SINGAPORE - DBS Bank and Xero, a leading cloud accounting platform, have come up with a way for small businesses to connect their DBS business banking accounts to Xero immediately, said the two firms on Tuesday (Aug 1) in a joint announcement.

Small business owners, who use the online business banking platform DBS Ideal, can choose to have their bank transactions imported automatically as subscribers of Xero's services.

A firm's transaction data from the bank account will be fed to Xero every day, so that business owners can get "reliable, up-to-date view of their financial position in Xero".

This means firms do not have to spend too much time on manual data entry or importing bank transactions.

The joint statement noted that this makes for "more informed business and investment decisions, without the hassle and costly mistakes caused by outdated cash flow balances and human error".

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) now have to apply for such data movement via paper forms, and it can take about 10 days to set up.

A recent survey by Xero of 150 SMEs in Singapore found small business owners spend an average of 15.5 hours a month manually importing and reconciling their bank statements while about 30 per cent spend between 20 and 40 hours a month.

Also, 67 per cent said manual bank statement reconciliation was a major challenge in managing their operations.