Review Xero Accounting Software
Thanks for allowing me to write a review of my experience with Xero Accounting Software. I am an accountant and have been using Xero for …
Starting at $13 per month
View PricingOverview
What is Xero?
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…
Recent Reviews
How Xero Differs From Its Competitors
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Popular Features
- Bank reconciliation (189)9.191%
- Accounts receivable (182)9.090%
- Standard reports (184)8.383%
- Dashboards (181)8.080%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Video Reviews
1 video
"Straight-Forward" Accounting. How Xero Helped a Business Owner Manage Expenses
03:08
Pricing
Early
$13
Cloud
per month
Growing
$37
Cloud
per month
Established
$70
Cloud
per month
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.xero.com/us/pricing-plans/
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Starting price (does not include set up fee)
- $13 per month
Features
Return to navigation
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Xero?
Xero is an online accounting software platform for small businesses and their advisors, as well as for personal finance. Xero competes most often with QuickBooks Online. Its features, beyond the ubiquitous general ledger and double-entry bookkeeping support, include invoicing with quotes, bank reconciliation, purchase order and expense management, tax management, and it is mobile-accessible. Xero integrates with over 800 third-party applications, covering everything from inventory and logistics to cash flow, project management, customer relationship management, and e-commerce.
The product is sold by subscription (a distribution model commonly known as software as a service or SaaS) requiring the payment of a monthly fee. This charge is proportionate to the number (and type) of company entities managed by the subscriber. The lowest tiered pricing option is the $9 per month Starter pack, which supports unlimited users but a limited number of transactions. The $30 Standard pack breaks open usage limits and adds e-filing and payroll options. The $70 Premium package doubles the number of supported employees on payroll from 5 to 10, and supports multiple currencies.
The product is sold by subscription (a distribution model commonly known as software as a service or SaaS) requiring the payment of a monthly fee. This charge is proportionate to the number (and type) of company entities managed by the subscriber. The lowest tiered pricing option is the $9 per month Starter pack, which supports unlimited users but a limited number of transactions. The $30 Standard pack breaks open usage limits and adds e-filing and payroll options. The $70 Premium package doubles the number of supported employees on payroll from 5 to 10, and supports multiple currencies.
Xero Features
General Ledger and Configurable Accounting Features
- Supported: Accounts payable
- Supported: Accounts receivable
- Supported: Cash management
- Supported: Bank reconciliation
- Supported: Expense management
- Supported: Time tracking
- Supported: Fixed asset management
- Supported: Multi-currency support
- Supported: Multi-division support
- Supported: Regulations compliance
- Supported: Electronic tax filing
- Supported: Self-service portal
- Supported: Global Financial Support
- Supported: Primary and Secondary Ledgers
Inventory Management Features
- Supported: Inventory tracking
Reporting & Analytics Features
- Supported: Dashboards
- Supported: Standard reports
- Supported: Custom reports
Customization Features
- Supported: Plug-ins
Security Features
- Supported: Role-based user permissions
- Supported: Multi-factor authentication
Xero Screenshots
Xero Video
Xero is accounting software for small businesses and their advisors. It reveals a business's cashflow in real-time with online accounting, invoicing, payroll, billing & banking.
Xero Integrations
Xero Competitors
Xero Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
Xero starts at $13.
Priority AccountEdge, QuickBooks Online, and Sage 50cloud Accounting are common alternatives for Xero.
Reviewers rate Journals and Reconciliations highest, with a score of 9.3.
The most common users of Xero are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(721)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-20 of 20)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
December 23, 2023
Learn about your business with Xero
Xero is an excellent tool to ensure all accounts payable and receivables are current. Additionally the financial statements help to determine the position of my business. The latter is a powerful tool that assists with decision making and identified areas I should focus attention on. As an example, the profit and loss report can reveal areas where costs are higher than expected.
- Profit and loss
- Payroll
- Invoicing
- Allow pricing tiers for invoicing e.g. retail, wholesale, etc
- Reporting could be improved
- Search functionality could be improved
December 11, 2023
Xero for small business review
Xero is the overall accounting platform for all Corporate activity. The strength is the integration to other required apps. Payroll, expense management, quarterly tax preparation and submission are all easily integrated into the necessary accounts. Other than a part time bookkeeper, there really is no need for further internal staff. Xero is reviewed by an external accounting firm and the effort is minimal to reconcile on a monthly basis. The dashboard layout is simple to customize and use - in short, meets all accounting requirements in one place.
