xero software - The Book-keepers Forum (UK)

NA_AA · Guru

xero software

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Cheers Sharon,

taken in the context that there are 4.3 million UK businesses there would seem to be a lot of scope for growth there.

15k is not a lot by comparrison to someone like Sage or Quickbooks but it's by no means an insignificant share of a market with a large number of businesses still having no real accounting system of their own.

Was any indication given as to whether that 15k were all current active users or was that simply a total of licences sold?

I would imagine the likes of Crunchers pushing Xero to their clients is going to make quite some headway into those numbers.

It does sound from the previous few posts as though there are teething problems but I suspect that the numbers are large enough (7.5% of Xero's total world sales making the UK borderline significant in audit materialarity terms (>5% but <10%)).

All in all interesting to see what develops there, Certainly one to watch, but at the moment it doesn't sound as though it's quite yet a finished product for the requirements of the UK market. (I think that Intuit have only recently woken up and smelt the coffee on that one).

Many thanks for the information,

kind regards,

Shaun.

p.s. edited because the end of a line went missing.

-- Edited by Shamus on Tuesday 6th of November 2012 05:56:58 PM

AMajor · Veteran Member

Yes, I am a Certified Partner and now most of my clients are on Xero and they love it.

I have a couple of other clients that use KashFlow but in my opinion Xero is a far superior product.

Hope this helps.

Angie

ClawzCTR · Guru

I had a friend ask me about this the other day... spooky. I had a look on the website and found it to be like any other cloud based accounting system. They did mention the fact you only use one ledger a lot on the videos, and i assume this is for ease of use.

Other than that it didn't really tickle my fancy. Couldn't find any solid pricing info though... least of all for accountants... clients yes, us no... you had to 'order a trial'. (put me off slightly if im honest)

NWN Blue Squared · Member

We too are Certified Partners and have a number of clients now using Xero which we are looking to expand. Apart from being a superbly well developed piece of software, which is flexible and provides plenty of plug-ins and modules for different aspects of accountancy, the support is also outstanding.

Xero seems to be growing exponentially around the world and we've attended a couple of their conferences in the UK which have been inspiring, but also revealed the wide range of accountancy firms that are using Xero for their clients.

Definitely a strong recommendation from us.

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

What do you mean by growing exponentially?

statistics are a funny old thing if it had one user and now had two thats 100% growth. If Sage or quickbooks had 1000 and now have 1100 thats 10% growth so Xero would be doing better at one more client.

Do you have any actual verifiable published figures as to numbers, market share, geographic market share, etc?

kind regards,

Shaun.

p.s. this question is no reflection on the merits or not of the software, it's simply a query in relation to how big the software is especially by reference to how many of the 200,000 users are outside of it's home turf of New Zealand.

ClawzCTR · Guru

I thought that 200k was rather small, but who am i to know; compared to sage thats a drop in the ocean.

At the end of the day NA_AA you need to spend the time doing the research and take advantage of these free trials, see if it works for you. You've only got to read Shamus's reviews on the top ones and read the comments after it for a good guide to start with. (sticky at the top of one page...cant remember which)

Just Fascinating · Veteran Member

I had no experience with cloud software until I was approached by a customer who is using Xero. Since trying to resolve their issues I've spent a lot of time investigating it. On the face of it it appears fine until you try to export data you need. You are restricted to their reports/exports formats and fields and it's very hard to get all the fields you need. There are several threads out there on this subject. For a flavour take a look at https://community.xero.com/business/discussion/52581.

Basically Xero doesn't have a 'backup and restore' facility. Their guide on importing from another system or spreadsheets is good. When you try and apply it to export that format of data from Xero (or even through several exports to compile the info needed) to reimport into Xero at transaction level you can't do it or so it seems (unless you do it all manually). I have put the question out there on Xero forums in case I missed something and no one has come back with a workaround.

So at this time I'm not convinced with Xero. It seems fine as long as the customer has had proper advice on setting up their organisation, Chart of Accounts, and understands their postings. This of course applies to any software but an important difference (I feel) between software is how easy you can export all the data to fix things when there are volumes of transactions and then reimport it.

I'm curious to know how this issue compares with other online software?

