A major outage is impacting Xero accounting software.
The outage is estimated to effect about 4.2 million small business users in Australia, New Zealand and the UK who use the software.
‘Some users may be experiencing errors logging in or navigating to Xero,’ the company said.
‘This is related to an issue with our third-party provider, Amazon Web Services, who are investigating this with urgency.
A Xero user said it is ‘very annoying that Xero doesn’t have phone support and the only way to email them is within the app, which of course is useless when the app won’t let you log in’.
The outage will leave many businesses struggling to complete end-of-month tasks, including making payments, closing accounts, and making payroll changes.
The outage comes just weeks after banks, airlines, supermarkets, media organisations and retailers were unable to operate on July 19 due to an outage triggered by major cyber security firm CrowdStrike releasing a Windows software update.
The ensuing IT chaos was a wake-up call, according to electronic payments systems expert Professor Steve Worthington.
A major outage is impacting Xero accounting software
Cloud-based accounting software Xero went down about 8am AEST on Wednesday
‘We’ve had outages where telecoms have failed or power has failed, or one bank’s IT systems have failed, but this was much bigger than that,’ says the Swinburne University academic.
‘A lot of people were disenfranchised and couldn’t use their digital means or merchants didn’t have the facilities to accept them.’
Prof Worthington says the outage highlighted the need for cash to remain a back-up option despite its use dwindling and carrier Armaguard requiring a $50 million bailout earlier this year.
‘Cash can’t crash,’ he says.
‘I don’t think it’s still king but it’s in the royal family of payments, if you like.
‘The global outage reminds us of the fragile nature of the modern IT world and it’s interconnectivity. Someone’s pulled one brick out of the wall and the wall’s just collapsed.
‘Without digital, you’re high and dry. What do you get then? A bunch of IOU notes?’