- Integrate Wagepoint payroll system
- Integrate MileIQ mileage expense system
- Integrate Dext expense management system
- Simple bank account integration - upload bank accounts and reconcile quickly with automated suggestions
- Working with historical Chart of Accounts is sometimes tricky, should be able to search by input as opposed to simply a timeline
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We are a small accounting practice that provides accounting and taxation services to small - medium-sized enterprises. Over the years, we have been using desktop-based accounting software. However, last year, I discovered Xero and even obtained certification in using it. Despite my interest in the benefits of cloud-based accounting software, I hesitated to make the switch immediately due to a few concerns: Fear of the unknown: Moving away from my familiar comfort zone and starting to work with something new felt daunting. Currency exchange rates: Xero's charges being in US Dollars raised concerns for me, especially considering our ailing local currency, which made me uneasy about the costs. Despite these reservations, I found myself intrigued by the features offered by Xero, particularly the advantages of cloud-based accounting software. Business Challenges: Taking on too many companies at a time: The decision to onboard multiple companies simultaneously has resulted in challenges and regrets. Being a small practice with one manager this means that we have taken on more clients or entities than our resources can handle effectively. The combination of taking too many companies, dealing with the learning and managing the migration is overwhelming. The learning curve associated with adopting Xero is ongoing, and there is a need for better comprehension and familiarity with the software's functionalities and features. The software is user friendly, has tutorials online coming in handy for referrals. How we use Xero. I started with my practice to get the feel of the software, I completed two years of capturing the bank in two nights, I was super excited. The bank feed functionality is amazing, this is a clever software, it is such a pleasure and time saving, it handles tasks such as invoicing, expense tracking and bank recon, also the Vat Report, I have never seen such smooth navigation.
- Bank feed - the software can remember where you allocated an expense/income even without creating a bankrule
- Tracing expenses, correction of wrong allocation, the Find and Recode in bulk
- The Vat Report comes up by the click saving so much time , It comes up with all the schedules easy for audit
- The fact that one can go on without having to roll over to the new year and be able only to choose the period one needs
- My main struggle is when i type in search when i want to know how to do certain things, I don't know if it's maybe the language barrier my side.
- I struggle with the bank rule but that could be me
- I really would like to see some explanations done practically, some tutorials have videos.
- Maybe its me I am old school, but would love to have proper training face to face practicality
May 02, 2023
LOVE it! Just need a small improvement
We use Xero as our accounting software & practice management software within our practice so it is used on a daily basis. It is used to store client details and records, used to prepare and lodge tax returns, used to log our timesheets within the firm and serves as an integrative platform with our other software programs. It solves the issue of having too many data bases to update when a client changes details etc
- Xero tax - (creating tax returns for lodgement)
- Client data base
- Reports/report builder
- Timesheets sometimes dont work
- Xero tax sometimes doesnt load
- Integrate with monday.com (workflow manager)
Xero is one of the more popular options among our clients (along with QuickBooks). Xero is reliable, user-friendly (for non-accountants i.e. business owners), and doesn't cost an arm and leg. It has most of the major features that small and medium business owners need from cloud accounting software. The Xero ledger and Cashbook options are a great offering for accounting firms for clients who don't want to spend a lot of money on subscriptions or no money at all.
- Reporting (customizing look and contents and the ability to add multiple comparative periods is brilliant and not found in many other competitors.
- Bank feeds. The way they organize bank feed and subsequent matching or coding is very user-friendly for non-accountants and fast for accountants.
- Can file VAT returns and is MTD compliant in UK.
- Customer support has been helpful (at least in my experience).
- Bank reconciliations. I would like them to try something like QBO where reconciled transactions are marked and then locked, so when editing or deleting those transactions, you are shown an extra warning.
- Vendor and customer pages. It should be easier to see a list of activities and then access those transactions from there. Again QBO does it better, in my opinion.
- Search feature. Once again their main competitor does that better, you can search an invoice number, amount, date, vendor name, and account head in QBO and it will show relevant results. Xero global search functionality is pretty basic.
September 14, 2021
Xero works for a small business
Xero is being used for the whole business. The business has 3 departments. Xero is being used to track sales across these departments as well as for invoicing, expenses, cash flow forecasting, payroll, and GST returns. There are multiple log-ins to enable roles to create invoices, save contacts and review the status of invoices and expenses.
