Xero - am I missing something?

Xero - am I missing something?

Didn't find your answer?

I have used QB desktop for years and think it’s great – I detest Sage with a passion – I think it is overly complicated and in-flexible.

QB introduced their cloud software (QBO) over a year ago and are still pushing hard for new customers – price is still £4.99 + VAT pcm, for life if set up via a Professional Advisor.

Accounting Web users appear to think that Xero is the best cloud accounting software and today I’ve set up a 30 day trial.  So far I am really unimpressed and struggling to see what this has that QBO doesn’t?  From what I can see this would cost £20 + VAT pcm.

Now before I upset anyone - I know that QBO isn’t great – if it was I wouldn’t be researching other options!

I was hoping some of the Xero worshippers would let me know what you think makes Xero stand out.

My thoughts so far:

  • It has account codes which I HATE – they’re pointless
  • VAT figures have to be keyed directly into HMRC website and not integrated (QBO has this problem too)
  • It appears to have payroll but it doesn’t actually calculate any deductions – isn’t that very dangerous for stupid clients?
  • I think that only the accountant can enter journals – why can’t clients?  Deprecation, recoding expenses?
  • It looks like the only recurring/regular entries you can have are journals which I don’t think clients can enter
  • It will calculate FRV but you need to enter the profit/loss journal yourself???
  • I do think the help is excellent!

Hopefully I’ve missed the big selling point and someone can point me in the right direction – thanks in advance for any help.

Replies (44)

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AshTag86
By Ash_D86
06th Feb 2015 17:20

First looks can be deceiving

@Fiona - thanks for taking a look at what we have to offer. Looks like you've had a good look around, don't forget every user has access to a Demo Company which can be used to have a proper play.

I'll go through some of your points below:

Xero does support account codes which are unique to each one; these can be used when creating transactions or locating them within the Chart of Accounts.We also do seamlessly integrate with HMRC meaning that you do not have to key in any figures to their online services, just enter a gateway / agent ID & password. All the hard work done.As you've found we do have a Payrun feature which allows a user to enter in pre-calculated values. However, we are launching an all singing & dancing payroll solution for the next financial year. This will calculate everything you need.Primarily it is the Adviser that can enter Manual Journals however there is an alternative way for the client to do so if they wish - via the Journal Report. Depreciation journals don't need to be entered each month as there is a Fixed Assets module which will post all those for you once it's been setup.We have a whole range of repeating transactions, from journals, invoices & bills. Not only will these generate for you without being logged in, you can also choose for Xero to send them out to customers for example as well.

Hope that helps with a few of the initial questions. Don't forget that along with the online Help Centre, we've also got our free education on Xero U and some short videos on Xero TV.

Ashley Driver
Education Specialist, Xero
@ashtag_86 @xero

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By MRS KF
06th Feb 2015 17:39

Liberty Accounts is very good software

I use QBO, and know XERO too, but the cloud based software I would strongly recommend is Liberty Accounts. Not heavily advertised as the competitors, however in my view is the most complete and sophisticated. I love it. I use QBO for small clients, where the price matters. 

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By DMGbus
06th Feb 2015 19:49

Bank feeds

A positive feature with Xero is bank feeds.

Does QB have this feature?

If QB lacks bank feeds then QB is not a tool for me to ever use whilst Xero definitely is a useful tool (no I am certainly not prepared to download bank statements as .csv file then feed into a software package).

I have,  few years ago, come across one bookkeeping software that works on nominal names rather than nominal codes - is QB that software? if it is then QB is not for me, whilst Xero is for me.

 

 

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By chatman
07th Feb 2015 07:37

@fiona_howells

Hi Fiona - How much do you spend on QB desktop each year? I found the constant upgrades very expensive, and having to keep every version on the computer a pain in the neck too. Add to that the date format problems, the  inability to import transactions, and the horrendous VAT procedures and reports, and Xero, Clear Books and VT seem like heaven.

I found QBO very buggy and spent a lot of time on the phone to their help line.

