To date we have just recommended Xero. We can work with whatever software the client wants but always say if you want us to work with you and help you overcome any software issues then you need to use Xero.
I have been going back and forward in my head should we stick to this or offer more than one choice.
My thinking is to say that we work with Xero, QBO and SAGEOne. (would get all the staff QBO and SAGEOne certified and appoint a QBO and SAGEOne champion as the go to expert) However, would probably still point most people to Xero.
One cloud software doesnt fit all clients and their budget but thinking if offer the above then should be able to suit software with about 95% of clients.
Just interested to see what other software others use. Are you a one option, give two or three options or use whatever practice?
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I'm probably atypical. At my age, I'm not anxious to learn a boatload of cloud software systems which will only be of use to me for, probably, a couple of years.
However, my thoughts are that, as cloud accounting increases, restricting yourself to one system and turning folk away if they won't change is probably not going to be good business sense. They'll just go elsewhere.
I’m like you at the moment- we have clients on everything from the top 3 to things like FreeAgent & Pandle. I always say that we’ll work with whatever they have/want.
One of our main bkpg clients is on SageOne, so I’ve had to send one of my staff on a few courses.
However, if asked, we only push Xero. Rightly or wrongly, I don’t see me changing that policy, especially as we’re probably going to start using Xero Workpapers, which only integrates with Xero.
For us its Xero only going forward. All new clients will use Xero or they won't be clients.
I've used Xero since 2010, understand it very well and believe its the best product so.
We still have 2 clients using CB and 5/6 on desktop versions of Sage. These are older clients and we will move them across at some point.
For us its Xero only going forward. All new clients will use Xero or they won't be clients.
I've used Xero since 2010, understand it very well and believe its the best product so.
We still have 2 clients using CB and 5/6 on desktop versions of Sage. These are older clients and we will move them across at some point.
You may be happy with Xero but I have a client who decided without consulting me to appoint a bookkeeper who put his records on Xero and completely messed them up (not, I hasten to add, to due faults in the program). I had not used Xero before and when I was given access to try and sort things out I found it very unhelpful when trying to change entries, even by journal.
Are you aware of the Xero "Find & Recode" function? It makes correcting client errors easier than on any other piece of software I've used.
Hi Mark
We offer all the software. As they are not all the same and some have their good and bad points. I have clients you are very particular about their creditors and some of the cloud software are very weak on the creditors side including screens and reports.
I hate the way the cloud companies are behaving at the moment the arrogance is outstanding. The simple fact, how can you comment that one software is better for the clients if you only use one. You can,t because you have not given the other software the time of day.
I feel like certain cloud companies are making accountants behave like sheep and not questioning their cults. Instead of us going forward in IT,I feel we are now going backwards and accepting software that is not one fit for all.
Stick to your guns and recommend Xero. We do the same - it's the market leader and nothing is likely to change that very soon.
However, we do support QBO and FreeAgent as these are good quality products, particularly FreeAgent for the contractors niche.
If we have clients on anything else - it usually only takes a brief demo (30 minutes or less) to demonstrate that they are using an inferior cloud product. More importantly, if they don't want to change then we can't offer them the services we want to, so they are unlikely to be an ideal client for us.
Stick to your guns and recommend Xero. We do the same - it's the market leader and nothing is likely to change that very soon.
I remember folk saying that about Sage.
Times change. Sage were not far off No 1 in a field of 1. Whereas Xero may be No 1 at the moment - but in a bigger field.
Agreed - but that's about how you adapt to the market place. I did in 2008, but seems some others are still coming to terms with the current state of play.
If Xero get knocked off their perch in 10 years hopefully I'll have seen it coming and will have told my clients about the next big thing. If not, then I'll be asking for recommendations about whichever AI bot I should be choosing or whatever?
Don't forget one of the big differences between then and now was that 10/15 years ago as a Sage partner you were only likely to recommend Sage because becoming a Quickbooks desktop or Pegasus Opera partner was too much hassle/cost to maintain unless you had a particular concentration of clients.
