Views on Xero...? - The Book-keepers Forum (UK)

LizB · Veteran Member

Views on Xero...?

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

You may find these useful :

www.book-keepers.org.uk/t52475321/xero-vs-sage/

Actually, there have been a lot Xero discussions on here that you may find useful so rather than listing them all out if you cut and paste the next line into your search engine :

site:www.book-keepers.org.uk xero

It will bring back loads of hits.

Sure that I saw on a feed from Accountancyage the other day (or it might have been financedirectors newsletter, or maybe in a Linkedin group discussion, can't remember sorry) an announcement that Xero are in the throws of releasing some client manager software but you'll need to check that out yourself.

probably not much help as a reply in itself but should get the ball rolling,

kind regards,

Shaun.

Meadowlands · Senior Member

I have become a certified Xero adviser, partly to add a cloud based offering to my practice as I think some clients will prefer that.

Xero is very pretty and the bank reconciliation tool is impressive and what attracts a lot of people I think. I have yet to start using it with a client, I did have one interested but the cost has put him off - 24 pcm inc VAT on top of my fees was a bit much for him, you only get to start offering discounts once you have 4 or more clients using Xero through your practice.

They are doing roadshows over the next few weeks which are free and might be worth going on. http://events.xero.com/uk/events/667-xero-summer-roadshow-2014 It would give you more information.

They often run free certification (which I did) its 4 hours sat at your computer then a test so don;t pay the 149 if you don;t have to. You then get a certificate and a free account to run your own business on.

The practice manager that Shaun mentions has just been launched and there is more info on the Xero website, it is one area I thought was lacking i.e. being able to track my billable time as I do in QB. I haven't been able to figure out how much this will cost as its free if you are a silver or above partner (4 or more clients on Xero). I sometimes find the Xero website a little confusing when looking for help and if you call they can be a bit pushy on the sales and keep calling you back.

Since I haven't actually used it for a client I can't say whether or not to go for it. So far I am not 100% convinced and wouldn't want my whole practice to be on it. I do however think it will appeal to some clients, e.g. they can do their own invoicing from it but you prevent them doing anything else.

Hope that helps

Alison

-- Edited by Meadowlands on Tuesday 17th of June 2014 02:33:13 PM

GordonB · Veteran Member

Hi Liz,

I use Xero for one client with a £3M+ turnover(previously used Sage 50) and there are no real problems. We only use it for basic reports which are ok but some are only available by calendar month rather than specific dates. Bank imports are fine from HSBC but I believe there is a direct contract between the 2. Not sure it how it copes with other banks. VAT returns are ok but not sure if they have sorted out the services reverse charge reporting yet for Google or Facebook advertising etc.

I personally am converting clients to Clearbooks if suitable, not sure where you are based but if anywhere near London Clearbooks have opendays for accountants/bookkeepers and on going phone and email support for Partners and clients. Have a look at their website or give them a call.

Just had an email from Xero-they are doing a summer tour of the UK in early July with morning sessions for new and potential users and afternoon sessions for current users. Google Xero events UK for more info.

Regards

Gordon

-- Edited by GordonB on Tuesday 17th of June 2014 05:26:07 PM

RobH · Expert

I'm also looking to offer a loud based solution and it will probably be Kashflow on the basis that I feel they are all probably much of a muchness, KF is only £10 per month, they use the same nominal codes as Sage and it links in with Iris. However happy for any Xero users to tell me that their offering is superior.

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

RobH wrote:
I'm also looking to offer a loud based solution

AND ME ROB

....Sorry, I'm the last one who should be picking up on typo's but I couldn't resist this one.

RobH · Expert

Ha, very good Shaun!

MarkS · Expert

I would say that Xero is currently the best online accounts option. I have about 15 clients using it and they all can use it without a problem. To be a silver partner you need to have 25 clients to get their free workflowmax practice management software plus other discounts. Having 5 clients makes you a bronze partner but doesnt give you any real benefits.

