Item: Xero
Rating: 9
Author: Malcolm Colman-Shearer

We use Xero to manage our accounts. We also manage client's accounts on Xero as well.

Xero makes reconciliation incredibly easy. It remembers how we reconciled a particular transaction last time and you can set up rules to auto code transactions so all you need to do is press OK. This makes keeping track of sales tax pretty simple too.
Reporting is a breeze, as long as you code all your transactions correctly it takes seconds to bring up a balance sheet, Profit & Loss and many other types of reports. It also allows for all kinds of custom layouts and exports.
Once your templates are set up with all the relevant information, sending invoices is simple and fast. It's also easy to track different line items on your invoice, say your keeping track of a project which is only part of the full invoice and is necessarily a specific line item, tracking codes make that very easy.

Notifications are really limited and surprisingly disappointing given what we've become used to in Saas tools. There's an area for discussing a transaction with the team but there's no way of at tagging those people so no one will see the discussion unless they actively look for it. Also, if an invoice is overdue, Xero will send the client custom reminders but it won't notify us, and same for bills, what if I just forget to pay a bill that's loaded up...? Xero knows but doesn't care. And the same for expense claims, you can upload a receipt and request reimbursement for it... but no one will be notified!
Integrations via Zapier are disappointing. Xero has done nothing to develop this area. Many of our other favorite spas products have really focussed on integrating well with Zapier. eg. Airtable, Trello, Helpscout, Gsuite, Slack but Xero has left a lot to be desired.
The dashboard doesn't give that much power for analysis and reporting. I'd like to be able to hack the widgets, add my own graphs and custom reports so I can see useful information.

We spend very little time on our own bookkeeping as it's so simple to do in Xero which means more time doing the work that matters.
We're able to spend more time focused on reporting for our clients rather than reconciling or fixing problems.
We're able to easily provide our consulting services to clients overseas via Stripe plugin and foreign currency support.

We have only used Xero and have never been tempted to use anything else.

For the price point, it's better for SME's and less good for freelancers who just need some basic services or enterprises who need way more functionality.
Functions SME's would likely add and would likely want to pay extra for include Sales Tax, Invoicing, and perhaps foreign currency.

It's very easy to use, quite intuitive.

Pros	Cons
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar	None

Yes - Its very intuitive but limited functionality

Xero is my hero!

Overall Satisfaction with Xero