Why We Love Xero
Overall Satisfaction with 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.
- Working with Xero has improved how we work with our clients. We take a more proactive approach than in the past. We have regularly scheduled calls with our clients to review their books together.
- Working with Xero has allowed us to maintain our clients' books in real time.
- Working with Xero allows us to generate and share reports with our clients much sooner than we were able to do so in the past.
- QuickBooks Premier,QuickBooks Pro,QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions
We have worked with QuickBooks for more than 15 years. We choose Xero over QuickBooks because Xero is online based so you are not dependent on one computer or server to access your information. You can even work with Xero on your phone or tablet! We enjoy the way the reconciliations work in Xero, it feels like you are playing a game. We feel that if we can help our clients have fun with Xero, they are much more likely to keep up with, and pay attention to their accounting.