I feel that all the marketing videos, etc... to encourage someone to subscribe to a software make it sound so easy to use. They also make it sound so easy to view your company's position and that what you see in their reports is correct and can be relied on. Which if set up correctly and really understood is. However what comes to mind is 'Garbage in - Garbage out' and many users being totally unaware and running their business on the 'Garbage out' data.

Figurate · Senior Member

I use Sage, Xero (am a "certified partner"), Kashflow and others.
Xero looks quite "pretty" (well, in comparison to some) and their bank rec is quite nice (it is strangely satisfying to click on "ok" and have that transaction disappear from the reconcilation screen)
Kashflow's logic seems to follow Sage's more closely (perhaps because both Sage and Kashflow are British) and it will let you do a bank payment without having to have the payee as a "contact" (Xero pretty much forces you to have a "contact" even, if you might never pay that supplier again).
That said, I wish Kashflow would not refer to "Purchase receipts" (an attempt to do away with confusing accounting language but one I'm not sure was wholly successful...)

Kashflow's audit trail is better than Xero's, though. You can run an audit trail report in Kasfhlow, and it will be similar to the financials in Sage - in some ways it will be better than Sage's because you can see the timestamp of any alterations. Xero's audit trail is a bit more, erm, "clunky")

For VAT/EC VAT, neither beats Sage, although that might be because Sage's VAT seems very logical to me.

No software is fool-proof, despite the claims on ease-of-use etc..., because they depend on the user knowing what they are doing to a greater or lesser extent. One of my clients on FreeAgent managed to corrupt their bank reconciliation by putting in the wrong "conversion date" and uploading transactions prior to that date, because they did not realise the significance of the "conversion date". In that instance, despite the software showing the user a mock-up of their self-assessment tax (which in theory, would be very helpful) it was incorrect, not least because the bank didn't balance.
(Although it was FreeAgent in this instance, I've seen similar "doh!" moments with nearly all bookkeeping/accounting software....)

I am quite happy to demo software and point out the good and bad bits and why it would or wouldn't suit a particular circumstance but I'm not happy to "sell" it to a client...
So what vaguely annoys me about being a "partner" with some online software providers, is that they seem to want you to sell their software to your new and/or existing clients. However, I don't want to sell software, hence why I'm an accountant and not a software sales-person.

(Sorry, that's turned into more of a ramble about various things, not just Xero)

NWN Blue Squared · Member

Hi Shaun

Figures I have from Xerocon are 15000 UK clients and growing over 100% year on year in the UK at the moment.

Kind Regards

Sharon

Just Fascinating · Veteran Member

Hi Louise, I found your posting very interesting and informative, as my only online experience so far has been with Xero.

I agree that it looks pretty and with Angie in the Kashflow thread that it does have a lot of great features. Also, that for its subscription, you can have unlimited users with roles assigned to determine their level of access to view and/or edit.

I also found navigating it took some getting used to mainly because of the terminology used.

Louise how simple was it to identify and rectify your FreeAgent clients' problem within FreeAgent? Was it a time consuming, laborious exercise to connect all the dots? Did you find you had to export the data to do so?

Your comment of "I am quite happy to demo software and point out the good and bad bits and why it would or wouldn't suit a particular circumstance but I'm not happy to "sell" it to a client..." sounds just how I feel, especially the more I discover and experience.

Brigitte

AMajor · Veteran Member

Just Fascinating wrote:
I had no experience with cloud software until I was approached by a customer who is using Xero. Since trying to resolve their issues I've spent a lot of time investigating it. On the face of it it appears fine until you try to export data you need. You are restricted to their reports/exports formats and fields and it's very hard to get all the fields you need. There are several threads out there on this subject. For a flavour take a look at https://community.xero.com/business/discussion/52581.
Basically Xero doesn't have a 'backup and restore' facility. Their guide on importing from another system or spreadsheets is good. When you try and apply it to export that format of data from Xero (or even through several exports to compile the info needed) to reimport into Xero at transaction level you can't do it or so it seems (unless you do it all manually). I have put the question out there on Xero forums in case I missed something and no one has come back with a workaround.