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Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
07th Feb 2015 12:34

Repeating Journals!

@Ashley - I just spotted this in your post above and, considering that 200-300 (can't remember) people (including me) have been voting and screaming for this feature since March 2012 (and probably before), I should not have had to spot it like this.

Thanks to the devs for finally waking up, but it is quite a big deal for accountants (and users) and I would guess that you will still have a large number of existing users using the naff workaround or (like me) entering years of journals manually.

Apologies in advance if it was mentioned directly (and not just via a new button or via social media) but, for such a marketing lead company, I'm surprised not to have it announced with fireworks, like you do more innocuous features.

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Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
07th Feb 2015 12:41

QBO & multiple tabs/windows

Was speaking to another accountant yesterday and he mentioned that you could not open different functions from within QBO on different browser tabs or windows, is this true?

One of the main benefits of working in the Cloud via web browsers is the ability to have as many tabs/windows open as you need, so you'll have one open for the bank stuff but then right click and open in a new xxx say sales, purchases, reports etc and also, as I do, have maybe 2-3 clients open at a time in different windows.

To be honest given that I don't know of a Cloud application that does not enable this, I had always assumed that they all did it.  Can someone tell me?

Would seem strange seeing as I seem to remember that multiple tabs was a feature of desktop.

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By bobbuilder
07th Feb 2015 16:04

Xero Reporting
Xero does have some weird stuff - why are there 2 different collections of Reports for example - "All Reports" and "New Reports"

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AshTag86
By Ash_D86
07th Feb 2015 16:44

New reporting
@bobbuilder - the All Reports in Xero are those that have been there since launch. As we invested heavily last year in our infrastructure & back end systems, we are now able to offer a much more robust reporting capability.

One by one each of the reports listed under All Reports will be moved over to this new framework. The project is a work in progress which is why there are still the two options available.

Ashley Driver
Education Specialist, Xero
@ashtag_86 @xero

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Replying to alan.rolfe:
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By bobbuilder
07th Feb 2015 17:30

but why?

Ash_D86 wrote:
@bobbuilder - the All Reports in Xero are those that have been there since launch. As we invested heavily last year in our infrastructure & back end systems, we are now able to offer a much more robust reporting capability.

One by one each of the reports listed under All Reports will be moved over to this new framework. The project is a work in progress which is why there are still the two options available.

Ashley Driver
Education Specialist, Xero
@ashtag_86 @xero

That explains what you've done but not why. As a user all I want to do is find the right report - I'm not interested in which suite of reports were introduced when, thanks. Why would it be helpful to have to guess which reports are where.

It might be useful for software reviewers but I can't see it does anything for users.

I'm not really complaining about it - it's just bizzare.

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By User deleted
07th Feb 2015 16:55

Kashflow ...

... is worth a look.

And I download QIF files not csv ones to upload, takes seconds and I prefer that to giving account login details to third parties.

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Gary Turner
By garyturner
07th Feb 2015 19:57

It's WIP

@Bob - We're in the process of replacing the original reporting engine and all existing reports in Xero with a completely new ones, and progressively converting small numbers of reports at a time.

Once we've replaced the existing 18 reports with their new counterparts, we'll likely retire the old ones and we'll be back to one single location for all reports.

Think of it like we're building a bypass and the roadworks will be around for a while.

Gary Turner
Managing Director, Xero
@garyturner

 

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By carnmores
07th Feb 2015 20:19

your not missing much

Stick with QB

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By fiona_howells
09th Feb 2015 12:14

Thanks everyone for the feedback

Wow – what a great response – thank you all!

 

@Ash_D86

I must’ve misunderstood the VAT filing – I saw the button which said file return following by something like you will need to file separately with HMRC and I obviously assumed incorrectly that this was outside of Xero.I followed the instructions for the journal report but couldn’t find it!How do you set up the repeating transactions?

