Just ask Xero: Software giant takes the plunge into generative AI

The country’s largest software company, Xero, used its Investor Day in Melbourne today to showcase a powerful generative AI assistant that will be able to generate an invoice, edit a quote or pay a bill.

Just Ask Xero, dubbed JAX, uses a conversational interface and large language models to make sense of a user’s requests, drawing on the financial and business data held within a Xero account to automate processes.

Jax will respond to a task request either in the Xero app or “other commonly used apps and surfaces such as mobile, WhatsApp and email,” Xero’s chief product officer Diya Jolly wrote in a blog update today.

“What if you could get back to what you love,” the narrator of a demo video of JAX asks, showing a florist talking to JAX on her phone and instructing it to add more bunches of flowers to a wedding quote.

JAX will summarise priority tasks each morning for Xero users.

In another demo, JAX informs a business owner that a customer has paid the last three invoices late.

“Would you like to apply a late fee?” JAX asks.

“Y”, the businessman responds in the chat. 

JAX will also summarise your priority tasks each morning, spot discrepancies in invoices and quotes and ask you to review them. Xero executives told investors in Melbourne that JAX would initially focus on invoices, quotes and contacts functionality, which are core to the Xero platform. Later, JAX would automate aspects of handling bills, cash flow forecasting and reporting. JAX will debut in beta mode later this calendar year.

Xero joins Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe and other software as a service providers in building GenAI into their core offerings, thought it will follow them by as much as a year once JAX is available in beta mode.

However, Xero pointed out today that it already has an AI assistant within the app to hepl with the customer onboarding experience, which will eventually be built into JAX. 

“Xero has also embedded a GenAI tool into Xero Central to provide answers customers need in conversational language. Results of the early testing performed have been promising. Xero has seen a 40% decrease in average customer search time, with search sessions requiring additional customer service support decreasing by about 20%,” Jolly wrote in her blog update.

JAX will be built into the core Xero dashboard and was positioned as a key part of Xero’s strategy for 2025 - 2027 unveiled today by CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy.

“Our strategy is simple, focused, and purpose driven,” he told investors.  

“We have solid foundations, a strong financial profile, turbocharged capabilities, and continued large global TAM to pursue, as we seek to become an even more trusted platform for small businesses and their advisors.

“As we continue to build Xero for the long term, we aspire to be a world class SaaS business, and believe we have the opportunity to double the size of our business and deliver Rule of 40 or greater performance over 1 time.”

“Rule of 40” is a business goal that stipulates that a company’s combined revenue growth rate and profit margin should equal or exceed 40%. 

The news of JAX follows Xero rival Sage yesterday unveiling its own AI-powered assistant called Sage CoPilot, which will similarly help handle administrative and repetitive tasks. It too will assist with forecasting, cashflow management and generating and sending invoices.

Sage Copilot will initially launch in the UK in April on limited release.