Hi,

I'm not sure why you'd need to export and then re-import? Might be missing something here... but the point of using online accounting is that you have access to the same set of data - no exports/imports, no data out of sync while its being investigated so to correct mistakes you have your own user login where you can make the necessary corrections. I've been able to support my customers in setting up Xero and if they want to maintain their own books training them how to use it. If they want bookkeeping support, then of course, I provide that too. If a customer makes a mistake or gets in a knot you can unravel it over the phone instantly.

Angie

Figurate · Senior Member

Just Fascinating wrote:
Hi Louise, I found your posting very interesting and informative, as my only online experience so far has been with Xero.
I agree that it looks pretty and with Angie in the Kashflow thread that it does have a lot of great features. Also, that for its subscription, you can have unlimited users with roles assigned to determine their level of access to view and/or edit.
I also found navigating it took some getting used to mainly because of the terminology used.
Louise how simple was it to identify and rectify your FreeAgent clients' problem within FreeAgent? Was it a time consuming, laborious exercise to connect all the dots? Did you find you had to export the data to do so?
Your comment of "I am quite happy to demo software and point out the good and bad bits and why it would or wouldn't suit a particular circumstance but I'm not happy to "sell" it to a client..." sounds just how I feel, especially the more I discover and experience.
Brigitte

Hi Brigitte,

The issue was the bank balance per the bank module/screen was not the same as the bank balance per the trial balance report (and neither total matched the bank statement*) took FreeAgent a week to resolve, because it escalated from their helpdesk, to a support engineer and then to a ruby engineer (ruby is a programming language) to find the cause - which was apparently due to the conversion date being set to a particular date, but there being bank transactions dated prior to that date. This is something that the client had set themselves, prior getting an accountant. They just didn't realise that it would affect their figures in the way that it did, but to be honest, why would they? cry

(*The issue of the bank balance not matching the bank statement was minor and caused by the client manually adding a bank transaction, even though they had uploaded the complete bank statements. It was found by finding the date when the two balances diverged, so no need for any data export etc... on this occasion)

Just Fascinating · Veteran Member

Hi Angie

Agreed "the point of using online accounting is that you have access to the same set of data - no exports/imports, no data out of sync while its being investigated so to correct mistakes you have your own user login where you can make the necessary corrections." The same applies to software sitting on a company's server with multiusers at different locations.

That works fine when a minimal amount of issues arise. When you have a large amount of data that is incorrect for example through duplications, triplications, omissions, keying errors, etc... and they are intertwined it is quicker to follow the audit trail and rectifying through exporting and reconciling outside the system and then reimporting, as opposed to having to keep clicking on different screens and components within it to investigate and keeping track of what you have just looked at.

Fortunately I wasn't faced with a multiuser issue, but there are steps that can be taken to minimise out of sync issues.

I'm glad it's all working well with your customers as it should and I look forward to getting some of those, but sometimes we can land up with a very different scenario and solutions are required.

Brigitte

Just Fascinating · Veteran Member

Hi Louise thanks for getting back.

Why would they indeed! My issue was also partly related to the 'conversion date' and subsequent postings.

At least we're all here ready to help them back on the right track.

Brigitte

Funding Joe · Newbie

Don't forget Xero add-ons

chiragaegis · Newbie

RE: xero software

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

When your internet works.

Don Tax · Expert

chiragaegis wrote:
........................ it is always up to date and is available anywhere.

Except on your hard drive.

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

lol Tim.

You don't have to be a cynic to work in this business but it helps.

Sorry Rasjkot, we're actually a quite friendly bunch but you'll find a mix of people on here from those who rave about the cloud to those who have been stung by being unable to access it when they need to and wouldn't trust it as far as they could throw the Empire state building.

If you think that the internet can be accessed from anywhere go visit a farm in Lincolnshire or an off the beaten path business in some parts of mid Wales.

Also in the past my ISP has had issues (won't even go into the loop that I got in that you call a number only to be told that I need to phone a specific number that is attached to my account but of course I couldn't access my account as I didn't have internet access!!! (eventually (six calls in) got one person on the help line with some common sense who just gave me the right number)).

You can't tell a client that you can't help them because you cannot access their details. For that reason I can see no replacement to having the software and client data on your own hard drives... As for access from anywhere. Well, if you've got your laptop with you anyway!