- Invoice creation.
- Reporting.
- Payroll.
- Online support can be difficult to use.
- I can't find a place to view upcoming expenses displayed in individual categories for cash flow forecasting.
September 02, 2021
The discipline enforcer, which also makes me smile
I use Xero for all sales and bills, with assistance from a Xero skilled remote accountant.
- Links to the Australian tax office.
- Links to bank accounts.
- UX is simple and clean.
- Search experience isn't great, too often linked to unhelpful info.
May 02, 2019
Xero - Inventory Management and Invoicing
We use it primarily for inventory management for goods and services for our clients. It helps us to keep tabs on what we're using and what rates. We are also able to use it to draft invoices to bill to the government and 3rd parties for work we do on their behalf or at their behest. It makes a lot of our billing easier to process and account for.
- Inventory Management - It's really easy to add goods/services and catalog them.
- Invoicing - It provides detailed and customizable invoices for partner's organizations.
- UI - It's a pretty easy to use software and very intuitive.
- Auto-population - while this feature is useable there are always moments where something doesn't auto-populate the way I would expect it to.
- Administrator controls - It would be nice to allow different users different levels of access.
- Integration capacity - It would be really nice to integrate with the other inventory software we use.
- Barcode scanning - we could use the ability to use a bar code scanner to speed up the inventory process.
January 08, 2018
Xero superior to QuickBooks
Across the organization and a few of the clients we support. Addresses the version issues of QuickBooks and bank reconciliation as central core of product is superior to its competitors.
- Bank feeds & reconciliation
- Single ledger
- Xero to Xero network invoices and bills
- Integrations to various, more specific solutions
- Multicurrency
- Reporting query flexibility
- Global search functionality
- Easier return to prior pages after drill-down
June 23, 2017
Finally No more Accountant Backup Files...
We use Xero to both run our own business as well as support our clients. The ability to have real-time access across our client base has been fantastic. We went from having limited access to real-time information (basically quarterly or annually when we got a QuickBooks file) to having near real-time information. It has allowed us to be more proactive and increased our client satisfaction levels significantly.
Internally Xero has allowed us to consolidate the multiple systems that were in place to manage time and billing. We have saved on costs by leveraging Paypal integration and allowing clients to receive invoices and make payments electronically.
As a company, Xero has been incredibly open to feedback. I am an XPAC member and have seen firsthand how the company listens to partners and their willingness to add features and improve the product (such as the updates to check printing and adding running account balances to help with monthly reconciliations).
Internally Xero has allowed us to consolidate the multiple systems that were in place to manage time and billing. We have saved on costs by leveraging Paypal integration and allowing clients to receive invoices and make payments electronically.
As a company, Xero has been incredibly open to feedback. I am an XPAC member and have seen firsthand how the company listens to partners and their willingness to add features and improve the product (such as the updates to check printing and adding running account balances to help with monthly reconciliations).
- Find and Recode - This tool is amazing. You can easily search for similar transactions and recode. For example, one team member accidentally coded a transaction from a specific vendor to two different accounts. You can search for the transaction by vendor and recode all of them in one shot. Saves a lot of time.
- Cash Coding - We have been able to take write-up clients and code a full year of transactions in a matter of hours (it used to take days). A little time invested in importing the transactions from the bank and then you can group and code the transactions quickly. Highly recommended.
- Integration - The ability to synch with add-ons has been invaluable. Open API's allow us to even consider building some of our own dashboards. It also allows us to pay for what we need as we grow. We don't have to pay for all the bells and whistles for areas we (or our clients) won't use.
- Bank Feeds - Xero much like other software is reliant on Yodlee feeds for many accounts. It's great when it works but can be a pain when the feeds go down.
- Reporting - Xero is continually improving the reporting but there is still room for improvement. There are however some great reporting add-ons that can help supplement when needed.
- Expense Reporting - The Xero expense reimbursement portion can be hard to manage with a large number of employees. There are very affordable add-ons that are better at scale.
February 04, 2016
There Are Xero Reasons Not To Use This Platform
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
EBCFO uses Xero primarily as the basis for our CFO outsourcing practice to entrepreneurs and small business owners (we also use it for our internal accounting). While we do utilize other accounting platforms, Xero is what is deployed to 85% of our client base. It addresses the need for high-quality GL accounting with the ability to bolt-on additional platforms to create a comprehensive finance and accounting solution. We also make extensive use of the add-on ecosystem, and if a platform does not currently integrate, we have the ability to code that ourselves also.
