Xero Pain Points

Xero Pain Points

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I have a client who currently uses Sage50 desktop - it is growing and we are looking for a 'cloud' solution which will allow more people access for data entry and reporting etc, as well as for me to review/prepare year end figures etc.

I have heard negtive things about Sage's offering (Sage One) but good things about Xero.

I've signed up for a free trial and I am sure Xero will do most of the basic things we need, but would be interested to hear of any pain points people are experiencing.

Also, it seems the premium xero offering is £30 a month for unlimited users, which seems inexpensive - is that really it or are there any charges we might need to pay on top later (except payroll)?

Replies (29)

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By jon_griffey
28th Jul 2015 16:31

Hosted Sage

f you like Sage you can easily get Sage 50 desktop hosted.  I would avoid Sage One.

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By rorydowney
28th Jul 2015 16:37

Online 50 offer Sage 50 hosted. They are not Sage

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By ARP99
28th Jul 2015 16:48

We only use the standard version, but there have never been any additional charges over the £20+ VAT we signed up to, and the price has stayed the same for a good couple of years I think.

 

Would thoroughly recommend Xero, I'm sure there are others who find some issues with it, but vs. my previous experience with Sage and SAP (I appreciate there is more to SAP, but it's also the most horrific system I've ever encountered!) it comes out well ahead.

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By stt
28th Jul 2015 16:49

Thanks for the responses, if Sage 50 hosted has identical functionality to the desktop version,then I would rather avoid it; I will know more once I've trialled Xero, but get the feeling it has much more to offer.

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By Cloudcounter
28th Jul 2015 17:00

No pain

I've used Xero now for more than six years.  Yes there are things that I wish it did differently but not enough to jump up and down and make a noise about it.  For example it reports TB and accounts in alphabetical order by default and I have to select the option to report by accounting code - hardly the end of the world, but it would be nice if it remembered my choice!

If you can get a "proper" bank feed for Xero that's likely to be much easier than downloading statements manually, based on experience with clients.  It's not caused me any issues.

Most other so called niggles will be because Xero does something in a slightly different way from the one that you've been used to - some people react quite strongly about that, including one on Linked In who gave the impression that his world had collapsed because some Xero report had the oldest columns on the right and he wanted them on the left! 

You just have  to try it to see how it suits.  No additional charges for things like extra users.  Support I've used twice and was excellent both times - one for something that I should have worked out for myself and one when there was a genuine glitch in a client records.

I've introduced well over 50 clients to Xero and had one who didn't like it.  Some took to it  like a duck to water, others needed a bit of time

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By stt
28th Jul 2015 17:07

Thanks Cloudcounter, are you saying the bank feed doesn't always work properly, or that it isn't available for some banks?

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By Cloudcounter
28th Jul 2015 17:22

Bank feeds

The "official" bank feeds work very well.  Afaik at the moment those are HSBC, Natwest, RBS and Metrobank

Some of other bank feeds can be a bit flaky from time to time.  Barclays (where a proper feed may be coming soon) constantly needs secuirty information updating - generally via the pinsentry..  Lloyds generally works well, but falls over from time to time and needs setting up again. There is also a Santander feed in the pipeline, but it's been in there since February. 

You can download manually and generally that's not a problem, but some clients screw it up.  I do download manually (Barclays) and it's not too bad, although it's not so easy since the alleged improvement in their website.  Lloyds downloads do seem to occasionally appear as US dates.

Bear in mind that I have done a heck of a lot of downloads in six years, and most of them have gone through without problems

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By stt
28th Jul 2015 17:29

Thanks Cloudcounter, much appreciated

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By Moonbeam
28th Jul 2015 17:59

I've been using Xero for 2 years

I am a hardened Sage Line 50 user, and have not moved my larger clients to Xero for some very good reasons. First the larger clients need large quantities of supplier invoice input and xero is very slow indeed in this area. You can whack in tones of supplier invoices to Sage in the time it takes just to do one or two entries in Xero. I am not sure whether this will ever change, but it is a real problem for high volumes. Sage remains highly complicated, and it's not easy to amend mistakes.

The other criticism I have of Xero is that there are a lot of reports as standard on Sage which any sane business owner would want that Xero either doesn't do or provides a very poor second to.

Xero recently triumphantly launched an equivalent to the Aged Drs/Crs detailed report. Unfortunately the programmer hadn't heard of the idea that the aged balances need to add together to form a total. As this is a program for accounts, surely this is not rocket science.

On the plus side, my much smaller clients are all advised to use Xero, because it's relatively easy to train them up on it, and I can edit out errors much faster than on Sage. Then the bank feeds are worth having even if they can be tediously slow.

