Xero Software

Pros

The feature rich addins, track ability, multi api connect ability, great cost, easily customization and great customer service. Top notch software.

Cons

Wish they would work harder on getting payroll up and running in the easy states like Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, but really Maine.

definately not recommended

Pros

ok to use for extremely simple business

Cons

pages don't load, error messages constantly, takes up to 5 attempts to save a bill. too expensive for the value, make sure you have plenty of time on your hands because most dont save and you have to remember to check what you need to redo

Pros

Ease of use, user experience, better storage system. The design is fantastic, the team understand how to use it quickly which makes training easier

Cons

I'd like the ability to use more features on the app. I'd also like the ability to use more filters on the excel reports

Would highly recommend

Pros

Easy to use, and super easy to navigate around.
Great for running reports and keeping track of all company accounts.

Cons

The only con i Can think of is that partial payments on PO's aren't really allowed but instead it is necessary to double the PO.

Pros

Ease of use and simplicity of the product. It is easy to link with online accounts, and then allocate as required. Simple to do reconciliations.

Cons

Needs to have a proper cash flow statement capacity to help understand future recurring transactions

Pros

Easy to learn and use, can customize forms, can integrate 100's of third party apps to reduce keystrokes, setups in a flash, and can import previous software data relatively easy.

Cons

Customer support could have been a little more helpful, but since it is so new to U.S., there are not a lot of tech support people around yet.. But they will be soon, because this software rocks!

Really good bit of software for the small businesses being run internally. When you get to the complexity where you need an accountant, might be time to move on.

Pros

Very user friendly, intuitive, and good accounting controls in place to help the non-accounting folk don't get lost down rabbit warrens.

Cons

Can be frustrating when coming from an accounting back ground, not being able to control or direct everything in your financials. Asset management system is much better than others in the market, but still frustrating.

By incorporating Payroll, we were able to streamline our wages and salaries, it saved us a lot of time.

Pros

It is very easy to use. Retrieving reports from the software is great, almost everything you need for reporting is available or customisable. They also regularly add new reports.
The Community is good, I have referred to questions placed by other to find out how to do something.

Cons

There is limited inventory management and you are limited to only 2 active tracking categories.
More guidance could be available when setting up a payroll system - there have been times when leave balances have not updated on an anniversary.

Pros

As a 1st time small business over, Xero is great value for money and quick and easy to use. With 0 employees it is easy to reconcile transactions between my business bank account and my accounting software. It's all done for you!
Just go through and confirm which is for what. It only takes a few minutes.
Having easy access to discuss or query my accountant at any time through the cloud set up. I can expect responses in the same time you could expect a response from a simple email.
I Love it.

Cons

We will continue to use Xero for our two simpler businesses.

Pros

Ease of use; general layout; no need to have great knowledge of accounting to get going. The help files are excellent.

Cons

Flexibility with certain taxes is not there. For exam we are taxed in weight of the product, but currently only allows % taxes.

I like the product and feel justified in recommending it

Pros

Ease of use along with multi platform support we use Mac iOS and Windows so it's important that we get the same feel across all .
Xero has a very easy to use app but most of the time we use the browser version.
Online invoicing while not an exclusive Xero feature is a real cost saver.

Cons

I had some experience with MYOB and Quick books and this was quite a leap as the feel and tech is quite different.
The ability to connect o other products is not great if you go outside the already integrated packages (which we did)
At the moment we still do not have an integration point between the LOB software and Xero and still have to double entry.

It would be useful if salary and job history was displayed against each user - as it is you can only see their current role and salary, so it is really difficult to track individual/group progression for reward and benefit purposes.

Pros

It's cloud based, and easy to edit pay runs, and the reports are simple to run. The number of hours for holidays can be edited for half days etc.

Cons

The online help forum is difficult to navigate and doesn't usually answer my questions. There is no explanation/error report when something goes wrong - e.g. if a pension filing doesn't go through, Xero will notify you that it has failed but gives no indication as to why. There is very limited functionality for recording people data.

Pros

Cloud based - I can access it from anywhere, even on a mobile device.
Secure and reliable.
Automatic bank feed feature makes reconciliation a breeze
BAS processing is simple and quick
Flexibile and intuitive
Always upgrading and improving the software

Cons

Invoicing has some limitations, eg there is no way to add a date field to an item. I have to manually type this in the description on every invoice which is tedious.
The find & match doesn't work very well for me. I receive bulk payments for multiple invoices (sometimes 50+ invoices in 1 payment). It's time consuming trying to filter and match all invoices, especially when the max list per page is smaller than the number of invoices I have to match.