- Open API.
- Consistent features and functionality improvement (on average every 3-4 weeks).
- Strategically, seeing the value of accounting as a business intelligence tool, not a compliance-only product.
- Great UI - strong appeal to the tech and startup community, and also allows non-tech users to quickly grasp concepts and utilize the platform correctly.
- Partner program reps have not always been friendly and responsive (my current one is amazing).
- Search function in the Help section does not consistently return appropriate results.
- Lacking functionality of running balances for each account (expenses also, not just bank accounts). This would significantly improve an accountants ability to find and correct errors.
December 18, 2015
Yes for Xero from Yes Accounting
We are 100% Xero accountants. Xero is the cornerstone of our small practice. All of our staff are experts in Xero. We have a diverse range of clients, from service, financial, retail, import, public sectors, and manufacturing to name a few.
Xero provides businesses with the the best of class tools combined with add-ons to operate the finances and manage their businesses direction.
Crunchboards, the latest add-on in our portfolio, combines forecasts from scenarios to deliver both historical and projections of business forecast. The forecasts give three way forecasts - profit and loss, cash flow and balance sheet.
Xero provides businesses with the the best of class tools combined with add-ons to operate the finances and manage their businesses direction.
Crunchboards, the latest add-on in our portfolio, combines forecasts from scenarios to deliver both historical and projections of business forecast. The forecasts give three way forecasts - profit and loss, cash flow and balance sheet.
- Bank feeds reduce data input and reduce errors.
- Expenses can be added on the go via the mobile app.
- Reporting - simple reports, good configurable dashboards keep owners and stakeholders aware of the financial position in seconds. Budgets can easily be created and managed.
- There are over 500 add-ons that streamline seamlessly to Xero. That gives us the confidence we can find the right match of CRM, POS, Time Management or stock control system as necessary.
- Multi Currency is as good as SAP Business 1. That is a real plus for software at this price.
- Payroll is quick and simple although we are seeing some lag in delivering standard reporting like P11's
- More flexible reporting is being delivered, but this is proving to be a long drawn out process. Currently the new monthly Profit and Loss report cannot deliver totals or YTD figures. The new reporting is more versatile in some cases, but is slower to run. That said, the original reports are still available and are perfectly suitable for most SME's.
- Bank feeds via Yodlee can be problematic. Identifying missing transactions is easy but takes time to identify and import missing transactions. Yodlee is a third party, so this is not strictly Xero's issue.
- Increasingly UK banks offer direct feeds. Most charge a fee of GBP3-3.50 per month for a direct feed. They are more reliable and update automatically. Metro Bank will be a GBP 1.00 per month. Barclays are about to deliver a direct feed. Of course, they will charge at the higher end too. Santander are cheaper but do not support all accounts strangely.
May 30, 2015
Xero or Nothing?
We used Xero as our general ledger and financial reporting system. We used it to invoice customers and pay vendors and to a certain extent manage our cash. We use it to extend our actuals reporting to financial forecasting and create "what if scenarios" to estimate what the burn rate is going to be. We use Xero for employee expense claims reporting.
- Multi currency - this is very important function for companies that transacts business in various denominations and locations.
- Bank Recs - Reconciliation (bank accounts) are done on a daily basis so your accounts are refreshed every day - as oppose to once a month (after you receive your bank statements). In QB, there are so many additional steps to balance your bank account on a daily basis if you are managing cash and trying to figure out what payments have not cleared.
- Financial Reporting - reporting is pretty good that you can determine the layout of your financials - so you can format it based on how you track your KPIs - cost per acquisition (customer), recurring revenue,etc.
- Classes - allowing "classes" so that a company can track financials in various companies or locations.
- Sales Tax Reporting - creating reports that presents sales before sale taxes and after taxes as well as reporting by state/city tax rates. There is an Income by Contact report but that is not sufficient for reconciling sales taxes payable by city and by state.
- Expense Claim - being able to set up the tax rates such that when employees submit their expenses with sales tax included in it, the sales tax rates are not available for selection as it usually ends up in the sales taxes payable (system treats it as a sales taxes payable).