I don't think Xero will be a serious option for my bigger clients unless they can dramatically improve entry times and reports.

I don't bother looking at Sage One. So many people whose opinions I trust have said that it is rubbish.

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By ireallyshouldknowthisbut
28th Jul 2015 18:08

.

I think Moonbeans assessment is pretty fair.

For small businesses without a bookkeeper its great

For high volume it might not be quite so good, however if you use the 'bank rules' well and also the "cash coding" functions it can be pretty bloody quick.  Importing is also pretty and easy to do if you have a lot of data to go in.  The ability to store PDFs of the supplier invoices is very powerful too. 

One thing that irks me personally is the actual keying speed and switch between screens is laggy as its browser based.  Desktop stuff tends to just work, albeit I have not used recent versions of SAGE. Most of my remaining desktop clients are on Quickbooks. 

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By stt
28th Jul 2015 18:36

Thanks Moonbeam and Ireallyshouldknow, that is exactly the type of detail I was looking for.

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By Cloudcounter
28th Jul 2015 20:52

Bulk entry

if the speed of bulk entries is an issue, there are ways to deal with that, including entering the information on a spreadsheet (csv) and importing

I know that the Xero team have been able to offer help with setting this up, and with other ways of saving time.  I'm sure that they've replied to posts on this forum or possibly somewhere else but it was some time back and I couldn't point to the replies

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Kieran Phelan
By KPEM online
29th Jul 2015 07:55

cash coding and supplier invoices
We have used xero for 5 years now and think it is excellent. Few things still to be ironed out on new payroll on xero but other than that its the best out their. Cash coding and bank rules make bank imports so quick and easy! And if you use Receipt Bank with Xero to scan supplier invoices in then the data entry is minimal.

Go for it.

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By jon_griffey
29th Jul 2015 10:20

Poachers

Once you have gone to the effort and trouble of investing your time setting the client up on Xero, just keep your fingers crossed that that don't get the call from KPMG.

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By janetmb
29th Jul 2015 11:59

Xero saves so much time on all the other parts of the data entry - ie not having to enter payments as well as the invoices that are being paid, not to mention all the time saved on the bank rec, that I consider it far outweighs any extra time spent creating invoices....

which I dispute btw, I always found sage very hard going when raising invoices.

Yes the Xero charges are very reasonable considering they include use of the package, unlimited access to the help service, Help button and instruction videos throughout Xero, and currently they are running a series of hour long Webinars all summer, to improve a users knowledge and ability in various areas of the package.

Xero look on training and improvement of a user's knowledge as part of the basic service.

Compare that with the high cost of getting any training in Sage...

I highly recommend Xero.

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By DMGbus
29th Jul 2015 13:30

Xero experience

My Xero experience has been good, but as with all software there'll always be something not to my liking...

The screen showing unreconciled bank transactions - I haven't found a way to download a useful copy of this (ie. in Excel format or .pdf format).  Trying a .pdf download via Firefox results in a virtually unuseable document.  Therefore I have to take .jpg format screenprints when I wish to illustrate queries to clients.The P&L would be more helpful to me if the (nominal code) was stated alongside the P&L account name, ditto. Balance Sheet

The above are minor niggles when compared to how bad Sage 50 / Accounts can be (eg. you have a nice neat report upon screen, so go file > print and get an unformatted print out lacking details that were visible on screen).

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Replying to RavD79:
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By Cloudcounter
29th Jul 2015 16:45

Xero experience

DMGbus wrote:

My Xero experience has been good, but as with all software there'll always be something not to my liking...

The screen showing unreconciled bank transactions - I haven't found a way to download a useful copy of this (ie. in Excel format or .pdf format).  Trying a .pdf download via Firefox results in a virtually unuseable document.  Therefore I have to take .jpg format screenprints when I wish to illustrate queries to clients.The P&L would be more helpful to me if the (nominal code) was stated alongside the P&L account name, ditto. Balance Sheet

The above are minor niggles when compared to how bad Sage 50 / Accounts can be (eg. you have a nice neat report upon screen, so go file > print and get an unformatted print out lacking details that were visible on screen).

 

 

1   Go to the reconciliation report, which you can export to Excel, and groups the unreconciled transactiosn together

2  P&L - Click on the tab that says "Compare Periods"  Choose periods as required then click on "More Options"  Sorting by account code reveals the codes.

Same option with balance sheet.

