Accounting software is essential for more than keeping your books current. It’s also vital for tracking cash flow, invoicing clients and paying vendors. Plans start at $13 per month for up to 20 invoices, five bills, bank account reconciliation, receipt capture and short-term cash flow snapshots.
However, Xero includes inventory management with every plan, including its $13 per month Early plan. More specific categories – Business, Accounting, Payroll, Projects, and more – have their own dashboards, accessible with a horizontal sidebar. You can click any data to see a full, detailed breakdown, complete with historical context, and you can set up data tracking to automatically generate specific reports. If there are payroll transactions in the file, then it depends on the provider and how the transactions are posted to decide how to handle them. For many providers, one simple way is to import them as bills due to each employee (create a vendor with the employee’s name).
With Xero inventory management (Figure B), users can track up to 4,000 finished items, inventory levels, set reorder points and monitor stock on hand. Although Xero’s inventory management isn’t as robust as that of QuickBooks, it’s still a powerful tool for managing business inventory. While Xero’s $13 Early plan is far cheaper than QuickBooks’ $30 Simple Start plan, it’s also very limited due to the caps on invoices and billing. A better comparison is the $60 QuickBooks Essentials plan (plus the $45 Core or $80 Premium payroll plans) vs. the $37 Xero Growing plan (paired with the $40 or $80 Gusto plan). Essentials supports just three users, while Growing is unlimited, making it better value for large or growing operations. Core offers the basics, while Premium adds same-day direct deposit, role-based access, and auto time tracking.
Customers
We researched both tools extensively to help you determine the best one for your company. In this article, we list their core features, pricing, pros and cons, as well as the type of company each bookkeeping tool is suitable for. The QuickBooks Advanced plan costs $200 per month, supporting 25 users. FreshBooks can be a good option for freelancers and contractors looking for an affordable, simple accounting software.
- For instance, If you have complex bookkeeping needs and require a QuickBooks-specific virtual bookkeeping service, then choose QuickBooks Live.
- QuickBooks offers a main dashboard that can be customized with a series of tile-like graphs or lists, which lets you see real-time KPIs at a glance.
- This could be a real shortcoming for small online retail businesses, for instance, that need to keep track of their products and the materials used to make them.
- Even better, inventory management is available at no additional charge with every Xero plan, which is why we declared Xero the winner for this particular category.
- QuickBooks, on the other hand, has generally more developed features, such as bank reconciliation without bank feeds, makes it easy to find bookkeeping support, and has live customer support.
Unfortunately, many don’t have positive experiences with QuickBooks’ customer support. One complained that they are often transferred to different departments when they contact QuickBooks. We believe the quality of customer service you’ll receive varies a lot based on the agent. Additionally, some users complained that QuickBooks Online is a bit expensive. While it is moderately priced, it can be cost-effective considering the value it can provide to your business. Head to the Xero App Store to find experienced conversion partners and learn about their white glove approach.
When you might choose Xero instead
If you need to give accounting access to more than five people, Xero could be the better option for you. QuickBooks Online’s most popular Plus plan tops out at five users; its highest-tier Advanced plan allows up to 25 users, but that plan is expensive at $200 per month. In contrast, all Xero plans offer unlimited users and its highest-tier Established plan is a more affordable $70 per month. Xero and QuickBooks Online are both powerful accounting software solutions for small businesses.
Step #6 – Import Bank Transactions
Prices for QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping scale with the monthly expenses of your business, which means higher costs for businesses with higher expenses. We break down the prices in our QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping review’s pricing section. Xero is an innovative cloud accounting solution developed and provided by a New Zealand company, Xero Limited, which has U.S. and other global regional operations. The software is user-friendly with a modern user interface that provides a fast learning curve to master its online accounting features, customizable dashboards, and real-time data and reports. Customer support is an important factor to consider when shopping for the best payroll software or accounting tool. Companies with efficient customer support provide technical support, product training, an extensive knowledge base and help users troubleshoot and resolve issues in the shortest possible time.
Approximately 100 additional integrations are available with Xero. We liked that Xero’s app store neatly organizes and categorizes these apps. This makes it easy to find the integrations you need and compare several options side-by-side.
Xero vs QuickBooks: Top Features Comparison
QuickBooks Online provides real-time data, reports, and dashboards. Xero and QuickBooks Online (QBO) provide bookkeeping and accounting software with pricing much lower than an ERP system with full functionality to manage business processes throughout the organization. Both Xero and QuickBooks Online integrate with many third-party add-on apps that supplement the basic accounting features, adding more capabilities and efficiency. QuickBooks offers a main dashboard that can be customized with a series of tile-like graphs or lists, which lets you see real-time KPIs at a glance.
QuickBooks has been around for a while and enjoys a wide range of third-party integrations. If your current business operations seamlessly integrate with QuickBooks, but those tools do not support Xero, switching could create amend your tax return with sprintax compatibility issues. You can also use QuickBooks to schedule payments in advance, including partial bill payments. We were impressed with this flexibility — you can make appropriate payments for your current cash flow.
The cloud-based QuickBooks Online lets business owners manage accounting, accept online payments, manage and pay bills, and much more. This makes it the best accounting software we’ve researched and helped it to edge out Xero in this round. With a free plan and paid plans starting at $20 per month, Zoho Books has plans for most budgets. Higher-tier plans include unique features, like workflow rules, on top of tools that help you measure project profitability.