We would never have considered a wholesale transfer of clients between one system and another. Nowadays businesses can do this within hours and a practice could easily achieve this in 12 months.
Now you can choose to be platform agnostic if you like. It's easy to sign up to a 30 day demo, play with the data and integrations, and as noted above you can also switch between products incredibly easily. I barely give this any thought anymore and never worry about upgrades.
This flexibility and agile nature of both businesses and the systems they use mean that the likes of Xero etc have to have a good UX, provide the killer features businesses want (how often did we ask Sage for something that took months/years to arrive) and innovate or risk losing their subscribers. Ultimately the barriers to entry to the cloud market are low so innovation and subscription numbers are key.
These are the reasons we use Facebook instead of Friends Reunited, Waze instead of TomTom, Spotify instead of CDs etc etc etc
Whilst we mainly use Xero, I do need to ensure you don't end up like the firms who only did Sage 20 years ago, who are mostly now ex-firms.
Whilst specialism saves time, agility is also helpful.
If you are big enough have a different team for each product.
Whilst we mainly use Xero, I do need to ensure you don't end up like the firms who only did Sage 20 years ago, who are mostly now ex-firms.
That's the danger I highlighted in post 1.
Ten years ago, firms who used Xero were front-runners.
They may be one among hundreds ten years from now.
ireallyshouldknowthisbut wrote:
Ten years ago, firms who used Xero were front-runners.
They were Australian as Xero didn't launch in the UK until November/December 2008 - pedantry I know but...
Whilst I agree with other comments about serving clients best with the systems they choose. The aim of any SAAS company is scale. Xero and QBO are the big players at the moment and none of the other competitors are showing anything innovative that will change that. On that basis you have to choose one or both of them as your system of choice, just as everyone did with Sage 20 or so years ago. Supporting other systems may be useful in the short term but I wouldn't invest loads of time into it, unless they scale up.
It's hard to predict where the future lies, given technology changes so quickly, but one thing that should be learnt from the move to cloud, over the last few years, is that if you don't adapt quickly your firm will end up playing constant catch up. From a SAAS point of view - those that scale quickest are the winners.
My one prediction for the future (and I'm happy to be proved wrong) is that the cloud market will start to settle down over the next few years. There's still loads of organic growth to be had in the UK by moving businesses from desktop to cloud. But once that's happened the bit players like Clearbooks, Wave, Kashflow and (dare I say it) Sage will start to be acquired or hung out to dry through aggressive pricing. We already have 2 way market offering - QBO is cheap (and Intuit can afford to continue being so), Xero has a more comprehensive offering, better tech/innovation and app marketplace and is aiming at the premium end.
Having been an anti-Xero crusader for a few years, on the basis that its marketing portrayed a product that didn't actually exist, I agree that it is now good (but not beautiful) bookkeeping software.
However I still remember the first heady years of Sage and then how it milked us as it got arrogant, fat and lazy and I can't help deja vu with Xero's market leader status and the hype still spoken about it.
Although to a lesser extent this was also my experience with Iris over 20 years.
I can't fault anyone who makes the decision to throw all their, and their clients', eggs into Xero's basket but it could never work for me, not only because Xero just doesn't suit all my clients but because, longer term, I know I'd face a mass migration.
Sarah asks; "how can you comment that one software is better for the clients if you only use one".
I'd take this further by saying that, with 30ish systems out there, there will always be one, perhaps just released today, that does some or all of it better than the market leaders and, unless you discover this and feed it back to your market leader, you are assisting with their stagnation and weight gain.
My views are similar to most here, I only recommend Xero to clients, I will support other main packages as long as they are working ok.
After doing a lot of testing and searching I found Xero to be the best from my point of view, and also the easiest for clients to use and engage with.
I wanted something that would work with all my clients, I find the different versions allow you to do that. Whereas the competition have 2 versions basic cash book or full version which gives less choice for the jobs that fall in between the 2.
