Xero Review: Accounting Software for Small Business

Here is the list of essential factors that you need to consider while selecting accounting software for your business. The software should be web-based, affordable, user-friendly, provides integration with other software. It should have robust security for your data. In this highly competitive market of software accounting, the one service that offers all the above features and more is Xero. Let’s check the Xero review.

Xero Review 2020

What is Xero?

Xero is accounting software for small business and is cloud-based. It has all the features to manage your books of accounts. It follows a double-entry accounting system. It allows you to manage cash flows, transactions, and other account details from any location.

Pros – Xero Review

Xero supports unlimited users. No other accounting software gives this option.
It has a simple and easy user interface.
It can be easily integrated with other software.
The software is updated every 3 to 6 weeks; hence you can take advantage of the latest features.
Xero can generate around 55 reports.
Xero offers a 30-day free trial for first-time users.
Xero offers discounted rates to the non-profit organization and proprietor of multiple companies.

Cons – Xero Review

The add-on features increase the price of the subscription.
The customer support service is extremely bad.
The dashboard is simple, but many users find it challenging to navigate as they need to select many options to get the work done.
The mobile app has many bugs, and it tends to crash at times.

Xero Pricing

Xero has 3 plans to suit your business requirements. The entire plan offers unlimited user options. The Early plan will cost you $9/month. You can have 5 invoices and quotes. You can enter 5 bills and reconcile up to 20 transactions. You can generate reports and get live bank feeds.

The Growing plan comes for $30/month. This plan has the same features as the Early plan. The only difference is that the Growing plan gives you unlimited invoices and quotes. You can enter all your bills and reconcile the complete bank statement. The Established plan will cost you $60/month. This plan offers all of the said features. It also has expenses and project management options. You can have multi-currency support as well.

Features Overview – Xero Review

The dashboard has an attractive display. The various tabs/labels like bank accounts, invoices owed, and bills to pay are displayed using graphs. These settings can be customized. The dashboard has a Sales Overview page that displays information about invoices and estimates graphically. When it comes to its invoicing features, it can handle recurring invoices, automatic invoice reminders, bulk invoicing, and can replicate old invoices. You can send invoices and estimates in PDF form to customers.

Various payment gateway options are available for customers. You can also create quotes and convert them to invoices or bills as required.

Client Portal is a newly added feature. This feature enables your customers to view, accept, and pay bills online. This saves a lot of time and paperwork.

Under the contact management feature, you can organize all the information about your client. The information can be basis details, sales tax rates, and discounts offered.

Another brilliant feature is the creation of a Smart List for marketing purposes. You can generate a list of loyal customers and provide them promotional deals. This helps you to retain loyal customers and to increase your customer life cycle revenue.

You can run bank reconciliation reports and manage the expenses by linking your bank and credit card account to Xero. You can even prepare depreciation schedules for your fixed assets.

Xero Integration

Xero software integrates with more than 700+ apps. For payroll, it seamlessly integrates with Gusto. It integrates with Zapier as well.

Customer Support – Xero Review

Xero offers support to customers via phone, email, and chats. It also has in-software help wherein customers can raise queries within the software. It also boasts of its online knowledge center. In spite of all these, the customer service is rated poorly. The executive over the phone is not competent to answer all the customer queries. The chat and email responses are slow and not accurate. Due to all these reasons, customer support for Xero is rated negatively.

Ease of Use – Xero Review

Xero’s user interface is well-organized and attractive. However, many first-time users find it challenging to navigate through the options available. The person handling Xero would first need to train himself before starting with it. It has online support and video classes for users to understand its usage. But still, there is a steep learning curve and is difficult when you compare it with other cloud-based software. It gets a rating of 3/5 when it comes to ease of use.

How a Small Businessman can Use Xero?

Xero’s basic early plan offers features like invoicing, reporting, bank reconciliation, and more for $9/month. These features are not included in the basic plan of competitors. Hence Xero becomes an affordable solution for small businesses. As Xero is cloud-based software, it can be accessed from anywhere. This feature gives mobility to users. Xero is well suited for MAC, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Very few companies have such an option. It can handle multiple currencies. This is a good option for companies that have an international clientele. Due to its integration feature, it is beneficial for retailers, Ecommerce, Hospitality, to name a few. This specific industry segment needs various integrations. Hence Xero is the best choice for such small businesses.

Conclusion – Xero Review

Xero is the only company that offers advanced features and ample integration at affordable rates. It has industry-specific plans and offerings. It provides automatic sales tax lookup, bulk invoicing, and default email templates. Such features save time and effort. It has an unlimited user option, so companies with many users are benefitted as they don’t have to pay an additional fee for each user. Though users face difficulty while navigating through the software, once trained, things become easier. For small and mid-size companies, Xero, the cloud-based accounting software is the right choice.