Workday Financial Management vs. Xero

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Workday Financial Management
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Workday Financial Management is built on a global foundation that provides organizations with the core financial management capabilities expected from a modern cloud solution. It goes well beyond just managing financial processes to achieve greater insight, improve financial consolidation and reduce time to close, instill internal control and auditability, and achieve consistency across global operations. By using an in-memory architecture and object data model,…N/A
Xero
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Xero is an online accounting software product for small businesses and personal finance. Its features beyond general ledger and double-bookkeeping include quotable invoicing, bank reconciliation, purchase order and expense management, and tax management. Third party apps can extend its features further.
$13
per month
Pricing
Workday Financial ManagementXero
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Early
$13
per month
Growing
$37
per month
Established
$70
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Workday Financial ManagementXero
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPrices in table are in USD and just apply to the US - other markets & prices are listed below: Canada - Starter $18 CAD/month, Standard $45 CAD/month, Premium 5 $58 CAD/month UK - Starter £14/month, Standard £28/month, Premium £36/month AU - Starter $29 AUD/month, Standard $59 AUD/month, Premium 5 $76 AUD/month NZ - Starter $31 NZD/month, Standard $66 NZD/month, Premium $84 NZD/month
More Pricing Information
Features
Workday Financial ManagementXero
Payroll Management
Comparison of Payroll Management features of Product A and Product B
Workday Financial Management
8.3
19 Ratings
15% above category average
Xero
7.5
73 Ratings
0% above category average
Pay calculation8.519 Ratings8.065 Ratings
Benefit plan administration8.816 Ratings8.023 Ratings
Direct deposit files8.416 Ratings7.249 Ratings
Salary revision and increment management00 Ratings7.241 Ratings
Reimbursement management00 Ratings7.154 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
Workday Financial Management
8.3
17 Ratings
9% above category average
Xero
8.1
151 Ratings
7% above category average
API for custom integration8.414 Ratings7.979 Ratings
Plug-ins8.316 Ratings8.2138 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Workday Financial Management
8.9
21 Ratings
9% above category average
Xero
7.3
189 Ratings
12% below category average
Single sign-on capability8.921 Ratings5.772 Ratings
Role-based user permissions8.919 Ratings8.8187 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Workday Financial Management
8.6
23 Ratings
18% above category average
Xero
8.4
213 Ratings
8% above category average
Dashboards8.423 Ratings8.3209 Ratings
Standard reports8.920 Ratings8.7211 Ratings
Custom reports8.518 Ratings8.3187 Ratings
General Ledger and Configurable Accounting
Comparison of General Ledger and Configurable Accounting features of Product A and Product B
Workday Financial Management
8.5
19 Ratings
10% above category average
Xero
7.2
223 Ratings
6% below category average
Accounts payable8.914 Ratings8.6203 Ratings
Accounts receivable9.014 Ratings8.8209 Ratings
Global Financial Support8.315 Ratings6.767 Ratings
Primary and Secondary Ledgers8.715 Ratings8.465 Ratings
Journals and Reconciliations8.912 Ratings9.890 Ratings
Configurable Accounting8.215 Ratings3.059 Ratings
Standardized Processes9.016 Ratings3.759 Ratings
Cash management00 Ratings8.3191 Ratings
Bank reconciliation00 Ratings8.9216 Ratings
Expense management00 Ratings8.1197 Ratings
Time tracking00 Ratings8.073 Ratings
Fixed asset management00 Ratings8.4137 Ratings
Multi-currency support00 Ratings7.8130 Ratings
Multi-division support00 Ratings8.2112 Ratings
Regulations compliance00 Ratings8.6112 Ratings
Electronic tax filing00 Ratings9.4116 Ratings
Self-service portal00 Ratings8.2130 Ratings
Intercompany Accounting00 Ratings4.540 Ratings
Localizations00 Ratings8.039 Ratings
Enterprise Accounting00 Ratings2.533 Ratings
Centralized Rules Framework00 Ratings3.433 Ratings
Inventory Management
Comparison of Inventory Management features of Product A and Product B
Workday Financial Management
8.7
8 Ratings
10% above category average
Xero
6.4
101 Ratings
12% below category average
Inventory tracking9.08 Ratings7.497 Ratings
Automatic reordering8.68 Ratings6.224 Ratings
Location management8.57 Ratings6.229 Ratings
Manufacturing module00 Ratings6.016 Ratings
Order Management
Comparison of Order Management features of Product A and Product B
Workday Financial Management
9.2
9 Ratings
16% above category average
Xero
6.2
89 Ratings
21% below category average
Credit card processing9.29 Ratings6.358 Ratings
Pricing00 Ratings6.262 Ratings
Order entry00 Ratings6.256 Ratings
Cost of goods sold00 Ratings6.366 Ratings
Order Orchestration00 Ratings6.121 Ratings
End-to-end order visibility00 Ratings6.124 Ratings
Order exception Resolution00 Ratings6.117 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Workday Financial ManagementXero
Small Businesses
Acumatica
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Score 8.7 out of 10
Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank)
Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank)
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Infor VISUAL
Infor VISUAL
Score 7.4 out of 10
Zoho Books
Zoho Books
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP Business ByDesign
SAP Business ByDesign
Score 8.5 out of 10
Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP
Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP
Score 6.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Workday Financial ManagementXero
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(23 ratings)
8.3
(238 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.5
(35 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(5 ratings)
8.5
(163 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(10 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(8 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(5 ratings)
9.3
(36 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(10 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(122 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(6 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Workday Financial ManagementXero
Likelihood to Recommend
Workday
Workday is well suited for managing employees throughout their full life cycle. It excels at housing employee data from the start of their time with the company through their departure. Workday is less suited to payroll functions, which could be more robust.
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Xero