In the North East there is a huge amount of sage desktop users, many more than Sage think as a lot of disks available before licencing was more sophisticated. what do you do with these? The obvious choice would be to migrate them to Sageone, but until May this year there is not a migration route for Sage to Sage, but there is for Sage to Xero or Sage to QBO, which has got to be a massive own goal for Sage which they are now trying to put right 2 years ago.
For me you need to pick software that is going to work for a reasonable amount of time if you are telling your clients to change to the next best thing every year, it undermines your position with them. Whilst I had concerns with Xero a few year back I think they are now the safe choice for your business. The account management is good, Tech Support gets some flack occasionally but I find it fit for purpose as most things don't need instant answers.
However the biggest thing for me when I returned to practice a few years back ( I appreciate I have said this before) was the number of firms that were new start ups a few years before me, were now firms with 500+ clients. This sort of growth was in unheard of in a traditional practice. Xero based services were the common denominator in all the rapid growth firms, and I couldn't get away from that.
I know Xero tend to be more shouty about it but you don't hear of Sageone or QBO having the same success, although I am sure some do.
The stand out thing for me at Xerocon was the achievement of Armstrong Watson, a Northern traditional firm with mainly offices in rural areas. Realising they needed to change to prepare for MTD and keep there practice current, they converted 4500 clients to Xero in a 12 month period.
That was must have been a mammoth task which could have been a disaster "if" they got it wrong, but they delivered and now they have probably one of the leading firms in the North, by having the balls to change 25 years of "we have always done it that way".
If you need a testimonial look no further than that.
(I dare say that his account manager was glad he was in the office that day when the call came in also).
have got to be honest, I'm not sure what the fuss is all about with Xero
we have a few clients on it and i've never been impressed by it
i always feel its a bit flimsy and only really suitable for clients that would have a handful of transactions each month year.....for a decent sized business something more robust is better
For more robust what would you suggest?
I have clients with £20/30m+ turnovers using Xero with no problems. Xero's own guidance is that each part of the nominal (bank, sales ledger etc) will manage 1 million transactions per annum with no noticeable impediment.
I ran a telecoms company, a few year's ago, before Xero switched to AWS, that was processing 1,000s of sales invoices every month. Finance team totaled 2 people.
Last time I used Sage 50 it still ran on 32-bit architecture which meant a transaction limit of 64,000 transactions (in total) before it started to fall over. Sage 200 did extend this out further but many clients find it overly complicated and expensive - some love it I'll admit.
Last time I used Sage 50 it still ran on 32-bit architecture which meant a transaction limit of 64,000 transactions (in total) before it started to fall over.
That must have been a VERY long time ago, Sage, since v3 of Sage Sterling 20+ years ago has been able to handle millions of transactions...
John
I was at school 20 years ago... and 64-bit processors only became mainstream in the mid-2000's with software another couple of years behind at least.
Plenty of instances with clients using Sage with tons of history and suffering corruptions and data loss due to the limitations I noted before :)
I think you might be getting confused with 16bit, 64000 (there or there abouts), is the maximum a 16bit application can get to.
A 32bit number can go as high as 2,147,483,647 which, coincidentally, is the theoretical maximum number of transactions that Sage 50 can handle and has been able to for a very long time now...
About 10 years ago, at a previous firm, we had a client using Sage 50. They had 6-8 users, then the systems tried crashing regularly.
Sage’s response was something along the lines of “wow, with 700k transactions pa I’m shocked it’s doing that well”. Outcome- move to Sage200, quote £25k installation & training, £25k hardware upgrades.
There was nothing complicated with their business, just a lot of customers on recurring rental invoicing. Imagine if Xero had been around then : £22pcm + a stock module.
Xero is my preferred option, but I have one client (who specifically requested it) on QBO and a couple left over on CB I don't really mind having the QBO client as I feel I should keep up in case it gets better than Xero at any time. I'd like to get the CB clients on Xero and be done with CB for good.
I wouldn't work with any other cloud bookkeeping programmes unless people started saying something else was really good.
