Xero has bolstered its platform automation by building Hubdoc machine learning technology into the next phase of Xero Expenses.

The next phase of its integration is to embed Hubdoc's technology to add machine learning to the Xero platform and roll out a new update to help small businesses process bills and receipts faster.

New advanced automation technology in Xero Expenses, with embedded machine learning, can speed up the time it takes to transcribe and submit some receipts from minutes to seconds.

The technology updates launch in mid-November and will enable Xero Expenses to extract relevant information faster. This means employees can submit expenses into the app and check for accuracy.

Xero Expenses connects directly to the small business platform, making it easier to reconcile expenses against their accounting ledger, the company states.

Xero is also launching one of its most requested features in Hubdoc duplicate detection.

In the coming weeks, Hubdoc will be able to automatically identify and highlight accounts payable documents that have the same supplier, date and amount, and notify users about the duplicates before submitting into Xero, minimising accidental errors.

Together, improvements in Xero Expenses and Hubdoc will mean small businesses and their advisors can spend less time on the manual data entry tasks and hours spent collecting and managing bills, expenses and other documents each month, and focus on helping grow their businesses.

Xero chief product officer Anna Curzon says, “Every minute saved on collecting, transcribing or reconciling documents is valuable time small businesses and their advisors can spend on actually running or growing their business.

"We're always looking for ways to help give our small business customers time back in their day, and are excited about leveraging this advanced technology to improve the accuracy of this data in Xero."

"As the integrity of this type of data grows, we can provide more powerful business insights and analytics for our customers," Curzon says.

Since Xero's acquisition of Hubdoc in 2018, it's made the technology available to all of Xero's business edition global subscribers.

The next phase of the journey includes continuing to make the integration more seamless and embedding the technology into the infrastructure of Xero's broader small business platform.

Kendra Vant, EGM Data at Xero, leads a growing team of data, AI and machine learning experts. She says her team is making significant strides in bolstering the machine learning capability on the platform.

Vant says, "Though much of this work happens 'under the hood', it's exciting to release updates that will make a significant difference to our customers everyday lives. These improvements make it easier to find the right insights needed to run and grow their business.