Likelihood to Recommend I work with several businesses and have attempted to bring ScaleFactor into multiple. Thus far the business status/environment has been suitable for ScaleFactor only once, but I'll continue to look for more. ScaleFactor is great when a company has matured beyond the owner making all accounting and banking entries. As soon as multiple systems are needed, it's likely a decent time to call ScaleFactor. I'm confident my operations could run through ScaleFactor for a long time as the next step for us would be something akin to NetSuite or some other more rigid enterprise solution. Additionally, our business has a geographically displaced work force, typically working from home. Having access to all systems via the cloud has been great. No longer do we have to pass a specific computer back and forth for a physical computer software license. It's enabled maximum work flow convenience.
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 ScaleFactor has been a great resource for me as I got my business off the ground. They have allowed me to focus on marketing and strategy while they handle my Quickbooks and other accounting needs. Great accounting and finance solutions that don't require you to hire an in-house staff Presenting data clearly. 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 Could connect with All saving accounts i.e. Building society saving aswell as major banks. When a connected bank or savings account hasn't been used for a month or 2 it could show a 0 transaction to keep it updated rather then saying "last updated 3 months ago" Read full review Occasionally, the price increases and I feel that prices should be fixed for long-term users as there are very few changes in the software from when I started using it 6 years ago. It would be useful to have the emails sent with invoices saved. Visual dashboards are limited. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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 ScaleFactor has been a great resource for me as I got my business off the ground. They have allowed me to focus on marketing and strategy while they handle my Quickbooks and other accounting needs. Great accounting and finance solutions that don't require you to hire an in-house staff.
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 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 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 Not sure if support is still available.
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 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 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 Scale factor, can be used like
Xero I believe. However all my past data was already stored in
Xero so I used it as an add on. It is a lot more user friendly and helpful, i.e. you don't need to be an accountant to use it. However I am not sure it is useable anymore or supported, so i have gone back to using
Xero alone.
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 They have been fundamental in helping us grow and scale at a relatively low cost in comparison to out-sourcing these functions. We can spend more on other items that can fuel growth while knowing the back end is taken care of. They provide automated supports for key areas like payroll, expenses, etc so that we can quickly get back to focusing on the other items. 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