One of the best cloud accountancy option for accountants and business owners
April 07, 2022

One of the best cloud accountancy option for accountants and business owners

Mohsin Ejaz | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Xero

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.
  • Increased efficiency due to automation: due to automatic bank feeds, third party and official integrations, banking rules, recurring journals, custom reports, etc.
  • Time-saving and increased accuracy due to bank feeds, cash coding, and native bank reconciliations which also reduces room for human error.
  • Support for multiple platforms: works across all major browsers on both Windows and macOS and has android and iOS apps.
  • Very business owner-oriented UI and friendly feel, removing all accounting jargon where possible. Easy to train clients to operate it themselves compared to, say, Sage.
  • Dashboard isn't overwhelming and nice on eyes.
Ignoring pricing, Xero is among the best options available. It has the most complete feature set along with Quickbooks. It is more user-friendly compared to most of its competitors. It has well-designed mobile apps that can actually do something in contrast with most competitors except a few who either don't have these or have very limited functionality. My experience with their support has been good to great.

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

It does most of the things the way it is supposed to do.

I have gripe with their search functionality, it should be able to search across all your records.

Their supplier and customer pages design isn't the most user friendly and it's not possible to glance at details of each transaction without opening them
Fortunately, I have had limited experience with support, but whenever I needed their help, they have been helpful. Their accountant partnership program had professional salespeople which was a great experience. Their forums aren't as good as QuickBooks but it's good to have a platform where you can ask questions. Their normal support was good in the few instances I had to talk to them.
It is great for small businesses especially:
- If there is a local variant for your country (US, UK, NZ, etc), so you can file GST / VAT returns directly, CIS returns (UK).
- If you are a business owner who wants to maintain books on your own because it is very friendly for non-accountants and rarely uses accounting jargon anywhere. They have done a good job of translating everything to layman's terms.
- If you don't mind paying slightly more than some of the basic options and get a huge set of features, reports, integrations, and customer support. All you usually need from cloud accounting software.

Xero Feature Ratings

Accounts payable
9
Accounts receivable
9
Cash management
9
Bank reconciliation
10
Expense management
9
Time tracking
Not Rated
Fixed asset management
Not Rated
Multi-currency support
9
Multi-division support
Not Rated
Regulations compliance
9
Electronic tax filing
10
Self-service portal
Not Rated
Global Financial Support
Not Rated
Primary and Secondary Ledgers
9
Intercompany Accounting
Not Rated
Localizations
9
Journals and Reconciliations
10
Enterprise Accounting
Not Rated
Configurable Accounting
9
Centralized Rules Framework
Not Rated
Standardized Processes
9
Inventory tracking
7
Automatic reordering
8
Location management
8
Manufacturing module
Not Rated
Pricing
8
Order entry
8
Credit card processing
8
Cost of goods sold
9
Order Orchestration
8
End-to-end order visibility
8
Order exception Resolution
8
Pay calculation
9
Benefit plan administration
9
Direct deposit files
9
Salary revision and increment management
8
Reimbursement management
8
Dashboards
8
Standard reports
9
Custom reports
9
API for custom integration
Not Rated
Plug-ins
9
Role-based user permissions
10
Single sign-on capability
Not Rated

Using Xero

20 - Accountants and bookkeepers. We handle over 100 clients using Xero for accounting and sales tax filing purposes.
1 - We have an IT guy who sets up Xero for new clients but it's nothing too technical, we can always call their support if we need any help or are stuck on something.
  • Bookkeeping for small businesses.
  • VAT filing for UK businesses.
  • Management reports for owners and directors.
  • Use different integrations available to automate certain elements (like connecting with Dext or A2X).
It's reliable, complete in terms of features and not too expensive.

Evaluating Xero and Competitors

  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
  • Prior Experience with the Product
Price, many small businesses are cautious of their subscription costs, so cost is a very important factor in choosing Xero or any other accounting software.