- Bank Feeds - some bank feeds are not available. For example, Chase Credit Card transactions have to be manually uploaded as Xero is still developing interface? For a small company, this may be a hardship as most purchases are not on a PO basis or vendors are not willing to do terms.
May 18, 2015
Xero's a Hero
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Xero is used by Bookkeeping Express to service our many clients varying in all different types of businesses. Being an "open" accounting system, it is built to interact with other applications. This interaction facilitates the receipt of information automatically, allowing it to be available in Xero almost immediately for reconciliation. This enables other applications that are the best in their field to be utilized by business owners while allowing the information to be fed into Xero easily.
- Xero allows banks to feed transactions into Xero on an automatic basis; a huge advantage. This alleviates having in manually input transactions.
- Xero's interface available to reconcile bank transactions to Xero transactions is simple yet sophisticated. Bank "rules" can be set up to automatically categorize transactions that recur. These rules are applied without human initiation and can be simply ok'd in an extremely simple user interface.
- Xero has "Open APIs" which allow other application writers to integrate their applications seamlessly with Xero. For example, a client can choose a scheduling/invoicing application that specifically suites their needs from a list of existing "Add Ons" in Xero and have their revenue information automatically fed into their General Ledger system.
- The most challenging Xero module to me is the reporting module. I would like to see more reports geared toward Customer/Vendor transactions as well as customization of existing reports. There is, however, the ability to export all reports to Excel so manual manipulation is an option until their reporting becomes more robust.
- Navigating between screens can be challenging if corrections need to be made. Using the "open in different tab" function alleviates this for now.
- I am looking forward to a global search function. Right now there are search functions but they are specific to particular screens.
May 15, 2015
Xero & Double Rule: A Match Made In The Cloud
We are an accounting and bookkeeping firm that only uses and support Xero. Coming from big four firms with outsourcing and business process background, I've always looked at ways to process things efficiently. Access to data, anywhere, anytime, was key. It led us to implementing app virtualization tools which turned out to be more costly and inefficient. We've experienced data corruption, server crash, lost data and the entire slew of network and hardware issues that made us focus on network administration more than on our core business - accounting service. This is what Xero has addressed.
- Cash coding. We've recorded thousands of transactions in one account in just hours. The ability to select multiple lines, enter description, account number, and other details just once, and being able to save, record, and reconcile in one click did not exist - until Xero.
- Sales dashboard allowing A/R personnel to have an overview of the top customer collectibles and by hovering their mouse over, they can preview contact information allowing them to just pick up the phone and start following up. If the customers want a copy of the invoice and statement, they can easily click the portion of the pie graph and it goes to a statement page where they can click on Email. The workflow design is just amazing.
- Find and Recode. This is a recently released feature. Imagine reclassifying hundreds of transactions which accounts were recorded in error or processing tracking of multiple transactions previously untracked. Complete time saver.
- Management Report. It's packaged beautifully and intelligently. We literally saved 70% of our time in report preparation. The ability to add a summary, insert ad hoc reports, mark a number and add a footnote reference, and to generate this beautiful package in 2 simple clicks - Publish, Publish - simply amazing.
- Pay now. I've had clients ask for the ability to process a payment within Xero and mark an invoice as paid immediately. The current process is either to print an invoice into PDF then click on the link that is generated based on the payment services set-up. Alternatively, you can email the invoice to the customer, in which case, the customer will click on the link and enter their credit card information for processing. Some of these companies want to store the credit card information in systems like Stripe and be able to click Pay Now when an invoice is generated for their customers.
- Approval workflow process. It's amazing that Xero has a simple workflow for payables and receivables. It would be more efficient to complete that process if the approver gets notified that there's a bill or an invoice that is awaiting for approval. Also, would be nice to have multiple layers of approval. Doesn't have to be complicated, even just sequential.
- CTRL F. We can probably work around this with the Find and Recode. However, still not the same compared with leading competitor. An easy way to look for a transaction is not available. We'd still have to go to Bank (under Account Transactions), Sales and Purchases (using search).
May 14, 2015
Xero - What Makes It Beautiful?
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Our company provides outsourced cloud accounting services to ecommerce businesses, so all of our clients need a reliable general ledger software as the base for their accounting system (which may include one to many different add-ons). Xero is that accounting software.
All of our employees are Xero Certified within the first week or two of employment, and all members of our team (and all of our clients) use the product every day to keep track of each business's finances.
