'Login infrastructure issue' blamed as sustained Xero outage threatens payrolls
- Reference: 1627394043
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/07/27/xero_outage_accountancy_saas/
- Source link:
The cloud-based software slinger, which boasts around 640,000 customers in the UK including accountants, bookkeepers and SMEs, has posted a succession of messages on its status page this morning apologising for the downtime and informing customers it is busy trying to fix the problem.
The problems started just as people were logging on to start their working day at 08:25 UTC, according to the company's [1]status page . They continued through to lunchtime and at the time of writing Xero was still down.
[2]
Engineers have been investigating the root cause of the problem. In its latest update at 13:16 UTC, the company said: "Unfortunately we are continuing to experience an outage of the Xero Platform which is preventing users from logging in. This is related to a Xero login infrastructure issue, and our teams are doing everything they can to get our customers back online."
[3]
[4]
With a lack of information forthcoming and in an effort to get around the problem, some users attempted to reset their login details to see if that would help.
But Xero told them: "Fixing this issue is our top priority right now, as we can appreciate the impact this is having for our users. Please note that passwords and logins are not incorrect. There is no need to attempt to reset your password."
[5]
According to some comments from hacked-off punters, there are doubts as to whether Xero really does appreciate the consequences that its technical wobble is causing.
[6]Akamai Edge DNS goes down, takes a chunk of the internet with it
[7]Northern Train's ticketing system out to lunch as ransomware attack shuts down servers
[8]Not only is Hubble back online after outage, it's already taking photos of the cosmos
[9]tsoHost pleads for 'patience and understanding' as sites borked, support sinkholed
Over on Twitter, a platform renowned for rationale debates and considered opinions, Xero was given the benefit of the doubt.
Goodness. A good advert for why cloud based accounting is a bad idea? I have two VAT returns I needed to get done today and an ongoing VAT enquiry that I can't deal with. Plus my clients are shouting at me as they use Xero daily for work. — Insight bookkeeping and accounting (@Insightaccts) [10]July 27, 2021
Another wrote:
This is outrageous. We haven't been able to work for half day already when it's the busiest time of the month for all accountants. This is the second time this has happened in a week and Xero is not talking proper action, very disappointing. We're 100% Xero partner and can't work — Expert Accounting & Finance (@ExpertAccounti2) [11]July 27, 2021
To lighten the mood, someone did ask: "Have you tried turning it off and back on again?"
And while one contributor suggested that systems can't be up 100 per cent of the time, the opinion of many is that at least Xero should provide more clarity as to when things might be fixed.
I agree, but I would expect clarity on the issue with it being down nearly three hours now. There has been no confirmation that the data of affected users is safe, nor has there been clarity on what is causing the issue and an estimated downtime now they are attempting to fix. — Francesca Doe (@francesca_doe) [12]July 27, 2021
One Home Counties accountant we spoke to, who asked not to be named, looks after scores of small businesses. They told us: "This is really frustrating. We're at the end of the month looking at payroll and all we can do is look at their status page and wait."
A spokesperson at Xero sent us a statement:
"Unfortunately we are continuing to experience an outage of the Xero Platform which is preventing users from logging in. This is related to a Xero login infrastructure issue, and our teams are doing everything they can to get our customers back online. We apologise to our customers for the inconvenience this is causing." ®
*Total Inability To Serve Users' Payrolls
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[1] https://status.xero.com/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/saas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YQAtup4u-tpNtzOyZneEvQAAAA0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/saas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YQAtup4u-tpNtzOyZneEvQAAAA0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/saas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YQAtup4u-tpNtzOyZneEvQAAAA0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/saas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YQAtup4u-tpNtzOyZneEvQAAAA0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/22/akamai_edge_dns_outage/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/20/northern_trains_ticketing_system/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/20/hubble_first_pics/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/14/tsohost_outage/
[10] https://twitter.com/Insightaccts/status/1419993319715835909?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[11] https://twitter.com/ExpertAccounti2/status/1419994051273703431?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[12] https://twitter.com/francesca_doe/status/1419972993426628609?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: And while one contributor suggested that systems can't be up 100 per cent of the time
"The cloud" is just someone else's computer.
Bad idea to have 100% of your business running on one cloud
Perhaps it's a bit much to expect accountants to add this up, but you could use two different clouds and only have half the impact of an outage twice as often, and still keep working on some clients.
Re: Bad idea to have 100% of your business running on one cloud
Unfortunately this completely impossible now, due to realtime VAT reporting and digital automatic filing of VAT & RTI/PAYE. You cannot use more than one accounting package, in the same way using two word processors to write the same document wouldn't make sense.
Re: Bad idea to have 100% of your business running on one cloud
What the OP suggested was not 1 busness using 2 accounting packages but multiple business spread over multiple accounts packages, for the accountants doing the books for more than one business.
Do I smell ransomware?
Their status page says it's *not* a security incident and related to infrastructure
Quirk
People should remember that according to HMRC they are solely responsible for their tax affairs, that is when you submit something late, you cannot blame it on "the cloud".
It's also a display of Keynesian economics at its finest - create a tax system that is needlessly complex and expensive to comply with, so that a new sector of companies providing ways of dealing with that complexity can be created. In reality, this does not bring any value to the economy - quite the opposite.
Companies instead of spending their hard earned money on accounting, could spend that on R&D or other things actually helping their business.
Unfortunately rules also have to be complex, to keep the pleb in their lane. We can't have too many entrepreneurs.
You Keep Using That Word; I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means
"It's also a display of Keynesian economics at its finest..."
?!!
You might need to look up what Keynesian is. Because [1]it's not what you say it is. Although I guess it's getting it wrong with a touch more class than saying "socialist economics" or "Marxist economics".
[1] https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2014/09/basics.htm
Re: You Keep Using That Word; I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means
From the linked article:
The revolutionary idea
Keynes argued that inadequate overall demand could lead to prolonged periods of high unemployment. An economy’s output of goods and services is the sum of four components: consumption, investment, government purchases, and net exports (the difference between what a country sells to and buys from foreign countries). Any increase in demand has to come from one of these four components. But during a recession, strong forces often dampen demand as spending goes down. For example, during economic downturns uncertainty often erodes consumer confidence, causing them to reduce their spending, especially on discretionary purchases like a house or a car. This reduction in spending by consumers can result in less investment spending by businesses, as firms respond to weakened demand for their products. This puts the task of increasing output on the shoulders of the government. According to Keynesian economics, state intervention is necessary to moderate the booms and busts in economic activity, otherwise known as the business cycle.
You see, Keynes believed that supply and demand should be controlled by the government. Government can increase the demand for accounting services by increasing complexity of tax affairs.
Then if you pair it with:
[1]"Big four accountancy firms donate £1.9m in services to political parties since 2009"
You can get an idea why this is so broken.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/jul/10/lobbying
Xero - aptly named, methinks
"The cloud-based single point of failure software slinger"
TFTFY
What happened, are Excel spreadsheets not good enough any more ?
You're a small business, do you really have that many invoices to file at the end of the month ?
I'm ok - thanks
My locally installed, perpetually licenced copy of QuickBooks is working fine (if that's a word you can apply to QB).
Back up
Seems to be back up. No word about what happened yet, though
Not Good Enough
Seems like it went from some users who were affected to no one can log in, login infrastructure issues are fixed fairly quickly, this is pointing more towards a cyber hack/attack, data breach.
And while one contributor suggested that systems can't be up 100 per cent of the time
Mainframes achieve 99.9+ %. You get what you pay for. I was never convinced that cloud had all the answers (but also mainframe does not have all the answers0.