Xero

It's been easier to use Xero than I expected, but I had a nasty surprise at tax time when I realized the default accounts/descriptions for expenses did not correlate 1:1 to IRS categories. (I should have checked this more closely when I set up my accounts because it's a New Zealand company, and the previous product was local.) This means I will need to double-check all my transactions for 2018 and the IRS has my vastly overestimated tax payment until I can do that and file my return on an extension.

I've had a much better experience importing data from financial institutions because Xero uses a well-known importing service that is trusted by the institutions.

I like being able to match multiple invoices to bank deposits because I usually don't run to the bank for each check. This will be more valuable as my company grows.

I should probably find an accountant to assist me with this, but I haven't found an accountant who understands both craft businesses and Xero.

Vorteile

Professional double entry software at a very affordable price
Accommodates both cash and accrual accounting
Links to financial institutions to get transactions
Uses standard importer recognized by the financial institutions instead of just trying to log in remotely (and triggering fraud alerts)
Can match multiple invoices to a single deposit transaction imported from bank
Can keep using Xero as company grows

Nachteile

Pre-existing expense categories/descriptions don't map 1:1 with IRS definitions, so I'm having to go back to all my receipts to make sure expenses are entered in proper accounts because I didn't realize this when I switched
More difficult to focus on specific expense categories to check transactions
Have not been able to import historic data from previous app (possibly because it's not double entry) so I am still paying the subscription on that software to retain access to my data
No integration with Craftybase, so I have to enter supply purchases and customer invoices there independently

It's a lot of money to get setup with a certified consultant. Very few consultants available in Canada. When we did find one she was great but she bills you for every second she works. As in not any free advice. My lawyer is easier to work with.

Vorteile

As a former quickbooks user of about 20 years, it was a big deal to switch platforms. At first glance it looked like it would do everything we wanted. I loved the price point, the interface and relative ease of use. The multi currency was great as was the ability to integrate with Stripe. You make a lot of compromises to save on the huge monthly cost of quickbooks but there are workarounds.

Nachteile

There are so many things that are just common/must have's for any business. Things like progressive billing, job costing and even the ability to make your own journal entries are missing. We had to hire a consultant and spend around $800 just to get it to add purchases easier to the mix with HubDoc. You see job costing catagories at the invoice level but not software or 3rd party app to back it up. The single most annoying thing about it is the support. It's non existent. You complain, They tell you its not a problem and ignore your requests. I struggle daily with the search function. I can't get about 50% of my searches to work. The clients I'm looking for are entered. I'm typing them in fine but you often have to visit contacts menu and find them manually by quote number or just never ending scrolling. Upon complaining numerous times the best they can do is say "it might take up to two weeks for your contacts to sync. " Xero: It's 2020 and the dark ages of cloud software have passed. You need to fix the search function and add job costing to be considered a contender. So here we are in 2020, manually adding each of our sales to a spreadsheet and adding the subsequent bills to it to see if we made $. They make it incredibly hard to contact support and they are quite unresponsive when they do reply to your ticket. They try really hard to push you to support forums, where there are literally hundreds of complaints on the same issue with the ability to comment closed.

We've been using Xero for about two years now. There have been a few hiccups along the way but for the most part things have been ok. Recently however, we've had a problem with our bank feed uploading into Xero in order to reconcile transactions. We first encountered this issue on 2/10/18. We informed Xero and they said they would look into the issue. A couple of weeks went by without hearing anything about the feed working as it should. We contacted them again and they said they were still working on the issue but that we could manually download the transactions ourselves in the meantime. Today is 4/10/18 (2 months later) and they still have not fixed the issue. We are still having to manually download these transactions ourselves in order to reconcile our bank accounts within the Xero software.

I spoke with Xero this morning and they still do not have a timeline for when this will be fixed. They said they use an outside company to perform the importing of bank feeds functions and that they are not responsible for it not working. They said when we signed up for the Xero service we were informed about the possibility of the feed possibly cutting out at some point in the fine print (terms & conditions). They refuse to issue any sort of refund for their monthly service during this time of inconvenience because they say the bank feed import function is a free service offered by a third party.

The problem we have is that Xero is marketing this service as part of their overall monthly service package which you assume is really included in your monthly service fee you pay to them. When it doesn't work they take no accountability for it not working. We think it's very deceptive for them to market a service (bank import functionality) to prospective buyers, which you assume is included with your monthly service fee, but then take no responsibility for it not working when things breakdown. We believe they do this to gain a competitive advantage over other companies like Quickbooks. Instead of just charging for the bank import service which would increase their monthly service fee and make them less competitive on a price basis with their competition they artfully setup their service to be able to offer a more competitive price but not assume any of the responsibility when the service doesn't work as expected. The general consumer doesn't think to put this deceptive tactic together when they sign up for the service and Xero assumes once they have you onboard you'll deal with the issue until they can get it fixed because switching accounting software companies at a later date is extremely inconvenient.

Vorteile

The service accomplishes most of what it was intended to do albiet at a bit of a learning curve for the new user.

Nachteile

There is no customer service support number to call. Bank feeds do not work properly. IOS app is mising some functionaility

Overall, it's a decent program, with all the bells and whistles you'd expect from a cloud based accounting program. Unfortunately working without being able to reconcile monthly made life too difficult. And not many accountants work with it, so that made it difficult to have professional eyes on my accounting.

Vorteile

I loved how easy it was to integrate XERO with my bank accounts and Paypal. XERO seamlessly connected and kept my balances up to date. I also liked how easy it was to invoice clients and connect invoices to Paypal or Stripe.

Nachteile

Unfortunately, the reconciliation process in XERO is a no-go for me. Rather than the Quickbooks and standard approach, where you do a monthly reconciliation against a bank statement, XERO had no such function. Once an item was matched up to a bank transaction, it was considered "reconciled." No option to close out a month and double-check transactions. I went back to QBO to get that feature.

A beautiful piece of software that turns a once tedious chore, into an easy and intuitive process. I always recommend my clients to use Xero (if they can afford to) as I believe it makes the workflow much smoother and simpler for everyone involved.

Vorteile

As an accountant and bookkeeping business owner I have been using accounting software for well over 10 years. I have to say when Xero entered the market I was definitely curious as to what it could bring to the market. I believe Xero have captured a very nice niche of the industry with it's very business orientated user interface and simplisitic feel. It makes accounting somewhat fun for the business owner. The way that they have revolutionized the way the bank reconciliation is performed makes it easier for buiness owner and accountant/bookkeeper to work together. I love the comments functionality and the rules that can be set to repeating transactions. The AI in the bank reconciliation also has a very nice balance to it. It will allocate your transactions when you need it to, but not too aggressively - meaning you don't have to undo all the automatic allocations (unlike some other software like MYOB).

They also have a lot of resources to help business owners and financial professionals. In addition they make continual updates to their software to adapt to the times.

Nachteile

I think the biggest con of the software is the price tag. Many of my clients have found this to be a stumbling block, saying that the monthly subscription fee is too high for their business.

Other than the price, the only other con is the support is only via email (this is the last time I had an issue which was a few months ago). They do not have a support contact phone line (in Australia at least) - so response has to be via email (which may lead onto a call later if it cannot be resolved by email). Which takes longer to resolve the issues.