Once you are certified you get access to use the cash book package which doesnt have invoice facility. This costs £5+VAT per month for the non VAT cash book package and £9+VAT per month for the VAT cash book package. This works well with clients who run everything through their business bank account. You can link the software to their bank account which will import the transactions on a daily basis. You can then easily allocate the income and expenditure in bulk through cash coding doing the accounts in less than an hour where previously might have taken you a day to do. I generally pay this myself for clients as only costs £60+VAT per year and I usually save a few hours a year doing the accounts.

Other benefits of Xero

1. Good reporting

2. Can link up with other software eg receipt bank to pull in purchases/expenses

3. Bank feeds and cash coding (Kashflow doesnt even have bank feeds at the moment but at the Accountex conference in last month they say they are working on it as their top priority).

SAGE line 50 2015 version is moving online. If you have had any emails regarding their roadshows over the next month they say they have the "biggest development in the last 10 years" this is what the development is so expect that SAGE over the next few years will gain a large share of the online market given can use line 50 online. The new version is also more streamlined that the existing version, meaning you can do things one way other than the 2 or 3 ways you can do things at the moment.

So in short I recommend clients looking for an online option to go for Xero.

Though I do have clients that use VT, clearbooks, Kashflow, Quickbooks, SAGE.

Regards

Mark

Meadowlands · Senior Member

Mark

Thanks for this advice, I hadn't realised these packages were there - not had any info from Xero about them! I feel like I have had no information since I certified. Can I ask is there a limit on the number of bank accounts and transactions? My client has 2 Credit cards and a bank account to reconcile. He does his own invoicing using a different package.

I think he would be interested in the 9pcm package.

Thanks in advance

Alison

MarkS · Expert

Meadowlands wrote:
Mark

Thanks for this advice, I hadn't realised these packages were there - not had any info from Xero about them! I feel like I have had no information since I certified. Can I ask is there a limit on the number of bank accounts and transactions? My client has 2 Credit cards and a bank account to reconcile. He does his own invoicing using a different package.

I think he would be interested in the 9pcm package.

Thanks in advance

Alison

Hi Alison

You can only get these cash book packages if you are certified partner. You would need to get them through your account with Xero, your client couldnt get them for themselves.

Xero dont actively publicise them but if you sat in on the accountant webinar you would have found out about them.

There is no limit on the number of accounts or transactions.

Basically it is like the £24+VAT package except it doesnt have any invoicing facility or debtors/creditors ledger. It is effectively a cash book package which works well for businesses that dont give or receive credit or sole traders who wish to do their tax return on a cash basis. Works well for business where most of their transactions go through the bank statement.

Most of my clients are on either of the cash book packages. Only a few are on the full package with invoicing facility and debtors/creditors ledger.

Mark

kjmcculloch83 · Expert

I use Xero for a number of clients. It's a good package but has some strange things missing that you wouldn't expect. For example there is no easy way to send a quote but they implemented quite a complicated purchase order system. Seems a bit back to front to me. There is also no easy way to send reminders.

Kashflow is much better at these simpler things but I don't find the user interface as good. It's like everything else though, horses for courses and no one size fits all.

Kris

rachel_mclean · Guru

I don't like it at all, the thought of loading the bank statement on to software scares me and I don't dare try it worrying that it will all go wrong.
I only have one client on Xero (thank god!! I won't be doing if for anyone else) I manual reconcile the bank account instead of uploading the bank statements....it's very scary this way too as if I make a mistake that I can't find I will have to re-reconcile up to a years worth of transactions : ( when you manually reconcile there is no way to save the reconciliation each month!! (I don't think) and also it's very time consuming this way. I charge for 2 hours work each month but it always takes me at least 5!!
BUT with someone who is not scared off loading the bank statement onto Xero I'm sure it will be fine

kjmcculloch83 · Expert

Rachel,

Don't be scared. If you make a mistake you can undo the whole reconciliation for that statement and start again. It's really easy and the Xero team are really helpful.

