Online accounting software vendor Xero has rolled out some new features, including a budgeting tie-in with Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet product.

In a post on the Xero blog, product manager Andrew Tokeley says the company looked at developing smart budgeting tools themselves, but opted to connect with Excel instead as it is ‘best of breed'.

"You can creat all kinds of customised reports and graphs, run ad-hoc queries, and even do some fairly complex forecasting,” Tokeley says.

"Now you can export your actuals from Xero, do some heavy lifting in Excel, then import the results back as your budget line.

Other features include the ability to add tracking or change the tax rate on a transaction straight from the bank reconciliation screen, a new partner bank feed from NZ Home Loans, and the ability to manage and print cheques, currently available for US customers only but coming in other regions soon.