Xero Review

Headquartered in New Zealand, Xero is a cloud-based accounting solution tailored to the needs of small to mid-size businesses. Its features include account management, billing, invoices, expense reporting, and payroll. Xero also integrates with over 200 other applications which facilitate nearly all aspects of business operation, including inventory management, CRM, and POS.

Ease of Use:

Xero’s interface is clean, well-organized, and easy to navigate.

• Setup - When you first sign up for an account, you’ll be prompted to set up your company through a series of fairly self-explanatory screens, each with its own easily accessible help section. There are also a series of “Getting Started” videos which, while some are slightly out of date, provide good, concise advice as to setting up your business with Xero. You have the option to save and quit at any point during setup.
• Organization – Once set up, navigating is a pleasure. The dashboard offers a quick overview of accounts, and it is easy to see items that need attention (overdue bills, for instance) at a glance. In addition to the dashboard, there are tabs for Accounts, Payroll, Reports, Adviser, Contacts, and Settings. Each provides access to a variety of drop-down options, and they’re organized pretty intuitively. Usually, things are found on the first place you thought to look.
• Instructions and Guidance – Xero provides a “Getting Started” text box at the top of some pages which provides handy tips; it’s easily hidden once you’ve mastered the content. How much you need to read instructions in order to use the software will likely depend upon your accounting knowledge and the complexity of the tasks you are attempting.
• Problems – Xero is very clean software. There are a few minor annoyances, as follows:
  • Lack of Time Tracking for Contractors – I am very glad to see a time-sheet function for employees under Xero’s new payroll function … but a bit surprised that the software doesn’t provide time-sheets for 1099 contractors.
  • Poor Inventory Support – While Xero says you can use add-ons for inventory, a quick glance at their forums gives you the impression, most of these don’t work well. Xero plans to offer improved inventory management this year; whether that will solve the problem remains to be seen.
  • CSV Imports – In the banking reconciliation, duplicate detection does not function across formats, so if you import a csv and later import a qif with overlapping dates, you will end up with duplicate entries. Also, depending on your bank, you may need to make significant adjustments to csv files before they will import correctly (Xero can’t import a bank statement csv with separate debit and credit columns).
  • Lack of Automated Features – Xero does not offer automated invoice reminders, overdue notices, or receipts upon payment. While it’s a minor point, it seems an odd omission for software which has such a great feature selection.