Kris

RobH · Expert

What are these packages like for entering a batch of purchase invoices, it's so easy with Sage but is it more fiddly with Kashflow/Xero or pretty similar. Also the bank feeds, I understand that you can 'train' the software to allocate against invoices but what happens if you get the bank feed before the invoices are posted, does it sit on the ledger as a payment on account and then you manually post against eachother. And what about cheques, where do these go to automatically?

I'm in the Rachel Scaredy Cat club at the moment and that's even before worrying about what nonsense a client may enter onto the system!

philco · Newbie

I had a bookkeeping client recently who had signed up for Xero although I worked on his premises for ease of access to source documents. I found it quite slow in filing transactions online, even though the client had decent broadband and I was using my own up to date laptop with plenty of speed and memory.

I timed a few transactions out of interest and found the average to be about 20 seconds to file a transaction online (e.g. sales invoices), and in one case, over 90 seconds. Add this to the fact that it's quite convoluted to get a backup of your data, I do not see the advantage of cloud systems in general. I'm a Sage user normally and most smaller clients are well served with Sage Instant Accounts as I usually visit clients onsite and the more enlightened of them are happy that their "books" are in their control and they can at least look at them whenever, even if they don't fully understand how it all works.

Just my opinion for what it's worth!

Phil Collis FFA

EPF_Solutions · Senior Member

Once upon a time, the height of technology was to sit at a teletype terminal connected to a phone line, and enter documents that went down the line to a mainframe computer for sedate number crunching. Then the personal computer was invented, and started a revolution in businesses being able to do computerised accounting in house, where they had total control of it. Seems like this is going backwards, but with some extra speed and a pretty looking GUI smile .

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

sedate number crunching! I don't think so. For processing huge data volumes quickly a big box with blue sides with an MVS operating system will still wipe the floor with anything that microsoft has come up with so far as windows programmers don't care about how much data they are throwing around where a properly programmed mainframe application won't process one more byte than it really has to.

Sure that a PC can process one record very quickly but try throwing 65 million at it and see what happens.

It could of course have been your connection that was causing the issues or possibly over zealous security protocols or just really bad programming of the pseudo conversational system that you would have been interfacing with.

PC's vs Mainframes if all very much horses for courses. If you want to process one person at a time then PCs are fine. If you want to process millions in seconds rather than before you retire then you need a mainframe.

Of course, the flip side is trying to get that box under your desk... And even if you could then there's the cooling system and the networking and the storage devices.... Now if you had gone with that approach I couldn't have argued but on speed to volume windows sollutions are not even in the same ball park.

Oh, and using screen scrapers you can have pretty windows front ends on mainframe data entry processing... But personally I don't see anything wrong with green screens... lol John, you've now got me feeling like acquiring a TSO/ISPF emulator, a CICS emulator and a COBOL compiler for my PC.

kjmcculloch83 · Expert

RobH wrote:
What are these packages like for entering a batch of purchase invoices, it's so easy with Sage but is it more fiddly with Kashflow/Xero or pretty similar. Also the bank feeds, I understand that you can 'train' the software to allocate against invoices but what happens if you get the bank feed before the invoices are posted, does it sit on the ledger as a payment on account and then you manually post against eachother. And what about cheques, where do these go to automatically?

I'm in the Rachel Scaredy Cat club at the moment and that's even before worrying about what nonsense a client may enter onto the system!

Hi Rob,

Kashflow have a software called rapidfire for batch processing. It's a small package that is installed locally on your machine. It's similar to VT transaction in layout (spreadsheet style). When you finish entering the batch it can be uploaded as one small file automatically.

Xero has no such system but I have been speaking to a software developer about building one for me as the API is really good.

The other thing is that the client only has as much or as little access as you allow. They can add items, just look or maybe you just want to let them post sales invoices. The user management is really good in both systems.

Kris

-- Edited by kjmcculloch83 on Thursday 19th of June 2014 08:32:51 PM

MarkS · Expert

RobH wrote:
What are these packages like for entering a batch of purchase invoices, it's so easy with Sage but is it more fiddly with Kashflow/Xero or pretty similar. Also the bank feeds, I understand that you can 'train' the software to allocate against invoices but what happens if you get the bank feed before the invoices are posted, does it sit on the ledger as a payment on account and then you manually post against eachother. And what about cheques, where do these go to automatically?

