Accounting software company Xero has reached the milestone of 100,000 paying customers in Australia, up from 75,000 at 30 August 2013.

Australian customer numbers have grown by two and a half times at the same time 12 months ago, and include nine of Australia’s top 10 accounting firms.

“We have seen a real shift in accountants, bookkeepers and small business owners wanting to use a pure cloud based accounting solution to manage their finances," says Chris Ridd, Managing Director, Xero Australia.

"Our customers are tired of managing software installs and paying for the required hardware upgrades that typically follow new releases. When they switch to Xero, it’s the last update they ever have to do.

“It is been an amazing journey for me personally over the past three years. When I think back to when I started where we had less than 5,000 customers and only 180 accountants and bookkeepers promoting Xero, our rapid growth over that time has been quite humbling.

"Our strategy is to be the leader in online accounting software. We’re disrupting the accounting landscape with our innovation, putting out new releases for our core product every three to four weeks. The opportunity in front of us is massive.”