FreeAgent vs. Xero

FreeAgent is really suited to the financial management of a small business. Especially an owner managed business as it provides all the tools to keep on top of finances. It can reduce the need for a bookkeeper as it is easy to add expenses and reconcile them with the linked bank accounts. The integrated payroll would also reduce the need for third-party management of such processes. Would still recommend the use of an accountant to advise on more complex financial requirements.

Incentivized

Xero is amazing at issuing Invoices to customers and then allowing the issuer to see if the invoice has been viewed/paid. Xero is brilliant at integrating into the Company Bank Account, and then updating the data within the Xero system - thus giving a real-time 'balance sheet' view of the companies cash flow

Incentivized

• Accounting! As you'd expect. Makes it much simpler andmore cost effective. In-coming and out-goings are recorded and assigned to projects and accounts. My accountant can access my books and reconcile so much more easily than trawling through spreadsheets.
• Time billing - time spent on projects/client work is recorded and is ready to be invoiced as required. Saves so much time and prevents inaccuracies.
• Invoicing - again, it should do this well and it does. Non payment reminders are automatic and clients have no excuses for not knowing the status of their account.
• Account dashboard - gives me an instant overview of the health of the business (am I on track to meet my yearly targets) and my accounts.

• Good report editing and great power to share them with colleagues to seek to improve our accounting processes.
• A simple and very dynamic user interface to manage financial and accounting data, it is a very automatic software.
• We can use it from the office or from our phones, which allows us to work from home. I like that feature as we don't always have to be in front of the computer and we can do it remotely.

Incentivized

• Reporting on financials, time tracking and project status is a little poor. It's adequate for what what we need, but would be great to see more advanced features.
• API is quite closed so cannot integrate with our other project management tools.

Incentivized

• I find the difference between Start up and Standard is lacking. It would be more suitable to have a package in between the two. eg it would be better to have one that allowed bank recon and bills (not limited to 20)
• User role can also need adjustment, I need one where i need to give full access to reports but not the bank. It would be ideal if you had a tick box on all users that allowed /dissallowed bank access.

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.

I spent nearly two decades in IT and am happy to say that FreeAgent's user interface is one of the best interfaces I have ever used.

It has deep functionality, and it's easy to use for invoicing, quoting, financial reporting, and customer management. This product manages financial information for small business owners in a unique way. The phone interface is really good as well-meaning I can keep on top of the finances on my phone and feel confident about the financial decisions I'm making.

Incentivized

Based in a cloud and never had any issues with down time. I can access from any device

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.

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.

Incentivized

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.

The format was great; someone was there to ask questions or help if you were stuck.

Incentivized

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.

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.

Incentivized

I used Fresh Books for about three years prior to switching to FreeAgent. It was the accounting functionality that made the difference - in the past two years I've not regretted the switch. Fresh Books is good, but its the UK accounting features that make FreeAgent indispensable to my business.

Ignoring pricing, Xero is among the best options available. It has the most complete feature set along with Quickbooks. It is more user-friendly compared to most of its competitors. It has well-designed mobile apps that can actually do something in contrast with most competitors except a few who either don't have these or have very limited functionality. My experience with their support has been good to great.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• Professional and uniform offering providing great confident customer service. My clients love it, whether they use it a little or a lot. It's a great piece of software - while sophisticated, it's straightforward to use.
• Time saving and efficient use of my team's time. Being able to easily share and compare work / tasks.

• Xero helps to [minimize] payroll errors, saving the business money[.]
• Tracking cost of goods is very easy which means that controlling expenses is easy[.]
• It's extremely easy to pull up all key financial data to get both broad and specific snapshots of the business's financial health[.]

Incentivized