims, CEO, SuiteFiles
What’s next
The pilot runs for six months, and Xero will share what it learns along the way on the Xero Developer Blog. We’ll share our updates here too.
Congratulations to our fellow pilot partners, Vinyl and BAS Ready. We’re looking forward to learning alongside you.
Using Xero and curious how SuiteFiles fits into your firm? Book a demo and we’ll walk you through how the Partner Hub integration works in practice.
