Flashy, trendy, pretty reports, not full featured, and company incents accountants to bring clients to XERO, suitable or not
May 11, 2015

Flashy, trendy, pretty reports, not full featured, and company incents accountants to bring clients to XERO, suitable or not

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Xero

I have moved away from using it for my small business clients.
  • XERO does produce a nice set of financial reports - but not anything that cannot be done in other accounting softwares
  • XERO could save bookkeeping time. Hopefully the bookkeepers / accountants using XERO pass these saving on to their customers.
  • Good for companies that pay VAT
  • Xero cannot and apparently does not plan to be U.S. GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principals), in that it cannot produce a Statement of Cash Flows, one of the 3 standard financial reports in the US. I'd venture that many businesses owners are not well familiar with the report; tho it is very informative and worth getting familiar with. Even if many small businesses are not required to be GAAP compliant, not having that ability when the time comes concerns me. Banks and investors will want to see it - and you may not be able to produce it just when it is most critical to have it.
  • The XERO LinkedIn group seems to be getting taken over by posts for get rich quick schemes. The majority of other posts are inquiries about finding add-ons for things I would have thought would be included in a full-featured accounting package. I take that as a sign there is much missing and the actual cost is likely to be higher than expected. It is therefore potentially embarassing for me to recommend it to my clients, even if I like it myself.
  • Know that XERO requires its certified users to bring them at least 5 clients before they will be listed as XERO- approved even if they have passed the training exams. As an accountant, XERO expected me to convert at least that many of my clients to XERO, whether or not it seemed the best solution or worth the effort to convert to XERO for my clients. I am not XERO's marketing department.
  • XERO is good at VAT - but none of my clients need that.
  • QuickBooks Pro,QuickBooks Premier,QuickBooks Online
I usually don't prefer XERO.
Definitely recommend for companies that have to pay VAT, such as the Commonwealth countries. Less useful for US companies. I would not usually recommend to convert to XERO from any of the other full-featured accounting packages that a client is already using. Some of the features XERO touts as special and great time savers - such as bank feeds and transaction rules - are common in most accounting packages these days, so I would be most likely to recommend XERO to a company just starting their accounting, without a big time or knowledge investment in an existing accounting process.

Xero Feature Ratings

Accounts payable
5
Accounts receivable
5
Cash management
5
Bank reconciliation
6
Expense management
5
Time tracking
5
Fixed asset management
5
Multi-currency support
6
Multi-division support
5
Regulations compliance
1
Electronic tax filing
1
Self-service portal
3
Inventory tracking
3
Automatic reordering
3
Location management
3
Manufacturing module
3
Pricing
4
Order entry
4
Credit card processing
4
Cost of goods sold
4
Pay calculation
Not Rated
Benefit plan administration
Not Rated
Direct deposit files
Not Rated
Salary revision and increment management
Not Rated
Reimbursement management
Not Rated
Dashboards
4
Standard reports
2
Custom reports
5
API for custom integration
2
Plug-ins
2
Role-based user permissions
3
Single sign-on capability
3