Xero Accounting Review: Features, Benefits, Pricing, and Cons

With Xero’s bank reconciliation feature, the transactions and financial records are automatically verified and matched, reducing errors in the financial records. It minimizes manual effort and ensures peace of mind due to its reliability and accuracy. This feature lets users supervise their cash flow and transaction activities while adhering to accounting standards and regulations. Using Xero Analytics feature, users can generate reports on the financial health of what is turnover in business importance and calculation the organization. It offers an idea about short-term cash flow and shows the impact of invoices and bills. It tracks income and expense metrics to identify trends and help with financial health.

This feature makes international transactions easy by allowing businesses to send invoices, quotes, and purchase orders in over 160 currencies. Users can mark report types as favorites and quickly access drafts, published, and archived reports through dedicated tabs. Xero’s key features include online invoicing, project tracking, bill payment, expense claims, and more.

Both Xero and Sage are cloud-based subscription services that can handle invoicing, cash flow tracking and quotes and estimates. Sage seemingly offers unlimited quotes and invoices each month, while Xero limits you to just 20 on the base plan. However, if you’re a business that has a lot of employees that need access to the software, Xero offers unlimited users on all plans—you’ll only find that feature on the more expensive Sage plan. Looking at Xero vs. Sage, you can see they stack up quite well. Because both software come with a 30-day free trial, you’ll have plenty of time to give each a test run before committing. However, there are some key features missing from Sage, including bill pay and time tracking.

Is Xero Right for You or Your Business?

Xero’s invoicing capabilities allow you to create and customize an invoice for clients and then accept credit card, debit card or bank transfer payments within the invoice itself. Account holders are able to customize online invoices to add a logo, accept payments instantly through the invoice, set automatic reminders for clients to pay and invoice directly from the Xero app. Xero processes payment through a payment gateway like Stripe, GoCardless and others. Keep in mind that these services charge a fee to process payments (usually around 2.9% plus 25 cents per transaction, though this varies by the payment processor). The Early subscription is tailored for solopreneurs and business owners who are just getting started. You’re able to send 20 quotes and invoices per month, enter five bills, reconcile bank transactions, capture bills and receipts with Hubdoc and view a short-term cash flow and business snapshot.

To ensure an unbiased review, we gathered factual data from official websites and fixed vs variable expenses analyzed user feedback from various sources to provide comprehensive insights and detailed reviews. Keep in mind that the ability to use multiple currencies in the software and invoice is limited to the company’s highest tier, at $70 per month. If using multiple currencies is a priority to you, consider other platforms that offer this capability at a lower cost.

The included mobile app is great for checking accounting reports or invoices on the go. And with time tracking as an option on higher plans, you can easily keep records of time spent on tasks. We like Xero for businesses with lots of employees, as they can take advantage of the unlimited number of collaborators. Xero includes extensive features that make it suitable to handle complex accounting processes for small- and medium-sized businesses as well as larger ones. The software makes it easy to pay bills, claim expenses, accept payments, track projects, manage contracts, store files and more. Xero’s robust debits and credits financial management features allow businesses to manage their finances effectively and confidently.

Xero vs. Sage: At a Glance

For more customization and AI-powered predictions, users can switch to Xero Analytics Plus. Xero’s built-in invoicing feature lets businesses create customized invoices by including the company logo, custom message, and added fields. The clients can click on the Pay Now button on the invoice to make payments using a credit card, debit card, direct debit, or any other payment method of their choice. Xero is a great option for large teams and small- to medium-sized businesses that need high-level accounting systems. It’s also a good fit if you want to integrate Gusto Payroll to your accounting platform. Business owners, freelancers and entrepreneurs often spend a large chunk of time on administration and accounting.

Xero is an accounting application with an easy-to-use user interface. Businesses can further perform a cost-benefit analysis to evaluate the financial viability of projects and ensure resources are allocated efficiently. Xero offers a clear overview of companies’ accounts payable and cash flow. It lets users access bills online from anywhere and pay them on time. Paperless record-keeping is also feasible by emailing bills to the file’s inbox.

Xero Review 2024: Features, Pricing & More

1. This can be helpful if your company is growing fast, or you simply want the reassurance that there’s no limit to how many people can be part of the team.
2. While it claims it has 24/7 online support, what it really means is that it has an online community you can ask questions in.
3. If the banks or financial institutions do not connect to Xero, users can manually import bank statements for reconciliation.
4. Xero, FreshBooks and QuickBooks all offer 30-day free trials and extensive features for online support, including a live chat, email support and a knowledge base.
5. Xero supports integration with 21,000+ global financial institutions for fetching bank data.
6. Suited for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), Xero is an affordable cloud-based accounting software system that streamlines these processes with plans starting at $13 per month.

Neither software includes payroll—but you can add it on for a price. Xero partners with Gusto Payroll, and costs start at an additional $40 per month plus $6 per employee per month. Sage has its own proprietary payroll offering, Sage People Payroll, but pricing is customized based on your company’s specific needs. Xero Expenses feature allows businesses to track and claim their expenses.

There’s also a separate time-tracking software—Sage Timeslips—and even a customer management tool called Sage CRM. While it might be nice to have all of these in one dedicated software, it’s nice you can pick and choose exactly which components would best benefit your business. Xero offers additional features like project management, payroll, and inventory management, but it is not dedicated software for these functions. To accept payments from their clients, Xero allows businesses to connect to payment services without any monthly subscription. Clients can make online payments using debit cards, direct debit using GoCardless, credit cards, and Apple Pay or Google Pay using Stripe.