Workbooks vs. Xero

It's a really great system for small to medium organizations that are willing to spend some time thinking about how their workflow can be improved by designing processes which will allow them to streamline and automate their business. For people who are not serious about making a commitment to bettering their business, Workbooks may not be a correct fit. For instance there are a lot of features which many people think they don't need, but they haven't really spent the time to figure out what the needs of the business are. The nice thing about Workbooks is that you can turn off things you don't need, and then when the business demands, they will be there for you to utilize.

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.

• Sales process management from enquiry to delivery of product
• This was previously on as many as 4 systems using excel and legacy applications such as the written word in log books
• Automatic reporting for financial compliance: once built, the reporting process reduced the workload on a monthly basis from 2 days to 20 minutes
• The FD loved it
• The overall capability of the package enabled the sales force to rapidly pull our pertinent data for a sales call, plus managing time and resources better for increased efficiency
• Business development and focussed marketing became so much easier, we noted that the process paid for itself many times over

• 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.

Incentivized

• There really isn't all that much, what I would like to see is an app to use on iDevices. Our sales team all have iPads for presentations etc.
• While Workbooks works rather well with HTML 5, I would still like to see an app. I know it's in the making, but haven't seen anything of this as of yet.
• I am sure that would increase productivity even further (if it's of the same standard as the main environment).

• 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.

Incentivized

the product works. support has been good or great so far all has been great and we hope to get more from the product. we purchased for an initial year then renewed for a longer term, we have no regrets with this.

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.

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!

Incentivized

Workbooks CRM never let me down.

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

Workbooks online trianing does what it needs to; but some training will always be better suited to face to face..

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

We felt the high amount of customisation available from Workbooks was much more beneficial to us than the offerings from the larger CRM companies. We also liked the smaller company mentality of Workbooks as it reminded us of ourselves. Ultimately the price also paid a factor as Workbooks was more affordable for what we needed.

Incentivized

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.

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

• Allows us easy management of leads and clear visibility of opportunities for the sales team
• User levels allows us to lock down various parts of the system to only allow them to view or edit certain areas
• Allows us to manage customers in one piece of software and avoid having to use separate software for support, sales and operations

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized