Xero

We at Box Advisory Services provide accounting services to small businesses to help them with any tax or accounting related problems.

I would like to recommend Xero. Xero is a new accounting software – the new alternative to QuickBooks – and it’s being used by more and more small businesses these days. It is standing out for all the right reasons, and investing in it would be an excellent decision.

Kirkwood Wilson Accountants offers support for a variety of cloud accounting packages which include Xero, Sage and Quickbooks. Our favourite piece of software is most definitely Xero! We’re really proud to say that we are Xero gold partners and all of our staff are Xero champions. We’ve invested heavily into really getting under the skin of Xero, allowing us to give our clients the best experience possible. Xero is constantly making innovations in our sector, driving the industry forward and saving us time on our day-to-day workload.

Although we love Xero, sometimes the client might need a little more than it currently offers. It has a pretty comprehensive product offering, but it doesn’t deal fantastically well with some things such as stock. Instead, it’s open API means app developers can integrate their software with Xero, meaning our clients can move to Xero knowing their accountancy software does everything they need it to, with the help of the add-on marketplace.

Xero’s cloud-based features mean that it can be accessed from any location in the world as long as there’s an internet connection. I always remember a client telling me they were invoicing their customers from a sun lounger on the Costa del Sol. Not my idea of a holiday but handy in any case!

It's user-friendly, and staff can be given specific levels of access which mean they can invoice, but won’t be able to see payroll information or the company’s bank account. It’s a really useful tool, meaning the company director doesn’t need to be in charge of invoicing anymore. It gives them some of their time back and they can focus on taking their business forward! It’s completely changed the way our practise operates over the last five years, and has really helped free up our time so that we can help clients with the things that really matter.

I switched to Xero from QBO a few years ago, and it has been working well . Though my accountant is not as familiar with the platform, she has been able to access the necessary information and run pertinent reports as needed. Things I like about Xero: • Seems more lightweight than QBO so responds more quickly and feels less buggy • Ability to import time tracking invoices from Everhour to Xero as well as auto-generate recurring invoices without conflicting invoice numbers (that was an issue with QBO — it didn't like that I was generating invoices from two different sources) • Ability to integrate easily with Stripe and PayPal for digital payment methods (QBO offers credit card processing, but I think you have to use their service... or at least you did at the time) • Automated reconciliation and bank record matching works pretty well, and it handles the credit card processing fees & transfers much more smoothly than QBO ever did (QBO was always confused about processing fees and where the money was moving from, so it required a lot of manual processes) Areas of improvement: • The Xero reporting options are pretty basic with very limited customization options, so you basically have to export your data to a CSV and manipulate it there for anything more complex • The interface feels dated, and while it's still fairly intuitive, it's not as 'pretty' as it could be. There are some upgraded views that you can optionally enable, but then you lose some features, so I haven't adopted them fully yet • All contacts just get lumped into one giant list, which is great if you have clients who are also vendors (which I do); however, it also makes it difficult to view specific groups (without manual work to categorize them into 'client' & 'vendor' groups) • Because of the combined contact list including vendors & clients, when Xero integrates with Everhour, the full contact list is pulled into Everhour, and I have to manually archive any non-client contacts to keep my Everhour client list accurate (since presumably I won't be billing Amazon.com for hourly projects lol). While archiving them isn't required for Everhour functionality, I prefer to keep my records tidy. Overall, I'm pleased with the decision to switch to Xero, and I would recommend it to other small business owners depending on their specific needs.

Xero was the worst business decision we ever made. Their customer service can't even be put into words. Be very careful before choosing Xero. There are a lot of product failings as well such as no Delivery Note/Dispatch Docket capability (they'll tell you about a "workaround" which there is BUT it means 10 clicks to get it done and that's after you set it up). We're in Ireland, it can't manage our VAT returns effectively, it can't do Return of Trading details at end of year, you can't lock out VAT periods so users can easily go back and screw up retruned VAT periods. You can't dupicate a product/service in order to easily create a new one, it's hard work to move a line item in a quote or invoice, there are so many glitches and annoyances with the system. Many of these seem small and you'd expect they'd fix/improve them but even with hundreds and thousands of requests from hundreds and thousands of customers, they just fall on deaf ears. With all their faults, easily the worst one is their customer service - basically they don't have any and they don't care about their customers. At all. They don't even have a way to contact them, no email, no phone number, just their Xero central database that you have to log on to, just to ask a question. If you're a micro business like a sole trader with no employees, maybe it will do fo you, but if you plan on getting any bigger, you WILL be moving away again and that's a difficult ordeal and bulk of work so I urge you to consider alternatives now.

Xero has made working in a virtual space due to covid and working with offshore accountants and bookkeepers a breeze. Would highly recommend to anyone wanting to increase productivity and its also user friendly.