Likelihood to Recommend For accounting systems, users and/or evaluators often want to see some type of matrix or "heads up" comparisons of specific features and functionality of a system in key areas such as: 1) General Ledger 2) Order to Cash cycle 3) Purchase to Pay cycle 4) Cash management 5) Inventory and/or Cost Accounting (Projects/Jobs, etc) 6) Revenue Recognition 7) Fixed Assets management 8) Budgets 9) Tax 10) Reports and Analysis It would be great if this kind of matrix existed to be filled in by reviewers so that others could benefit from their perspectives about the applications and how they address or handle the specific features/functionality. With respect to FinancialForce, the company has found that nearly all the key features it needed were available from the application.
Read full review If they are using foreign exchange I always use Xero. If I need reporting to be customized we always use Xero. If the client is already working in a software and it is working for them we will leave them in the software they are in.
Read full review Pros User interface is more modern and user-friendly than other software Dashboards allow for good visual interpretation Reports are able to be customized to better fit users' needs Read full review Their method of moving between screens was very logical and intuitive which is not a "given" attribute among software packages. Finding transactions was relatively easy with just common sense. The use of this software was generally well received in that the accountants did not discredit the software as cheap, poorly organized, or timely to learn. No one at Corporate had a vendetta against using Xero. It does a good job of allowing the users to drill down to the final detail of an account balance - which is fundamental to the accounting department's needs. Read full review Cons Since SalesForce was not made with accounting in mind, building FinancialForce as a module on top of SalesForce gives problems because the overarching architect of SalesForce cannot facilitate all the accounting requirements. The FinancialForce integration team was not very good, and did not help us set up our FinancialForce very well. Their customer support is also lacking and takes a long time to respond and troubleshoot our problems. FinancialForce doesn't actually build financial statement reports. We were only able to run a trial balance, and we had to build the statements ourselves in Excel. Read full review I would like to have the ability to sign up a holding company and all its trading entities under one subscription, in order to have amalgamated and separate accounting records and reports for each trading entity. This is pertaining to my own Xero business clients: I would like to have a full featured, customizable practice client support /ticketing and task manager system, with reminders that can be sent to my clients and my team for various tasks due. I would like Xero to have a cheaper option for their packages that include invoicing and related documents, as in my country we have options with an opposition accounting firm that offers a subscription where clients can create up to 2000 invoices per year for free. Read full review Likelihood to Renew The company has now converted its legacy, "home grown" operations system and built it on the force.com platform, and the integration between it and FinancialForce is deeply entrenched. No other application would be able to replicate this functionality, and the company will be able to scale and leverage the force.com platform as it grows.
Read full review In addition to the matters covered in this review, my reason for renewing this product is that Xero's functionality and the constant updates that the company provides, makes the software even more business friendly. The software therefore builds a brand loyalty among customers.
Sarang Mandke Consultant - Cloud accounting integration, Real Time Accounting
Read full review Usability Change management is always an issue, but the evidence of the application's usability is that both long-time employees (used to the legacy systems for many years) and newer employees have been able to learn the system and improve their business processes.
Read full review Xero has all the features that you need, basically. From chart of accounts, reconciling books, to making annual financial reports. What I'm currently looking for Xero right now is to provide more broader integration with the other apps so we can use it for customer-facing experience also. All in all, everything works well!
Read full review Reliability and Availability Unless the internet is completely unavailable - which has not happened yet - the application is always accessible. Since FinancialForce is built on the force.com platform, it's uptime is tied to Salesforce security and system performance standards
Read full review We have been actively using and 100% Xero based for our ecommerce accounting practice for over 4 years. There has on been one real outage for more than 5 minutes. Xero was open and transparent about the outage, what they were doing to resolve the issue, and provided 15 minute updates. Showing how they care about their customers and partners. Plus, showing that their customers care too, were understanding, and went surfing or in our case took a nap. Couldn't run our business without Xero as a partner.
Read full review Performance If Visualforce pages are enabled, they sometimes slow down the load time.
Read full review Pages generally load quickly, but it's a fairly common occurrence to have pages taking a bit longer than I'd like to load (as in, 4+ seconds). Occasionally I have to refresh a page to get it to work. Bank feed and integrations tend to be slow in general, but that could easily be due to API latency on the side of the other parties. Most of the time, though, the bank feeds refresh before I login so it's not a huge problem. Not necessarily good performance compared to a local app like QuickBooks desktop, but definitely good performance for a cloud application. Room for growth? yes.
Read full review Support Rating The response time for FinancialForce is exemplary. Immediate acknowledgement of the support request by automatically logging a case/ticket on the provider side, then less than 24-hour follow up by a support team member with specific questions, information or resolution for the issue.
Read full review Always respond and keep issues open until you are satisfied with the result. Generally good responses, in the past, I had some support responses that were really basic and really annoying. They type where "have your tried restarting your computer" style of answers. Well, of course, I went through all the basics before contacting them. Duh, but I suppose not everyone does. Otherwise, it would be a 10. The last year has shown a marked improvement in the support responses however.
Read full review In-Person Training The format was great; someone was there to ask questions or help if you were stuck.
Read full review Online Training Through its Xtra login website available to its customers, FinancialForce offers a complete set of online, video tutorials, training and documentation. Each tutorial is "bite-sized", meaning it imparts instructional, step-by-step information in 2-3 minute narrated videos. For a particular cycle or process, like invoices to payments for example, each tutorial builds on the last so that the user can get a complete picture of the steps and process in less than 10 minutes.
Read full review All of Xero's training is online and available for anyone (business owner or accountants) to learn and become experts in their system. There is a range of content from product training to real world webinars from their partners. Xero is beautiful accounting software and their training is the same.
Read full review Implementation Rating The company decided to run parallel for three months in order to soften the impact of the change from the legacy "system" - which users had been interfacing with for over a decade - to FinancialForce. While not recommended, this did provide time for the in-house "super user" team of 2 people to become completely familiar with the application, and thus provide hands-on training and be a resource for the users who would be processing the daily accounting transactions.
Read full review If it can be done, time the implementation near a new fiscal year so you can start clean. Otherwise, you have to go back and do historical data from the beginning of the fiscal year, which can be brain draining.
Read full review Alternatives Considered FinancialForce Subscription & Usage Billing has more features, more useability, and manages higher numbers of customers. The systems I have used in the past are easier to navigate but couldn't handle this number of customers.
Read full review I've used a lot of different accounting systems. Many of them so big and powerful, but a hassle to get set up. Xero is light, inexpensive, and easy to use. When I originally selected them they seemed like they were developing new features at a quick rate as well. I was invited to be part of focus sessions to make the product better. That part has slowed down significantly though.
Read full review Scalability I have yet to fully stress test the product given the size of the company where I am using it. I am sure as we scale to more customers, more vendors and more reporting requirements, I will have a better understanding of what it is capable of in terms of bandwidth and processing
Read full review Return on Investment Beneficial to easily be able to track impact of fluctuating currencies. Integration with Salesforce.com reduced/elimintated manual entry which saves various colleagues time. Increased visibility over the entire sales cycle because of the integration between Salesforce.com & FinancialForce Accounting. Read full review Saved many hours through automatic invoices and followups Saved many hours by allowing transactions to start via bank feeds (ie I don't have to input a transaction and mark it against what is in the bank/cc account; rather, the transaction in the account is where you input the transaction into the books. Has the scalability my business requires, and not much more. Read full review ScreenShots