 

@DMGbus – QBO does support bank feeds.  Re account codes with QB and QBO you can switch the codes on or off

 

@chatman

We are registered as QB Professional Advisors so pay £32 a month for QB – this includes the newest software all the time

 

@Paul Scholes

QBO will allow you to open difference functions on different tabs

 

I guess at the end of the day different things appeal to different people.  We have clients using FreeAgentm, freshbooks and QuickFile and they all seem roughly the same.

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By kiwilondon99
09th Feb 2015 12:25

Multi currency bank

 

which cloud has true multi currency bank accounts [ revalue @ month end ? ]  or able to handle several multi currency accounts { ie $ Euro etc ]

 

 

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Replying to jon_griffey:
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By elliesch
17th Feb 2015 23:17

Xero multi currency

Xero revalues the bank balances I believe however there is something not quite right about the way it is handling revaluations as I have a client who now has an out of balance TB.

 

Xero tech support response is that having an out of balance TB is 'not ideal' - you're not joking!

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By MissAccounting
09th Feb 2015 12:59

Im not the biggest fan of Xero and have QBO on my list of software to review but most of that you said in your original post is incorrect:

My thoughts so far:

It has account codes which I HATE – they’re pointless - you can ignore most of the account codes and just type into the account field boxVAT figures have to be keyed directly into HMRC website and not integrated (QBO has this problem too) - you can file direct with HMRC as mentioned aboveIt appears to have payroll but it doesn’t actually calculate any deductions – isn’t that very dangerous for stupid clients? I dont know why this is even there to be honest and is very confusing for clientsI think that only the accountant can enter journals – why can’t clients?  Deprecation, recoding expenses? You just need to set up users with "advisor" permissions to access the journal menuIt looks like the only recurring/regular entries you can have are journals which I don’t think clients can enter You can enter recurring sales and purchases tooIt will calculate FRV but you need to enter the profit/loss journal yourself??? Not used the FRS so cant commentI do think the help is excellent! The support is very good and as you can see they are very active on various channels

I still think its expensive though....

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Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
09th Feb 2015 16:54

Couple of thoughts

Account codes: From what I can tell you are not stuck with account codes in Xero, you can use alpha characters instead or, as MissA points out, start typing the description.  If you export TBs to other systems to prepare final accounts, having the ability to match your book's codes with the accs prep code is important.

Journals permission - I have a problem with this in Xero, I'm OK to be corrected but giving a client advisor permission pretty much allows them into most aspects of the books.  It's not that I don't want clients to see other stuff (except perhaps locking/unlocking periods) it's more that sometimes the number of menu items & facilities are OTT at this high permission status, certainly when training up.  This does come from the belief that only accountants understand journals, as long as you show them how they work in specific situations, they are not rocket science, plus you can just copy & re-date the last one, and I'd much rather my client do the basic ones.

Mulitcurrency - @kiwilondon99 I'm not sure if Xero enables currency revaluations on a set date, I couldn't find it on my client's Euro account, I also use Clear Books and each currency account has a revalue/date button, which generates a Exchange difference journal, no idea about QBO. CB, QBO & Xero enable multicurrencies

 

 

 

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AshTag86
By Ash_D86
12th Feb 2015 14:27

Entering Manual Journals

@Fiona - sorry for the delay in response.

In order to enter a Manual Journal via the Journal Report firstly select Reports, All Reports & then click the Journal Report under the Detailed Report section.

Once you're in the report, under the option menu bar you'll see two links; Manual Journals & Add New Journal. These two links remain on the report regardless of whether or not you have the Adviser user role. Useful if you do want your client to have access to these without giving full Adviser rights.

Ashley Driver
Education Specialist, Xero
@ashtag_86 @xero

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By chatman
18th Feb 2015 07:55

Out of balance TB

Wow! You wouldn't have thought an out-of-balance TB would be possible with a modern ledger system.

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Replying to Daybooks:
By jon_griffey
18th Feb 2015 11:36

one sided journals

chatman wrote:

Wow! You wouldn't have thought an out-of-balance TB would be possible with a modern ledger system.