The only point that I can see to cloud offerings is if you need to share the data with others who are also working on the same data.

Shaun.

Don Tax · Expert

lol yeah and it was a bit of a Cheesey Peas ad.

adrianpearson · Member

For what it's worth, I believe that worries about the availability of the Internet as regards using cloud software will soon disappear. Mobile phone coverage can still be a bit patchy but who doesn't have a mobile these days?

Anyway, when LTE (4G) becomes available "everywhere" a broadband connection will be available wherever one has a phone signal - so even if your ISP / Landline Telco goes temporarily tits-up you will be able to use your mobile as a WiFi hotspot instead (in a 3G area that can be done now).

My phone signal isn't great at home but when I was without broadband for 2 days during the move from PlusNet to Sky I used my mobile to connect my computer to the Internet and got a perfectly usable connection speed.

The Internet is only going to get faster and more reliable. That's the way technology goes, so I would not let worries about this stop you taking advantage of cloud accounting software, or any other cloud service for that matter.

Just saying.

Adrian

VinceH · Expert

Ugh. A future with an internet that reliable (and widespread), and with mobile phone coverage everywhere sounds like a total nightmare to me.

From tomorrow, I will be away for a week, hiding in a little bungalow near Boscastle in Cornwall - where I will have no internet connection, and no phone signal. And that's heaven!

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Don't worry Vince, there's a solar storm coming which will make it all better. lol

Wella · Expert

VinceH wrote:
Ugh. A future with an internet that reliable (and widespread), and with mobile phone coverage everywhere sounds like a total nightmare to me.

From tomorrow, I will be away for a week, hiding in a little bungalow near Boscastle in Cornwall - where I will have no internet connection, and no phone signal. And that's heaven!

Hi Vince.

You will be my neighbour for a week, i'm just up the road in Tintagel.

If you do get to check in to the forum, and read this. Go to the Wellington Hotel in Boscastle on Wednesday night, any time after about 8.30 and I'll buy you a pint. There is a little folk type music gathering there, and is usually a good evening. I'll wear a carnation and stand under ther clock smile

You're right about internet connection, phone signal , and even Tv (not all freeview channels are available)

Bill

monster_bookkeeping · Newbie

Hello - Yes I am a XERO Certified Partner and can assist you with any queries you may have on XERO Accounting practices.

Let me know

Tom McClelland · Senior Member

North Cornwall branch of BKN...

We spend several weeks a year in Trebetherick (between Polzeath and Rock).

But I don't need to go down to Cornwall for a bad phone signal. Berkshire (Britain's Silicon Valley!) is much worse. I'm lucky to get a single bar of 1G in my leafy village 5 miles from Reading (on a hill, not in a valley). Mbile calls have to be gabbled quickly before the connection drops. 3G or data connections, forget it.

VinceH · Expert

Wella wrote:
You will be my neighbour for a week, i'm just up the road in Tintagel.

Ooh, you lucky, lucky man. That's a fantastic place to live/work* (I'm assuming the two are one and the same).

My last three holidays (including this one) have been two in Boscastle (actually a little way outside, in a little Bungalow) in February 2011 and this year, and Tintagel itself in July last year.

Wella wrote:
Go to the Wellington Hotel in Boscastle on Wednesday night, any time after about 8.30 and I'll buy you a pint.

And back in July, I extended my holiday in Tintagel with a couple of days in Boscastle, in the Wellington - though that was a Friday to Sunday. :)

I ended up spending the week indoors when I was in Tintagel, though. I twisted my ankle really badly when I started walking along the coast towards Boscastle, and could barely walk for most of the week. And by the time I moved on to Boscastle, although I was walking (with a very noticable limp), my camera went kaput! Great times... great times.

Unfortunately, I didn't read the post until now. Ho hum. Maybe next time.

* Makes mental note: If Bill lives and works there, that means there must be enough work for me to live and work there if I steal all his clients. Bwahahahahahahahahahahacoughcoughsplutter.

Oh, wait. I didn't type that out loud, did I?

Wella · Expert

Tom McClelland wrote:
North Cornwall branch of BKN...

We spend several weeks a year in Trebetherick (between Polzeath and Rock).