I don't recommend any cloud accounting software at all, as every one I have seen is terrible. There are three features which are to me essential in accounting software, and every cloud system I have looked at lacks at least one of these:
1) A proper sales ledger; many have not got this.
2) A proper purchase ledger; most have not got this.
3) The ability to save and restore earlier backups; as far as I know, only ClearBooks has got this (but lacks 1&2).
I have one client who uses Xero (their own choice). Nobody else uses cloud software at all, though I would still take them on if they did.
What, pray tell, do you class as a "proper" sales or purchase ledger? Unless, of course, you mean a book... The accounting and reporting offered by QBO, Xero et al are equivalent or better than Sage or similar.
As for the ability to save and restore earlier backups - why? There are apps that will do this but I still fail to see the point.
Many cloud systems simply have not got the ability to look at a supplier or customer's history on one page. Restoring earlier backups is essential where the client has made a mess, or where something has been accidentally deleted, or a load of data has been input or uploaded wrongly.
That comment makes no sense. It is precisely my experience with cloud accounting that has created my low opinion of its current products, and to demand the three features listed, all of which are normal on desktop systems. Do you actually know of any cloud accounting system that ticks those boxes? I've asked this question before, and nobody has found a system that does.
Hi JD,
Most of my experience comes from using Xero, but I do use QBO, SageOne, FreeAgent and Exact. I haven't used Kashflow since Iris acquired it.
As I said in my previous post all the major players produce sales and purchase ledgers that mirror what you can get on desktop. You can, in Xero, drill down in customers and suppliers and see a full history of invoices/credit raised and payments/receipts.
As for being able to backup and restore that feature isn't needed - hence my why? As has already been posted Xero has the Find and Recode feature available to advisors (been around for about 2 years) that enables you to bulk correct as many client cockups as needed.
As an example, I had a client ring up on the filing deadline for his December VAT return as he had posted all the sales at one of his shops as standard-rated instead of zero-rated. This had spilt over into Jan/Feb transactions as well. The solution on a desktop product would have been to quantify error and then raise a series of credit notes and sales invoices to fix. On Xero, I filtered the offending transactions (300+ for the quarter) and clicked the button to change. I also amended some of the defaults to try and prevent it happening again. As it happens I also caught a couple of VAT issues on the inputs - VAT taken off wages and PAYE!! All in a spent less than 15 minutes on the phone and in the system. Granted this was a retail environment so I didn't need to reissue invoices but I doubt that's an issue any system could solve.
As for clients deleting transactions - they never disappear on a cloud system, certainly in Xero, and they can also be reinstated, unlike in desktop setups. You can also track down the offending member of staff as each transaction has its own mini audit trail. I know this feature is starting to leach into desktop (but guess where it came from) and in my experience, very few clients set up multi-users in a desktop environment as it usually costs more!
Using Xero why would you need to use a back up? It defeats the purpose of using a real time software package.
Client makes a mess - use find and recode
Need a back up ('just in case' - never had the need for this in 7+ years) - use Backupmybooks
View customer/supplier history on one page - yes, you can - quite easy via the Contacts Tab.
Accidentally deleted:
Bank transactions - import again
Sales invoices - re-input - not difficult.
Purchase invoices - re-import if you use AutoEntry/ReceiptBank/Datamolino
Anyway, why would you ever 'delete' a transaction unless you know it was definitely wrong? Just use void - you can then follow the audit trail.
Of course provide some basic training to clients via skype/logmein/zoom etc or screen share using the same and you can deal with potential problems before they become major issues.
If you're still stuck using desktop software you have missed the point of the cloud and the benefits it brings.
To be fair to JD, on Xero whilst you can get a customer activity report or statement, you can’t do the same for suppliers. Which has always puzzled me.
Easiest way (same as with sales invoices) - Contacts/suppliers - select supplier - view recent bills report - enter date range.
That is not the same. I am Xero Certified Partner the purchases side is very weak and is not same as the sales are the same detail. The recent bill report gives some information but nothing like the detail it should.