Back in the day some accounting software allowed one-sided journals.  Could do with this functionality in Sage on occasions.

 

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AshTag86
By Ash_D86
18th Feb 2015 08:09

Multi currency

@elliesch - that sounds strange & not something we ordinarily see.

We'd like to take a closer look into this one, have you send us an email at all? If so, could you let me know the response number & i'll chase this up.

Thanks

Ashley Driver
Education Specialist, Xero
@ashtag_86 @xero

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Replying to Daybooks:
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By elliesch
18th Feb 2015 08:50

Xero TB out of balance
It iseems to be a known issue as far as support are concerned. The response from them included the following comment
"As the only way to remove the imbalance is to use a different exchange rate to effect the rounding, if this does not work, currently there is no way to remove the imbalance." I tried a couple of variations with the rate but no difference.
Ummm now what?

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AshTag86
By Ash_D86
18th Feb 2015 08:58

Looking deeper

Thanks for coming back to me so quickly. I've spoken with our technical team & they would really like to take a closer look into this for you. Did you have a ticket number to hand please & we'll be able to see what's happening.

Ashley Driver
Education Specialist, Xero
@ashtag_86 @xero

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By Myshkin
19th Feb 2015 11:49

TB out of balance

"Wow! You wouldn't have thought an out-of-balance TB would be possible with a modern ledger system."

When using Sage with its charity accounts switched on the TB goes out of balance every time you do a year end.

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Replying to smalts:
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By chatman
19th Feb 2015 12:05

Modern Ledger Systems

Myshkin wrote:

"Wow! You wouldn't have thought an out-of-balance TB would be possible with a modern ledger system."

When using Sage with its charity accounts switched on the TB goes out of balance every time you do a year end.

LOL. I did say "modern".

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By J T
19th Feb 2015 11:59

Works great for accountants in business

One thing I will add is that Xero is a much better product for Businesses. I looked into a number of products to recommend to some SMEs and it

- has much more functionality (dept. codes, report writing etc.) hen many of the competitors

- pay per company not user licences

- maintenance is included (compared to Sage).

- decent report writing

 

For accountants in practice there may be cheaper options, quick books etc. and the end product suffices for HMRC, sole trader but I wouldn't be happy using it for a  company I worked for.

For me Xero is a more cost effective and user friendly alternative to Sage etc and to train someone on it is pretty easy.

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By ept2015
19th Feb 2015 12:09

Benefit of Xero

One of the biggest advantages I've found for Xero is that clients find it very user friendly and are not intimidated by it, so really get the benefit of being able to view their cloud accounting package.

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By stuart1696w
19th Feb 2015 13:45

QBO

Also absolutely loathe Sage and cannot fathom why Accountants in particular are still advising clients to use it. I have used QB since 1995! for all clients and got them off sage as soon as I could. Cloud Accounting? it's not actually in the clouds ( usually an encrypted huge server in a telephone house) and does not yet have any features to rival Desktop. Just don't bother, its a passing fad which hopefully will soon fade.

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Replying to Southwestbeancounter:
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By chatman
19th Feb 2015 14:31

Keep us updated

stuart1696w wrote:
Cloud Accounting? ... does not yet have any features to rival Desktop. Just don't bother, its a passing fad which hopefully will soon fade.

Damn. I wish you'd told me that before I switched all my Quick Books clients onto cloud accounting programmes. Let me know when the fad for real-time accounting data fades and I'll get them all back onto desktop software.

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Replying to Southwestbeancounter:
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By jaybee661
19th Feb 2015 14:29

@stuart1696w

stuart1696w wrote:

Cloud Accounting? it's not actually in the clouds ( usually an encrypted huge server in a telephone house) and does not yet have any features to rival Desktop. Just don't bother, its a passing fad which hopefully will soon fade.

... that gave me my daily chuckle anyway!