You will be happy with this software. Make sure you have a good accountant or bookkeeper backing you up as their are new features all the time. Be proactive and make use of them!

Pros

I love the feel of it. I find it very intuitive. It has great reporting options and I love having the app on my phone. The app works great for taking pics of receipts on the go (right in your system) and for invoicing on the go.

Cons

I wish it had Canadian payroll! That being said the payroll integrations with Wagepoint and Payment Evolution are great.

I have found this to be a frustrating system, I am accustomed to MYOB support, when I need to learn something new, the email approach of responding in 24hours makes it really impossible to gain any relationship. When I complained, Xero response was "Sorry you want to leave us - heres how to change"!

Pros

Xero is from New Zealand & has expanded extremely well via a strong programme of marketing to accountants. As a SME not much to like!

Cons

Lack of customer support - Xero doesn't consider me a customer only my accountant. Ive paid in full, & my account was cancelled with no notice, my wages were late. All this because Xero shut me down on Friday night - the message read "Your account has been suspended - contact BDO"

Oh Lord please let one person read this review and pass on Xero. Losing my business is not enough to satisfy me, I'm desperate to make sure someone, anyone, doesn't give this crappy company and their software money.

MOST IMPORTANT: I stopped the service and they kept all my company information and accounting details for the entire year. They wouldn't let me access them unless I paid. That's right THEY RANSOMED me for my own accounting info. Sick. Since it's only a web based program, if you don't want to pay anymore, you don't get to access any of your data. Isn't that fun. Sure you can export and document with everything crammed in there, but you can't use it easily or transfer it seamlessly to quickbooks etc. UGH!

And the other issues: the interface is lousy. There transaction recognition is really bad and their rules don't work very well. So if you are like me and have a lot of credit card transactions, good luck, cause you'll be at the screen for hours. I could go on about how it won't recognized the payee from the bank account line because it thinks it's the reference line etc, but you should never have to learn this for yourself. Be warned.

The reporting is a joke. An absolute joke. You spend all month or year inputting data and then you want to go pull up some reports to see how everything is... well sorry you can only use their pre-designed reports with little or no customizable function. Want to pull income and expenses for specific categories and accounts... nope sorry, you can do specific accounts or categories or accounts, not both. Infuriating to say the least (this is why I decided to stop using)

There is literally no customer service. That means literally. None. You cannot get anyone on chat or phone. The only thing you can do is email and wait. No realtime interaction. But who would need to get answers to accounting questions right away? Silly me.

To conclude: I don't really write reviews but I'm so frustrated with this company I'm just trying to find a way to lash out. So this typing is helping. If you happen to read this and decide against Xero, I love you.

Pros

the colors were nice. It's pretty cheap. The bank accounts seem to refresh 50% of the time. The name is easy to remember

Cons

* online based so they keep you information of you cancel service BEWARE
* transaction recognition is terrible - you'll spend hours entering the same transactions
* Reports are non-customizable and basically useless
* Customer service does not exist. Literally does not exist. No possibility of realtime help under any circumstances.

Cannot understand why xero has reporting tools for invoices but cannot give same for purchase orders

Pros

Good interface easy to use
Fast and efficient
Good for small business
Simple to pick up due to basic functionality
Good dashboard

Cons

Lacks heavily in reporting functions
Cannot any level of Purchase Order reports or basic purchasing reports
Customer service team have people going around in circles with feature requests without actual improving features

It's not all that popular in the US yet, but I believe it will be within a few more years

Pros

The software is very intuitive compared to many other programs. Also, you can reconcile transactions as you record them

Cons

It takes a minute to get used to the differences from other programs, but once you do, its a great program

Pros

Simple, cloud based accounting software that has almost every feature needed for small business. And then there are all the add-on's you can imagine.

Cons

Would be great if they hosted the software on servers resident in Canada instead of the US. Cloud server was unavailable once for a few hours, same time as Amazon's servers had their mass outage.

Fine for very small businesses and sole trader. Get an ERP if you are any larger.

Pros

Editing of invoices, journals, and other transactions.
Bank feeds and uploading statements. Reconciling is a breeze.
Exports to Excel provided throughout.

Cons

Very slow except on a 1Gb network.
Setting between different entities not preserved.
Settings not preserved by session
Big exports often hang