All of our employees are Xero Certified within the first week or two of employment, and all members of our team (and all of our clients) use the product every day to keep track of each business's finances.
- Bank Feeds - more and more cloud accounting software is starting to make direct bank feeds available, but Xero does this well and cleanly. When transactions are automatically pulled from the bank, the system will look to see if the information seems to match an outstanding bill, invoice, or previously recorded (but yet unreconciled) transaction and then offer that as a possible match. If none of those are available, it will suggest the coding for previous entries as a pre-filled option. The end result is that most of the time, you can enter the bulk of your transactions with a single click per transaction vs. hand-keying all the data.
- Bank Rules - in addition to the bank feeds, Xero also offers the ability to create "bank rules" which will read the information from the bank, and based on a set of criteria you define, the system will treat the transaction in a predefined manner. For example, you can tell the system that any transaction that comes in from Office Depot for less than $500 should be coded to Office Supplies with a memo entry that says "Office supplies for the Denver branch" with a tracking code of Denver. This allows for a ton of automation.
- Cash Coding - this feature takes the power of bank feeds and bank rules and shoots them with steroids. Once bank feeds are set up and bank rules are enabled, the user can go to a grid-like screen that shows all downloaded transactions along with how the system intends to code them. With the click of one single button, you can code 50 or 100 transactions (or more), massively cutting your work time and saving your fingers from tons of data entry.
- Stability - I hear horror stories on almost a daily basis about competitor's software that I simply don't experience with Xero. EVER. Their product is consistently up, stable, and working without any weird, phantom craziness.
- Reporting - I'm waiting on some better reporting from Xero. They have most of the basics, but they need to improve their cash flow report, and they need to make their reports more customizable.
- Drilling Down on Reports - One of my biggest pet peeves is when I drill down on a cash basis report and the detailed report defaults back to accrual. If I'm looking at cash basis financial statements, chances are good that I want to look at cash basis detail. This creates additional, unnecessary navigation.
- Billable Expenses - Luckily this isn't a huge issue for our clients, but Xero needs some way of identifying expenses that will be billed back to a client (preferably automatically pulling that information and adding them directly to an invoice with a click).
February 25, 2015
Xero down under and everywhere else - Our take on this cool cloud accounting software
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Xero for our company accounting as well as for client companies for whom we do bookkeeping - we're a small team but we handle between 50-100 accounting clients with varying needs
Xero was the first cloud based software we experimented with, the results were very pleasant and positive. The main reasons why we use Xero so much is the hazzle free set up and maintenance overall. 75% of our clients are SMEs and most of their accounting needs are met through Xero. So we really don't go looking for many others
Xero was the first cloud based software we experimented with, the results were very pleasant and positive. The main reasons why we use Xero so much is the hazzle free set up and maintenance overall. 75% of our clients are SMEs and most of their accounting needs are met through Xero. So we really don't go looking for many others
- Xero has a global version, so it's easily adaptable to a specific region. Most of our clients are based in Singapore. But we also use it for bookkeeping needs of companies that are geographically located in other regions like Taiwan, India, AU etc
- The built in payroll option in Xero is a plus plus. I totally love the fact that I don't have to rely on excel sheets and word documents to make payslips - from that stage to generating payrun is quite easy - complete with options for CPF (Singapore) and other related deductions
- It is easy to build invoices and expense bills through Xero. We often encourage non accounting clients to do it themselves after we set up a Xero account + custom videos for them. Many have come back and told us it is easy to use.
- We use the Xero App on our smart phones quite extensively and it's totally great to record transactions on the go. As an avid iPhone user, I love the Xero app and the summary options it offers. I can login and check figures on the go - love that!
- I'd like to see Xero come up with "expense tagging" features. In our industry, we have many payments which we make on behalf of our clients. E.g - Fines we pay to government agencies. We pay this and often forget to invoice the clients. If there was an option where I could record the fact that the expense is being paid on behalf of a client that would be great. What would be better is that the "expense" item comes up automatically when I invoice my client the next time.
- Xero does not have live bank feeds in Singapore now. It has been in "beta testing" stage for sometime. This is a put off - clients often ask us why would we want a software were they have to still ensure all the bank transactions have to be recorded via uploading excels/manually. If this works, we have a winner on hand
- We are unsure of the real extent to which Xero can integrate with inventory management tools. Better scalability in terms of the volumes that can be handled could make a difference
- The software integrates well with a lot of add ons like receipt bank - what would be one step higher is to have the capabilities offered by add ons built into the software.
