8. If I Were You: The Next 90 Days
The single most important thing
Get 5 Xero practices to pay for a bulk cleanup before you write product code, then get 3–6 paying monthly for the app by day 90.
- Segment: bookkeeping practices with 10–250 Xero clients, in one country (UK or Australia).
- Job: "Fix a client's Xero file in bulk, safely, and prove what you changed."
- How: start hands-on. Run cleanups for practices on a screen-share, using your own scripts against the Xero API, with a spreadsheet preview they approve line by line. Charge for it. Automate only what you've done by hand at least 10 times.
Week-by-week
| Weeks | Goal | Exit criteria (~15 hrs/week / full-time) |
|---|---|---|
| 1–2 | Discovery. Message commenters on Xero's bulk-void, bulk-delete and bulk-edit product-ideas threads, plus practice groups. Ask about their last 3 cleanups: what went wrong, how long it took, what they used, what they charged the client. | 12 / 15 calls. You can name the top 3 cleanup jobs in practices' words, with hours attached. |
| 3–4 | Paid hands-on cleanups. Offer 5–8 practices a done-with-you cleanup at $99–299 per client file. Snapshot before, preview, write, change log after. | 3 / 5 paid cleanups. If fewer than 2 will pay, the pain isn't real at a price. Change the job (to scheduled import), not the pitch. |
| 5–8 | Build the thin v1 (web only): Sign in with Xero, practice dashboard, bulk recode, bulk void/delete with payment removal, invoice and bill import with line items, preview, snapshot, reverse, change log PDF. | Hands-on customers move to self-serve. Every job type's reverse is tested on the demo company. |
| 9–10 | Certification and content. Apply for Xero app certification. Publish 4 guides ("bulk void invoices in Xero", "change account code on many invoices", "undo a Xero import", "delete imported bills") and 2 short videos. | Certification submitted. Guides live. 10+ / 25+ trials. |
| 11–12 | Measure and decide. | 3 / 6 paying practices, ≥60% of trial practices ran a job with a preview, zero broken client files. Hit it: list on the App Store (Plus tier) and keep going. Miss it: go back to discovery. |
At ~15 hrs/week, weeks 5–8 stretch to weeks 5–11 and certification slips to day ~120. The day-90 gate still applies to calls, paid cleanups and self-serve use.
Kill criteria (write these down now)
If at day 90 you have fewer than 2 paying practices, or no practice has run a second job unprompted, the wedge is wrong. Don't add features. Change the job (scheduled import) or the country.
The one thing to stop doing
Stop thinking of this as a "sync app" that could work on any platform.
Five platforms is five APIs, five certifications and five sets of support tickets. "Sync" also puts you against Zapier, Make and every AI agent at once. The product is a safety tool for bulk changes to a client's Xero ledger, and nothing else until $5k MRR.
A close second: stop treating bulk void as the headline. It's free elsewhere. Recode, preview and proof are what practices pay for.
What stays on the long-term roadmap (only after proof)
- Scheduled monthly imports and month-end checks (by month 6, the retention feature).
- Firm tier: users, roles, an approval step (month 9+).
- Client-facing "what we fixed" report (a referral loop).
- A safety layer for AI agents writing to Xero (preview and log before an agent's changes), only past $5k MRR.
- Then, if paying practices ask, a second ledger (QuickBooks), accepting the head-on fight with SaasAnt.