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By raybackler
19th Feb 2015 15:15

Liberty Accounts

We use this for all of our clients and have made it a central feature of our practice.  It has every feature a small business would need.  Payroll has been fully integrated since at least 2004 when we first started with them and it includes P11d filing online.  The online bank feeds work directly with the banks and they also support credit card downloads.  They were the first to introduce online VAT filing on the actual day HMRC first allowed it.  There is a shareholders' register that records dividends.  It also produces dividend vouchers and the meeting minutes.  There is a fixed asset register that manages depreciation with various options and it handles disposal properly.  User access can be tailored so each user gets access only to the parts of the system they need.  Reports are produced in pdf format and can be exported to Excel.

The fees are competitive with Xero and QBO.  Every now and then I check the websites of the these competitors and several others to see what is being offered.  Liberty is not perfect, but nothing ever is.   Their support is excellent and I have never been tempted to move to another cloud offering.  I look because I would hate it if I was supporting a product that was behind other products on the market.

I have no vested interest in Liberty except being a dedicated user.  I know when giving a glowing review their is the suspicion that I have some connection to the company, but I don't.  It is just good.

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Replying to Jo Nokes:
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By MRS KF
28th Feb 2015 10:37

Liberty Acconts ahead of the game

This is so true. This is best cloud software on the market. I totally love it. I use different software too but it's not comparable. Liberty accounts is the most sophisticated of all the available clouds based software and  well ahead of Xero and QBO. However, not that heavily advertised as competitors. I always wonder what are the priorities of QBO, it seems it takes them AGES to make features improvements despite of users suggestions, but then, they always are up in terms of add- ons to generate income. I wish they invested money not only in the layout improvement, but also worked on the weakness of the software features. 

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By ColinNibbs
19th Feb 2015 15:50

Gone from the Cloud

I have mentioned this on another thread, but here goes again. I am not a fan of any cloud accounting, simply because you are totally reliant on the provider maintaining the cloud. What happens when the provider goes bust? The servers get switched off, and you are left with nothing. This has happened to me twice with other applications, and there is nothing you can do. At least with desktop software, you have time to find an alternative provider.

This also happened to a client of mine who uses QB. One day all her data had gone. Apparently someone in QB's IT department decided to delete data that they shouldn't have. It took days to restore everything.

By the way, I am a Sage user and have been since their version 1! Bearing in mind all the problems mentioned in earlier posts, I am surprised that Sage is not better supported. I have never had an issue with Sage, apart from cost - but I guess you get what you pay for!

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Replying to johnhemming:
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By jaybee661
19th Feb 2015 16:31

@ColinNibbs

ColinNibbs wrote:

I have mentioned this on another thread, but here goes again. I am not a fan of any cloud accounting, simply because you are totally reliant on the provider maintaining the cloud. What happens when the provider goes bust? The servers get switched off, and you are left with nothing. This has happened to me twice with other applications, and there is nothing you can do. At least with desktop software, you have time to find an alternative provider.

This also happened to a client of mine who uses QB. One day all her data had gone. Apparently someone in QB's IT department decided to delete data that they shouldn't have. It took days to restore everything.

By the way, I am a Sage user and have been since their version 1! Bearing in mind all the problems mentioned in earlier posts, I am surprised that Sage is not better supported. I have never had an issue with Sage, apart from cost - but I guess you get what you pay for!

... so, there we go - the future is the desktop version of Sage!

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By chatman
19th Feb 2015 16:41

Desktop Sage is the future.

Well since I heard that cloud software is not actually in the clouds, but in an encrypted huge server in a telephone house, I quite agree.

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By Charlie Carne
19th Feb 2015 21:10

QBO and Xero

Hi Fiona

As you have been using QB on the desktop for years, I’d take another look at QBO (QuickBooks Online), as it has improved considerably in the past year. The main advantage for you will be your desktop experience which easily transfers to the online version. Whilst the menus are different from the desktop, the underlying workflow logic has not really changed from the desktop experience. You will be able to learn the basics of QBO in an hour or two. If you want to get a thorough understanding of all of QBO's features, Intuit offer free training at various locations. I attended this course some time ago and it is very good (even the lunch is free!).