January 05, 2015
Why We Love Xero
We use Xero with many of our clients. Since Xero in on an online based software system, it allows us to work collaboratively with our staff and with our clients. Since a Xero subscription includes unlimited users, we can invite all of our staff, our clients, the CPA and others to work in the file. We never have to worry about doing back-ups or upgrades. We can access our own firm's books and our clients from one dashboard. We can also see who was last logged into the file and when, how many unreconciled lines there are and and how many comments have been left by staff or clients. We also use Xero for our own firm's accounting. All of our staff members use Xero.
- Bank Rules - The Bank Rules are very powerful. You can set up criteria for Xero to pre-fill entries. You can use percentages, use greater than or less than amounts, assign a fixed amount and the balance to another account. The Bank Rules are flexible too.
- Bank Feeds - The Bank Feeds are easy to set up. Xero will go out and retrieve the feeds once a day from all connected bank and credit cards
- Reconciling - Reconciling is FUN in Xero. You almost feel like you are playing a game.
- Sharing Reports - You can publish reports right in Xero and share them with your clients.
- Global Search - Right now searches are limited by bank or credit card account. This can be hard when you are looking for something but you do not which account is was paid from.(But I understand that global search is coming)
- Reports - Right now you are limited on customization of reports. Reports have improved in the past six months and I understand that they will keep improving.
- Payroll - Payroll for the US was released in 2014 but lacked some features, such as electronic tax payments. This may have changed by now. We have opted to use one of the Xero Add-On Partners for our own and for our clients' payroll.
August 25, 2014
Xero - A new and hip accounting software for all
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Xero is used as an accounting and finance tool across our organisation i.e. Futurebooks. Xero helps us stay on top of our customers billings and all our expenses. Increasingly, we are using Xero to build future strategies for the company as the various financial reports generated out of Xero provides a very clear, concise, easy to read and understand analysis of Futurebooks' financial position.
- Let's begin with Xero's user interface. Its visually appealing, really simple and easy to follow. Each and every tab within Xero links smoothly with one another so a user such as myself is never lost or confused.
- Recording of sales, purchases, payroll and bank transactions is fast and efficient in Xero. As you begin to use Xero more regularly, you can generate client bills, record expenses, payroll at a rate of one minute per transaction.
- In most countries, Xero has live feeds with banks so you need not worry about missing any bank transaction. Its recorded automatically.
- With Xero's superb mobile app, you can record your sales and expenses on-the-go i.e. you need not sit at your computer to record data.
- Xero links beautifully with all of its add-ons. For example, an add-on called Receipt-Bank, which automates expenses (i.e. purchase invoices and bills) by pulling all relevant information of your expense receipt, will then send this information directly Xero where it will be awaiting your approval and payment.
- One area of improvement for Xero will be to localise its functionality by each country. Presently, Xero has localised versions for Australia, New Zealand, UK, US while the rest of world receives a standard "Global" version. Hence, users from the rest of the world may find it a little time consuming to tailor the output from Xero to suit their local government requirements.
- Xero can also improve on its "Annual Accounts" section by providing users more freedom and tools to amend the layouts, styling and overall presentations of the reports.
We use Xero for the VC fund and several of its portfolio companies. The operations vary from IP holding companies with few transactions to fully operating companies. It's always used by the entire company and not just a department. Our teams are distributed, including bookkeeping outsourced overseas, so we need an online solution.
- Xero is rapidly growing and improving. Some features were limited a few years ago when I first starting using it, but the software is steadily improving. It gives me confidence to keep using it even if there are some short-term drawbacks.
- It runs extremely fast and is easy to use. The functions are intuitive and don't require extensive training to figure out.
- The bank feeds work great and make bank reconciliations very quick and easy. We do limited data entry.
- I like the integrations with other software. With some companies we use Unleashed Software for inventory and order management, and the integration with Xero works well.
- The reporting could be improved, which I know they are working on. Ability to customize is limited. The cash flow statement is terrible. For one company we go through a lot of extra work to prepare financials just because we need to prepare a better cash flow statement in Excel.
- The Global version doesn't have check printing capability, which is a large drawback.
- You can't batch pay invoices that aren't in the functional currency. It isn't a huge deal, but it takes extra work to pay individual bills and to reconcile separate payments in Xero with one payment in the bank account.