Item: Xero
Rating: 10
Author: Stephen Steinberg

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Xero for our accounting and bookkeeping, making it our single source of truth for all things financial within the entire company.

Pros and Cons

Integrations with other platforms
Quick & easy reconciliation process
Particularly good for ecommerce accounting & bookkeeping
Affordable & great value

Improve the Xero community (Facebook groups, Linkedin Groups, etc) for more robust community support
Faster product improvements and new feature releases
Better inventory management and COGS calculations

Return on Investment

Because it's the market leader, it's easy to find good experienced talent to manage
Reconciliation process is easy, keeping manual errors to a minimum
Basic financial reports are real-time which is great, but custom reports are difficult to build so additional software is necessary at this time

Xero was the first cloud-based accounting software, so we've always stuck with them. Quickbooks seems to be the only real competitor at least for eCommerce-based companies. The other options - Freshbooks, Wave, Zoho - seem to only be good for very, very basic service-based businesses. But it's been a while since I reviewed the options. I know Quickbooks and Xero are both acquiring a lot of complimentary software so I expect features to grow fast and impressively from here.

Usability

It makes everything very easy to use without too much prior accounting knowledge. The learning curve will be easier with prior accounting knowledge though, but from my experience with Quickbooks years and years ago, Xero seems more accessible.

Cloud Costs

Yes. Historically they haven't had robust native integrations with their API but it seems to be opening up recently, so they'll be better able to take advantage of the fact that they are cloud-based.

Ease of Integration

For a cloud-based platform, it should be better than it is. It should also have more options, but I think the list is growing.

Key Insights

Do you think Xero delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Xero's feature set?

Yes

Did Xero live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Xero go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Xero again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Gusto, Stripe

Likelihood to Recommend

I love Xero - they were the leader in cloud-based accounting and still hold that spot in my opinion. At the time of this writing, Quickbooks is making big moves to challenge them through acquisitions and new product features - we'll see who ultimately comes out on top. The one problem area for all eCommerce companies at this time is COGS calculations - in my opinion, whichever platform streamlines that process the best will win the race. If you have an eCommerce company, Xero is the choice. Unsure how service-based businesses would fare.

Xero is the current leader in ecommerce accounting, but Quickbooks is catching up fast

Overall Satisfaction with Xero