Xero is also a very good product (I still have a couple of clients that use it) and it used to offer many features that were missing from QBO. So much so, that 18 months ago I considered switching my clients to Xero, and only held back because of Xero's poor reporting. At that stage, Xero was better than QBO in most other respects. But that was a long time ago and QBO is a vastly different and much better product now. I think that QBO now improves on Xero for a number of reasons. Here are some issues that have been raised in the post above and which may help readers compare QBO and Xero:

Reporting: QB has always been (IMO) far and away the best bookkeeping product for reporting. When Xero talks about improving its reporting, it means that it will write more fixed reports (as requested by its users). There is a long-standing post on the Xero forum that shows its users frustrations with the lack of a report writer since 2012. QBO (just like its desktop counterpart) allows you to create a report from anywhere, set up numerous filters and save this customisation for future use. Whilst I use that to create some reports that I may use on numerous clients, I can also create a bespoke report for a specific client for a specific purpose. For example, some years ago, a client needed one of its junior staff members to monitor which customers had been invoiced and which had paid to attend an upcoming event. As the event got closer, the staffer needed to chase additional potential attendees and to chase those who hadn't paid. I created a sales item specific to that event (which was used on the sales invoice) and wrote a report that was filtered to only show sales invoices that included that item. It also showed which of those invoices had and had not been paid. That junior staffer (who had no understanding of accounting) could, at a glance, see all she needed each day. This report took me about 1 minute to create, was used every day by the client staffer and was deleted once the event had passed. I create reports like this all the time and, because no one else would need it, there’s no point asking Intuit (or Xero) to write it. To take a report of more general use, a client asked me why his supplier was demanding money for invoices that he had already paid. In this situation, I simply wrote a report that listed every purchase invoice and credit note from that supplier, along with every payment made to that supplier (ignoring how my client had allocated payments to invoices, as his supplier had allocated differently). This was sent to the supplier and he was asked if he was missing any of the payments listed or if the supplier had issued any other invoices not listed. The problem was solved immediately. I tried to do this in Xero, but was told that I could not get a list of payments made to a supplier (only a list of which supplier invoices had been paid, which is not the same thing). If I'm wrong about this, please can someone from Xero tell me how to do this? In QBO, you can take any nominal account, or sales item, customer, supplier, etc. (or a contiguous or non-contiguous group of any of those) and run a report filtered for any field (names, dates, classes, paid/unpaid, etc etc) or sets of fields to produce any report you like. It takes seconds to create and can be saved for future use. The almost total flexibility for report customisation in QBO makes it the number one choice for me.Bank feeds: this is an area where QBO used to be absolutely appalling. But then they looked at the competition (mainly Xero I’d guess) and improved it dramatically, to the extent that I think that it is now as good as Xero. You can connect QBO directly to most banks and it will suck in the last three months’ transactions when you first set it up, and then each day’s transactions thereafter. If any bank doesn't work this way (and most of them do now except a few odd ones: for example, Coutts) or you want to import transactions that are more than 90 days old, you can go to the bank’s online portal and download a csv (spreadsheet) file for any period you like and upload it into QBO. Just yesterday, I set up a new QBO client who uses Metro Bank. I set up the automated bank feed with the client, which brought in 90 days of transactions into QBO and then (using search all dates, rather than individual monthly statements) ran a report on the Metro Bank site for all transactions since he opened his account a year ago, which generated a single csv file which could then be uploaded into QBO. Once the transactions are in QBO, you can post them directly to cost centres or use them to clear outstanding debtors or creditors. There are rules that can be created to treat a transaction in a certain way if it matches a particular criterion. This is all similar to what Xero offers. Anyone who looked at QBO's bank feeds even six months ago should take another look, as they have continued to improve this feature so much that it is completely different from what was previously on offer and matches Xero in all but one way: there is one area where Xero still improves on QBO and that is its ability to have the banks ‘push’ data into Xero. The system I described