New offering for small businesses offered exclusively on Xero

DENVER & DALLAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Xero, the global small business platform, announced that Liberty Tax, with 2700 franchisees across the US and Canada, selected Xero as the preferred cloud accounting software for its new small business service offering.

Liberty Tax, a portfolio company of NextPoint Financial Inc. (TSX: NPF.U), has more than 12,000 tax professionals in the US and Canada providing tax preparation services for individuals and small businesses. The company will be expanding its services and launching a service for small businesses that includes monthly bookkeeping, payroll services and business loans.

“We recognize the importance of our individual and small business clients and their need for real time access to their financial information to help inform decision making,” said Brent Turner, CEO, Liberty Tax. “Combining the expertise of our tax professionals with the financial tools and insights the Xero platform provides will help boost the value we provide to our clients and members.”

Historically, Liberty Tax has only offered primarily tax return services. Standardizing on the Xero platform enables Liberty Tax franchisees to expand their offerings for clients and advise them year-round, rather than only during tax season. Liberty will expand integration of the Liberty Tax Mobile app to provide connectivity to the Xero platform – all accessible from the app on the client’s phone. This marks the first development in a banking as a service model that Liberty Tax will offer.

Through the Xero platform, Liberty Tax professionals and their clients will have access to insights on day-to-day and month-to-month activity, along with real-time views on key metrics such as cash flow, invoices and payments, and business forecasting.

“Over the past year, we’ve seen companies accelerate their digital transformation efforts to adapt to rapidly changing environments,” said Tony Ward, President, Americas at Xero. “Cloud adoption and gaining real time visibility of financial data, coupled with advisory services from Liberty Tax professionals, can help supercharge small business success.”

About Xero

Xero is a cloud-based accounting so ware platform for small businesses with over 2.7 million subscribers globally. Xero offers an ecosystem of over 1,000 third-party apps and 300 plus connections to banks and other financial partners. In 2020 and 2021, Xero was included in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index and in 2020, Xero was recognised by IDC MarketScape as a leader in its worldwide SaaS and cloud-enabled small business finance and accounting applications vendor assessment.

About Liberty Tax

Liberty Tax, a portfolio company of NextPoint Financial Inc. (TSX: NPF.U), is a tax preparation service with more than 2,700 locations, and serves approximately 1.6 million consumer and small business clients in the United States and Canada. Established in 1997, Liberty Tax is one of the nation’s leading tax preparation companies, with franchised locations in every major metro area throughout the US and Canada. For a more in-depth look, visit Liberty Tax Service and interact with Liberty Tax on Twitter and Facebook.

Contacts

Brad Cohn

brad.cohn@libtax.com