 

 

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By Oliver.Furniss
30th Jul 2015 00:22

Hey stt, just to clarify that with Xero Premium you get Payroll for 10 employees included in the £30 plan. If you have more than 10 employees then you could select the Premium 20 or 50 plans. Thanks

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By stt
30th Jul 2015 17:02

Thanks Oliver, do you happen to know if there is an upper limit to the number of employees Xero payroll cna cope with?

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By Cloudcounter
30th Jul 2015 17:35

Employee limit

There is the Premium 100 plan for (of course) 100 employees.  I think that there won't be many business with more than that in the market that Xero are aiming at, and you might find that transaction volumes become a problem first

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Replying to Franck BRUNET:
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By FactChecker
24th Feb 2024 13:19

Probably the most inept piece of self-advertising that I've ever seen:
- hijacking a 9 year-old thread on the dubious basis that it mentions Xero;
- absolutely no focus/clarity in the 'message' being (badly) promoted;
- no idea (me or apparently the poster) as to who is meant to be interested.

Franck BRUNET, it is at the very least considered polite to declare your affiliation - but such overt advertising is against site rules anyway.
Of course none of this will concern you if you are only a BOT.

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Replying to FactChecker:
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By Franck BRUNET
24th Feb 2024 13:36

If you read the text a little rather than looking at the images, you'll see that this comment raises a problem that persists today. So the fact that it's on a thread from 2015 may seem like a hijack to you, but it's just a sign that you shouldn't just read 3 lines. A little hindsight and reflection instead of degenerating malicious comments.

Don't you think this problem still exists? That it wastes time and users? Do you know of any other solutions?
So rather than grumbling like that, use a little common sense.

And you say that the message is not targeted? Proof that you haven't read or understood anything!
An ecommerce player who uses Xero and has a bank reconciliation problem, if that's not a targeted message, then I don't understand your place here.

I welcome discussion and constructive criticism, but not this kind of message.
But I guess you've had your fun!
It is at the very least considered to raise the level of the discussion a little ;-)

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Replying to Franck BRUNET:
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By FactChecker
24th Feb 2024 14:14

"If you read the text a little rather than looking at the images"
... you must be a Bot (what "images" in a text-only medium)?

" it's just a sign that you shouldn't just read 3 lines"
... I actually read all of it (twice because it was so hard to follow), but what's with the "should"?
[It may come as a nasty surprise to you, but what others post on a public forum isn't determined by what YOU want to see.]

"It is at the very least considered to raise the level of the discussion a little ;-)"
... aside of the poor cut'n'paste (what is 'considered'), what "discussion"?
[All you've done is promote a product, and then descend into whingeing.]

Anyway, I see that you've ignored the opportunity to declare your affiliation - which rather supports my comment about a lack of politeness.

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Replying to FactChecker:
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By Franck BRUNET
24th Feb 2024 14:26

I'm not going to put an affiliate link as it's not one!

This is a deliberate copy and paste on my part, which confirms what I said in the light of this exchange: "At the very least, we should consider raising the level of the discussion a little ;-)".

I'll stop here because I think it's more interesting for me to spend my energy elsewhere

Cheers!

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Replying to FactChecker:
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By FactChecker
24th Feb 2024 14:32

One other thing:

"And you say that the message is not targeted?" ... I stand by that 100%.

Someone is spending a lot of time and money on promoting an otherwise unknown company/software ... google reveals a sudden splurge of entries (all within the very recent past and entirely on platforms where the marketeers can push their message, as opposed to where users can provide feedback).
Little sign of focus there on discrete channels or market sectors, more of a 'drown them in data' approach.

But my original point was ... you picked a UK-only forum whose membership is primarily professional accountants/advisers/agents for SME businesses, and yet your example is full of $dollar values.
And your claimed USPs are hidden from any likely audience by your choice of tacking on to the end of an elderly thread that happens to mention Xero (whose clients you see as potentially a target, but only in certain circumstances).
If you really believed in the strength of these claims you would put them clearly, and at the heart of, an obvious advert ... maybe even paid-for advertorial!

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Replying to Franck BRUNET:
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By Leywood
24th Feb 2024 14:27

It’s just unwanted spam

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Replying to Leywood:
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By Franck BRUNET
24th Feb 2024 14:31

mdr

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Replying to Franck BRUNET:
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By FactChecker
24th Feb 2024 14:42

UK ... then USA ... now France.
Impressive range, and yet still pointless.
Rien à voir ici.

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Replying to FactChecker:
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By Franck BRUNET
24th Feb 2024 14:52

Thank you for your interest and for taking the time to read my message!
It means a lot to me ;-)

But please continue !!!!

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