It is driving my clients mad, and new clients will not move to xero because of it, the supplier's screens to view are shocking
The 'history' in Xero is next to useless. It merely shows a list of invoices that have been paid or not paid. It does not show details of the payments. As for why you would need to restore, if you have never had to do so, you must have been very lucky! While it is possible to undo any number of errors given enough time, why should that be necessary? Why not just go back to where the system was before the errors were input? Why is it so many people sing the praises of Xero and its imitators, when their software is not fit for purpose? Even Sage is better, and that's the worst insult I can think of!
if you have never had to do so, you must have been very lucky!
A restore should be an extremely infrequent event. It shouldn't be part of your regular procedures.
Your missing the point totally. Its not the software that is the issue where were you when it was all going wrong?
Automation is nothing new, its been with us for decades, think of autopilot on an aeroplane. The only risking bits in an aeroplane is landing and taking off, auto pilot deals with the few hours in between.
Compare that to your client, the setup (the take off) needs your involvement to set it up right. Time invested here will pay dividends over the lifetime of the client. If setup correctly the automation should be more accurate than human input as it will always post to same nominal etc whereas people make mistakes or change treatment.
After good setup the flight part is just more of the same, but any errors in setup will be repeated over the journey, the your input is then needed again to deliver and interpret the final figures and keep them right along the way (the landing).
Your approach is like a pilot setting off for Germany but not checking that the co-ordinants are set for France than blaming the aeroplane for getting it wrong.
Instead of blaming the software look closer to home if your clients are messing up.
In my (admittedly limited) experience of Xero, this was always the problem that I had with it. There appears to be no way to run a report that lists all payments made to a supplier. It only lists those invoices that have been paid, which is not the same thing. In QBO, however, this is simple and a report can be generated in seconds for this.
Thank you, chatman. Exactly which report do you recommend? Do you mean the Aged Payables Detail report? But that only seems to show what's outstanding. I cannot see a report titled Accounts Payable, but perhaps I'm looking in the wrong place?
The Account Transactions report. Select Accounts Payable as the account you want the transactions for.
So, in Xero, I have to go the balance sheet, pick "show transactions" for the accounts payable account and then export ALL transactions for ALL years to Excel and then (in Excel, NOT in Xero) run a sort or filter to find the supplier that I want! How is that better than QuickBooks Online (QBO), where I can save a customised report (that only takes seconds to create) that lists all payments to my chosen, filtered supplier (or to a combination of suppliers, if I wish) and which can be saved to run in seconds any time I want?
It seems crazy to me that highly advanced accounting software is incapable of reporting on basic transactions, providing the levels of sorting and filtering required in everyday use. Whilst I recognise Xero as a good product, I have always preferred QBO, as the quality of bookkeeping software is defined by the ease with which one can report on the data, as well as the efficiency of inputting it in the first place (which is now mostly automated by bank feeds and OCR data extraction from purchase invoices).
I never said it was better; I just said you could do it. I accept that QBO is better in that respect, but in general I find QBO much harder to work with than Xero.
Hi JDBENJAMIN - whilst I agree that the three features you quote are important, there are ways and ways, and just because, for example, the ledger history doesn't look as it did 10 years ago, doesn't mean that todays system won't actually present the information in a better and more user friendly way.
My prime motive in using cloud accounting is that it's enabled me to get the majority of my clients to keep their own books, with little error or need for adjustment and so, regardless of the system they use, as they have never known Dr/Cr sales ledger T accounts, and their books are accurate, they work fine with PDF statements or screen views of the customer and supplier histories.
I am a great fan of the ability to take a backup snapshot and, as you say, it was one of the features I always valued in Clear Books.
It saved huge amounts of time on several occasions where a new user had entered 50 items incorrectly or where I had imported 300 dollar invoices as £s. All I needed to do was hit, "restore from last back up" taken just before the work was started.
Ironically this feature hasn't worked in CB for over a year, but you can ask CB support to restore any client from a daily backup they take.
Also, CB does have a traditional T account supplier and customer ledger screen, just hit the "running balance" button on the contact's screen, I think I've used it twice in 4 years.