above relies on QBO or Xero ‘pulling’ data from the bank overnight and this requires the online banking password to be entered in QBO or Xero. It’s a very secure system, so I have no problem with that, but some banks (eg HSBC) require not only a password, but also a unique keypad code to be entered each time it is interrogated. This is dealt with relatively easily: when an HSBC bank feed is refreshed in QBO, it just asks for the keypad code to be input, whilst QBO remembers the password and then pulls in all of the data. With direct feeds (as the ‘push’ feature is named in Xero), an agreement is signed with the bank and the bank then sends the data into Xero overnight. The advantage of this is that the password and keypad code need not be entered in Xero, which is helpful if you need one person to ‘own’ the keypad and another to refresh the bank feed. It should be noted, however, that direct feeds in Xero are only available for a few banks (mainly HSBC & RBS, I believe). In any event, once the data is imported into Xero or QBO, it makes absolutely no difference whether it was imported by push or pull or an uploaded csv; the rest of the bank feed processing is handled in exactly the same way.Account codes: these can be turned on or off in QBO at will. Fiona seems to “hate” them, whilst DMGbus can’t live without them. Both of your needs are catered for in QBO.Payroll: QBO already has this built in and Xero will have it next monthMultiple tabs: Paul Scholes says that someone told him that QBO could not “open different functions from within QBO on different browser tabs or windows”. This is not true. I constantly have multiple tabs open at once in either Chrome or Firefox and, if I want to see two tabs at the same time (one on each of my two monitors), I can easily uncouple one of the tabs to do that. The ability to open multiple clients at once is also possible in QBO. To do that, you can create a second (or more) user in Chrome (Settings – People – Add person) and have each ‘person’ log in at the same time to a different client. There is no limit, so far as I know, to the number of ‘persons’ (and thus clients) that can be viewed at the same time. Xero works similarly, in that only one client can be viewed at a time from a single person login. I haven’t tried logging into multiple clients in Xero using Chrome’s multiple ‘person’ feature, but it will probably work in the same way as QBO. Alternatively, you can log into different clients simultaneously, simply by using both Chrome and Firefox at the same time.Help: Xero does indeed have an excellent set of help screens. QBO has a long way to go to match that. However, I think that QBO more than makes up for this by having a superb support team available over the phone. They are now all UK based and really do understand the product. I rarely wait more than two minutes to get someone to answer my call on the standard adviser helpline and find their advice to be outstanding. I've not used Xero's telephone support, so I cannot comment on that.Response to JT: your comments regarding pricing and maintenance are true for all cloud (as opposed to desktop) products. QBO will do everything that you've listed and, I’d suggest, its reporting (for the reasons above) is much better than Xero.Response to stuart1696w:  I agree with chatman. Cloud is certainly not a fad and has enormous advantages over desktop, such as real-time access, as chatman says. Fear of the cloud reminds me of the time when Sage was still in DOS and their answer to what were then ‘modern’ graphical (GUI) packages was that accounting only needed simple data entry, for which DOS was the perfect solution!Lack of desktop features: whilst QBO and Xero do not have all of the features of a desktop product as part of their core offering, both of them have a very successful ecosystem of partner products that integrate fully, offering all sorts of additional functionality. For example, QBO and Xero integrate with various stock control products (which are also in the cloud) that provide features far in excess of that which is available on QB Desktop. One of the advantages of cloud is that we can choose the product that offers our preferred basic bookkeeping features, whilst adding on only those additional, non-core features that we need from a specific partner that implements those features in the way best suited to our business. In other words, we can get best of breed products that all work seamlessly together, unlike on the desktop, where this is almost impossible.

In summary, both Xero and QBO are excellent products and offer broadly similar features. I'd review both to see which you prefer, but don't base your decision on any reviews of QBO as it was a year (or even six months) ago.

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Replying to Duggimon:
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By J T
20th Feb 2015 13:05

Out of date - apology

 

Response to JT: your comments regarding pricing and maintenance are true for all cloud (as opposed to desktop) products. QBO will do everything that you've listed and, I’d suggest, its reporting (for the reasons above) is much better than Xero.