In my opinion Xero is well suited for: 1) Standalone organisations, 2) Organisations where the accounting team bench strength is thin, 3) Organisations which are able to leverage on new technologies and apps 4) Organisations which get most of their tech infrastructure within the APAC region Xero may not be as suitable for: 1) Organisations with group structures (especially complex ones) 2) Organisations which are constrained in their use of startup technologies and apps by startups 3) Organisations which get most of their tech infrastructure from the US or EU
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Pros
Workday
  • The flexibility of going beyond handling the accounts, where we can handle cash, assets, and accounting simultaneously for the customer.
  • The single platform offers grants management where you can organize the lifecycle of the grants and synchronize it with any criteria of grant closing out scheme.
  • I personally liked Project billing with the essence of evaluating project revenue and nice reporting templates that can be shared with the customer at any stage of the project while having the flexibility of auditing the reported cost.
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Xero
  • Repeating invoices (most of my business is monthly recurring invoices) - it does these very well.
  • Reporting - particularly being able to dig into the different lines of the P&L statement.
  • Tracking categories - I assign a category to every line of every invoice so it's easy to see how much has been sold of each type of service every month and year, and compare them to previous periods.
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Cons
Workday
  • Some of the Workday updates last till like 10 in the morning which prevents employees to clock in and check their times and some cases their schedules
  • Workday can work on opening documents quicker instead of taking couple of minutes or notifying the user when they are ready to download
Read full review
Xero
  • Having different email addresses for different parts of a customer's business (eg invoices and statements to different places)
  • Easily seeing the text of emails that have been sent through Xero
  • More easily archiving old pay items. Our HR software updates rates when awards are updated which means a lot of old pay rates are in the system and they have multiple clicks to archive each one. Clicking the ones to archive in bulk and then just click archive for all would be much more efficient.
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Likelihood to Renew
Workday
No answers on this topic
Xero
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.
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Usability
Workday
Workday is easy enough navigate, as long as it is properly set up. With that said, it can be put together in a modular fashion as well, allowing for a very high degree of flexibility in terms of design and process delegation. Finally, it makes consolidation achievable in times previously unthinkable.
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Xero
The dashboard is a simple design where all accounts can be seen from the same screen, unlike other softwares that makes you search for bank accounts that you want to work in. Our clients love that they can easily find their way around their books without having to call our firm to help them.
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Reliability and Availability
Workday
No answers on this topic
Xero
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.
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Performance
Workday
No answers on this topic
Xero
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.
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Support Rating
Workday
Our support team has been awesome. They are extremely knowledgeable and have been able to guide us through all of the challenges we have faced. Workday's community online is also extremely helpful with many trainings and help topics that can be reviewed at your convenience.
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Xero
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.
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In-Person Training
Workday
No answers on this topic
Xero
The format was great; someone was there to ask questions or help if you were stuck.
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Online Training
Workday
No answers on this topic
Xero
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.
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Implementation Rating
Workday
No answers on this topic
Xero
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.
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Alternatives Considered
Workday
Despite Airtable also being easier to use one thing that differentiates and put forth Workday Financial Management tool above is it's key features and better suited functionality for handling confidential data. The other positive note where Workday Financial Management performs high is it key analytics tool that's easier to use and representation of information into insightful dashboards.
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Xero
Each of the products I listed had their own list of drawbacks, but the one thing they all had in common, which was right on top of that list of drawbacks, was ease of use. I struggled to get myself accustomed to each system and struggled, but when it came to getting a client to even try and use it was when the true struggle started. Just found it easier to make use of Xero from the very beginning.
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Scalability
Workday
No answers on this topic
Xero
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
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Return on Investment
Workday
  • We were able to combine 4 different HR modules into one system.
  • We reduced data breach incidents by 95% after shifting to Workday. One of our legacy softwares had vulnerabilities.
  • The initial learning curve was higher than projected. We spent about a week to 10 days extra time deploying it, which affected the profit center that year.
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Xero
  • We have saved 1 hour per month on reporting on one of our not-for-profits, which is 12 hours a year at minimum from an investment of 30 minutes on initial setup.
  • On cleanup files, we are able to save at minimum half the time we would spend and be able to get them cleaned up and moved to a monthly file quicker
  • Using cash coding on one client as an example it would take us a week to do their bookkeeping last year it took me 8 hours from start to finish.
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ScreenShots

Xero Screenshots

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