Cloud finance hotshots Xero and Expensify partner to make expense reports suck less

Both accounting startup Xero and expense report startup Expensify are prime examples of cloud-based apps that are disrupting the traditionally stodgy area of financial services.

Now the two are getting chummy with a new partnership that will automatically port Expensify’s expense report data into Xero’s accounting system. That way, if your employees file expense reports, that info goes on the books immediately and you have one-click access to all of your finances.

“We have a very open API and want to be the general accounting system for the web,” Xero President Jamie Sutherland told VentureBeat. “This [partnership with Expensify] makes it simple to import data from Expensify data into Xero.”

Sutherland said the integration between the two products has been in beta for a few weeks and indicated customers have seen time-saving benefits from the matchup. The integration leave beta in two weeks, but it is fully functional now for anyone who wants to sign up.

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Now, you might see this a small partnership, and that’s fair. But when you think about how much reach these two companies have together, you’ll realize how smart this is. Expensify claims to have more than 1.5 million users across more than 200,000 companies while Xero has about 200,000 customers.

Both Xero and Expensify also have a future-looking businesses that are cloud-based and highly mobile. Both have apps for web, iOS, Android, and other platforms. So the appeal for cutting-edge small businesses and startups to use each of them is obvious.

“Many of our customers already like Expensify as well,” Sutherland said. “And in our view, Expensify is a leader in this space.”

New Zealand and San Francisco-based Xero has raised $82.2 million to date and has $70 million of that cash still on hand to help it continue growing quickly. The company has been focusing a lot of its recent efforts on getting recognized in the U.S., and it will be hosting its first “Xerocon” in early September. We recently included Xero as one of 6 cloud startups that is doing well by having a narrow focus.

San Francisco-based Expensify has raised $6.7 million in funding to date. One of its most recent big announcements (besides this one) was that it added the ability to invoice and bill clients from inside its cloud-based dashboard.