Charliecarne,

From reading your response, Quickbooks has moved along a hell of a lot since I looked at it and my response is out of date, sorry.

James

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By PJWSmith
19th Feb 2015 22:29

Cost Centre and project costing

I am looking at putting a new system into a client and have concerns that these "low end" (no disrespect as from the posts above these seem very good systems) have some limitations. So if anyone can shed any light on the following it might well save me some time on the internet:

Can either of these systems properly provide full cost centre accounting at the General Ledger level and full project costing with the ability to report out of a project on sales, costs and profitablility?

I had heard that Xero does not allocate a unique number to a processed purchase invoice as a reference under which it can be filed - if so how do you find the invoice again when the VAT man or whoever wants to see it? Is this common with this type of system?

Can the systems deal with VAT partial exemption, including the annual adjustment?

What about things like purchase orders and stock control?

I am sure there are lots more but this is a good start.

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By Cantona1
24th Feb 2015 22:43

Long live Sage

I think Charliecarne has made a brilliant overview on QBS and Xero. He has a solid knowledge on both systems.  One thing which has been over looked is the cost. If you add 3rd party's stock module cost plus payroll, I think Xero is way expensive for small businesses. The standard pricing is £20 per month, but this does not include Payroll and Stock. QBs price includes Stock module. Both packages are much better than Sage. Any product is better than Sage, even excel, FULL STOP.  I am unable to watch some videos on you tube because I get panic attack when Sage ad pops-in with out warning.

 

 

 

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Replying to Gladstone:
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By J T
25th Feb 2015 10:14

Panic attacks

Cantona1 wrote:

 I am unable to watch some videos on you tube because I get panic attack when Sage ad pops-in with out warning.

You probably should get therapy for that.

And there were once packages even worse than Sage, I have had the misfortune of trying to get data out of them.

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Man of Kent
By Kent accountant
25th Feb 2015 09:58

Surprised again

@charliecarne - excellent review, thanks for spending the time to give a detailed and balanced response.

I'm always surprised when reporting becomes such a big issue on a regular basis. I can appreciate some bigger businesses will need specific and bespoke reports but in my experience smaller businesses don't.

I don't have any clients who require different reporting from what's available in Xero (Xero is my preferred accounting software) this includes business with multiple locations and turnover up to £4million.

Is it really that much of an issue? 

Xero add ons - yes I think the software can start getting expensive if you need multiple add-ons. I have three clients who integrate other software with Xero. That's it.

Maybe its just me - most of clients are service based (no manufacturing at all) so their reporting needs are very straight forward.

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Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
27th Feb 2015 10:04

Reporting - agree with KA

I sometimes wonder whether the preoccupation with reporting is more an accountant's thing than it is a client's thing.

For example, it's probably the weakest feature in FreeAgent but clients still love it and the reporting that is provided is more than they ever had before, when they used spreadsheets.  Being straight forward it's also educational, ie they can now drill down and see where numbers come from, something that was always a pain for me to explain at the year end.

For me both Xero & CB give more than enough features and flexibility in their reporting and I'd even go as far to say that it's Xero's best feature.

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By Cantona1
28th Feb 2015 11:17

Ad speaks

"Not heavily advertised" No wonder why so many people do not know about this product. The sole reason for Sage dominance is not because it is a good product-far from it- but it has the financial clout on promoting its crap product.

 

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By raybackler
02nd Mar 2015 10:05

Job Costing

@PJWSmith

Liberty Accounts has the ability to enter a Branch Code and an Activity Code for all transactions.  We have an electrical contractor, who uses the Branch Codes for each Job they work on.  You can run a P&L Report for each Job and also another report for non-allocated costs so you can check if anyone has forgotten to enter the Job number.  The Activity code can be used so you can do cross analysis across Jobs.  For instance you might have one Nominal Ledger code for Sub-Contractors, but you could use the activity code for site electricians versus workshop electricians and every other type of Sub-Contractor as an example.

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