[pm]

In Australia, there was a company called Paycycle which filled in the payroll gap, which Xero subsequently bought out and incorporated into their Payroll offering for Australian companies.

My theory is that Xero purposely crippled parts of their software so as not to offend or discourage the developer ecosystem. However, they missed the target with things like payroll, which is such a gigantic PITA for everyone and EVERYONE WANTS IT, that they instead responded by creating a solution that tried to appease third-party developers and their users. As you said, that solution ended up half-baked and pointless.

However, I have great faith in Xero. If they buckle down on things features we want, their developer ecosystem be damned, then we might get a truly killer product.

[rileyjamesx]

The developer eco-system is very important. The lack of payroll didn't eventuate out of a fear of offending the developer community tho. Xero started in NZ without payroll. It was only after expanding to Australia that there was enough demand for payroll. At some stage payroll will be available in all regions.

I'm glad you have faith. Lots of features in the pipeline.

[pm]

Indeed, I signed onto Xero when payroll didn't exist. Payroll is as hard, if not harder than doing payment gateways in different countries - everything's different for each country. But the first incarnation of (Australian) payroll left much to be desired - and I assume that's the payroll that everyone's currently stuck with - so I was elated to hear that you'd bought out Paycycle and were integrating it directly into Xero.

We're going to be integrating internally with Xero in the next couple of months, so hopefully the API call limit doesn't become a pain.

Otherwise, keep up the good work.