Tom, I have two clients in Polzeath, one being an avid surfer, so when the surfs up, no chance of finding him (which is good cos i can get the kayak out biggrin ).

Hi Vince, yes live just outside of the town, (yes it is classed as a town) on the way to Trebarwith, and work from home, and surrounding area.

Did you stay in the haunted room in the Welly (room 9 I think)? Back in the day one of the rooms used to doubled up as the local mortuary, when the flood occured in 2004 a large slate mortuary slab was washed out from the floor. It is now a table top in the garden, with drain channels and drain hole still visible.

Work is more a life style thing, there is work here but it wont make me rich (just happy smile ) It's one of those "it'll be ready Thursday" but not saying which Thursday, sort of places. Actually, I get the feeling that it would suit you biggrin

Anyways, it's wednesday night, and I'm off to the Welly for a few pints of Rattler (that makes me happy too smile ), and a bit of a sing along.

Happy to meet up with any forum members, if you ever wander down to God's country (It must be God's country, as the local saying goes, "there are more saints in Cornwall than in Heaven", look at the place names)

Bill

Vince keep meaning to ask, where is your avatar pic taken? It looks likes Boxhill in Surrey

VinceH · Expert

Wella wrote:
Hi Vince, yes live just outside of the town, (yes it is classed as a town) on the way to Trebarwith, and work from home, and surrounding area.

I've just glanced at a map, so I can see where that is. When I stayed in Tintagel, I was on the B3263, towards the other side of Tintagel. A nice little spot with a view out towards the hotel and on out to sea - but not a view that included the castle, unfortunately. (I popped into Tintagel and explored the castle when I stayed in Boscastle the time before.)

Did you stay in the haunted room in the Welly (room 9 I think)? Back in the day one of the rooms used to doubled up as the local mortuary, when the flood occured in 2004 a large slate mortuary slab was washed out from the floor. It is now a table top in the garden, with drain channels and drain hole still visible.

I can't remember what room number I was in, but I doubt it was that one (it was only a tiny little room overlooking the back of some houses and a path up into the woods) . I'm sure if I was in a room that was supposed to be haunted they would have mentioned it - and I would have responded with a "Bah. Stuff and nonsense!" or similar!

It's one of those "it'll be ready Thursday" but not saying which Thursday, sort of places. Actually, I get the feeling that it would suit you

You've got me pegged nicely, there! smile

Vince keep meaning to ask, where is your avatar pic taken? It looks likes Boxhill in Surrey

No, it's the trig point on the summit of the Sugarloaf Mountain in the Brecon Beacons (Near Abergavenny).

Wella · Expert

Hi Vince

I dont think they tell anyone that they are in the haunted room. I believe it is mentioned in the welcome pack/ brochure. I read a review of the hotel in a travel website, where an American lady went bollistic, after she had found out her room was haunted but nobody told her. me personally, I would love to spend the night in the haunted room

We may have been even closer neighbours than I thought. My place is on the B3623. If you take a little stroll along on Google street view from the primary school, you will spot an house with a strange character lurking in the porch. That'll be me

This Boxhill trig point. see the similarity?

Box Hill: trig point and fine view

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Seems a silly place to stick a tank trap though.

Wella · Expert

LOL

Looking them I am surprised no mindless job has prised out the brass tri fitting and NT badge for scrap.

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

12pay wrote:
NA_AA wrote:
Has anyone had experience using Xero online software?
Xero offers many features common to other good accounting packages. Its main advantage over conventional desktop is that its intuitive interface and cloud-based hosting.

You have still not replied to last nights request for you to identify yourself.

If you are genuinely associated with 12pay then you have less than five minutes to make yourself known to Tom before your userid is pulled and all of your posts removed.

Shaun.

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Ok, you came online and I thought that just maybe you were typing out an explanation so I extended the five minutes.

As you have now gone offline without posting any explanation of your user name I have no option but to ban your userid and delete all of your posts.

Please note that removing a userid also blocks the IP address meaning that you will not be able to rejoin the site under another userid.

Peasie · Expert

I had gone on to UKBF to inform (ask) Tom about this person as you can't send PMs on here. When I got there I noticed it had been a week since he last posted on that forum so never bothered sending the PM. It did seem very odd. Especially the reviving of an old thread.

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Hi Peasie,

I thought that something was wrong last night when I read the first reply and saw the userid but I gave them chance to make themselves known to the site.

Its got to the stage where I see one liners and think "Ooh, cocoon phase of SEO advertising"

I spoke with Tom off line who gave me confirmation that the poster was not known to him.

The poster posted in five threads, mostly old one's, all of which have now been cleaned up due to the name infringement.

the IP adress started 1.186 so it was India (These sort of posts are invariably either India, Pakistan or Alaska).

There is of course also the issue of a Yahoo email address professing to be 12pay but there is nothing that I can do about that and Tom would need to contact Yahoo to get that stomped on.

garyturner · Member

For the avoidance of doubt and since the poster in question spoke positively about Xero, I'd like to assure the members of this community that Xero never partakes in this kind of mindless shilling. We have a large user community that extends into the hundreds of thousands globally and some of them will be quite passionate - which I think is a good thing on balance providing it doesn't come across as shilling, or annoying - plus the web is sometimes awash with people jumping on popular terms in order to game their own SEO value and who have nothing whatsoever to do with Xero, or using Xero.

As for our company and our people, I think we're one of the companies that gets how to behave on social media and is mindful of the damage a single errant member of a team can do to a brand's reputation in today's connected world - we have a pretty extensive culture and code of ethics for our people and that absolutely discourages shilling or misbehaving of any kind. (As an aside, I wish that could be said for others, not least the employee of a competitor whom we identified as being a shill under a false identity in a Xero negative thread I engaged in on this forum back in February this year.)

Gary Turner
Managing Director, Xero

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Hi Gary,

no worries, the errant poster covered a wide variety of software including Sage, Iris, Xero, 12pay, Excel, Turbo tax and Ledger library (I might have missed a couple).

I am sure that as you identify non of the companies were associated with the poster and that the posts were merely the groundwork for an SEO ad.

The poster has now been banned and their posts removed for using 12pay in the name (the same as I would if someone were to use Xero in their name if they were not in reality associated with the company).

Many thanks for posting the update though, always good to see the real representatives of software companies on the site.

kindest regards,

Shaun.

Peasie · Expert

Just unfortunate that yours was one of the threads they hijacked Gary. They were easily spotted as Tom McClelland from 12Pay regularly posts on this forum so when someone with a username of "12Pay" pops up it sticks out like a sore thumb.

Here's a dumb moment for you - I just went to UKBF to see the correct spelling of Tom's surname, without realising it is a few posts above on this very same thread.

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

And on the matter of hijacking Tom, I receieved an email from Jobsite this morning about Project Manager training courses.

Take a look at this page :

http://jobsite.e-careers.com/project-management

the top one, £499 level 3 package do you recognise the person holding the skyscraper up!... And here was me thinking that he only came in laptop size.

Tom McClelland · Senior Member

Ha Ha! When we bought that image we were starting up and we couldn't afford exclusivity.

Thanks for banning the shill. It made me really cross when I saw a mindless endorsement of our software purporting to come from us.

But not as cross as I got when I recently found at that a competitor's telesales staff regularly trashes 12Pay (well, I'm aware of 5 instances, anyway). My fury changed to amusement when I discovered that the same competitor also trashes Moneysoft, on the grounds that "accountants don't like it".

Merlion ABS · Senior Member

Xero has it benefits for client ease of use regarding invoicing and sending them out to clients. The reports are ok, but fairly non flexible, but the time to do things or process some entries takes far longer than sage or quickbooks.

Yes it can download bank transactions, but then the auto matching isnt 100% fool proof, if you want to double check entries before allocating bank payments or receipts, then you have go back or click link to another webpage and its just take too long compared the quickness of sage.

In my opinion, Xero is good for a small sole trader or simple Ltd Co who do their books regularly, but for a bookkeeper, Sage is still a lot better, plus with integrated reporting, report editing, a good bookkeeper can produce some very useful KPI's and management information for their clients using sage that Xero is no where near doing just yet.

FoxAccountancyServices · Expert

I agree with the above. Domestic Vs Industrial