I'm in the Rachel Scaredy Cat club at the moment and that's even before worrying about what nonsense a client may enter onto the system!

Hi Rob

Re your various points (will refer to Xero as most of my online clients use this. Only one client uses Kashflow)

1. More flexibility to enter invoices on xero. You can manually add them one by one, you can do them on a spreadsheet and import them in, or you could link up with a 3rd party like Receipt Bank and get them to summarise and import in for £9+VAT per month per 100 invoices. Given that 100 invoices would probably take at least two hours of mind numbing tapping on the keyboard it is a no brainer.

2. Yes you can use bank rules so the bank transactions are matched with the invoices. If the invoices arent yet posted the bank transactions will just sit on the bank reconciliation as unmatched until the invoices are posted to match against. They arent automatically allowed as a payment on account. What Xero does is it suggests an invoice that it relates to based on description and amount then you need to agree that it relates to it.

3. Not sure what you mean re cheques. As there isnt any description other than the cheque number and amount from the bank feed you would need to match against the relevant invoice yourself. Though you need to do this anyway in SAGE.

Nothing to be afraid of with Xero or any of the other cloud packages. They all do much the same in the background and it is just a case of find how the interface works and the slight differences between each.

SAGE 2015 (due out in the next couple of months) is moving to the cloud with the interface much more streamline than it currently is. Though you will probably have seen this if you were at accountex.

Mark

RobH · Expert

Thanks Kris and Mark.

Funnily enough I did go the Sage stand at Accountex but they just kept refilling my glass with slightly dodgy 'champagne'! However Sage called me today to remind me of the improved cloud offering. It's £10 per month and we get a 20% discount/commission, so £8 in reality. They have the bank feeds at no extra cost and she said it was pretty much the same as using Sage Line 50 but cloud based. It can also (as you would expect but in the past could not do) restore a back up from Line 50, so may be an option for me.

MarkS · Expert

Rob

SAGEone is SAGEs current cloud offering but it is rubbish compared to Xero which is far superior.

But SAGE line 50 is also moving online with there 2014 version which means that SAGE will probably gobble up most of the online market over the next few years given their dominance of the desktop market.

Mark

Unwize Owl · Senior Member

Interesting thread - been pretty busy this week - and with a new Xero client - so I'll add my 5 eggs worth!

Manual bank recs - yes you can mark everything, as you find each line that corresponds with the bank statement, enter the invoice/bill and look at the drop down on the right, there should be a line saying 'mark as reconciled' or something like that, as with sage, there is no requirement to do a set amount and sign it off, you reconcile as you go with rolling balances. Bank feeds are not an issue - if you are worried I'd get someone who has done it before to guide you through but it's no harder than adding a feed to QuickBooks.

Reporting - pretty good, and improving with nearly every upgrade. I like the tracking feature - works like classes in QB. Excellent for project management.

Unpicking.... yeah, unpicking is ok. I have a somewhat complicated one to do at the moment where for some unexplained reason the accountant has 'swiped' a large amount from a savings account to fund a suspense account to 'balance off' trial entries and anything they didn't feel like entering correctly. Their maths is poor, nothing quite adds up correctly and the VAT figures are giving me conniptions! Fortunately Xero has excellent audit trail so tracking back isn't too hard - just trying to understand what was done to whom, how and above all why?????

There must be some good accountants out there - why do I have to spend my life untangling the mess the poor ones leave?

As a final note I have used (and still work with on occasion) QBO, KashFlow and Xero. I prefer Xero for audit trail and tracebility, QBO for ease of entry and linkability. KashFlow is ok but a little harder to work with in my view - too much is hidden from the user which makes it harder to correct mistakes.

PyramidPoint · Member

Hi
Interesting discussion!
I have done some research on Cloud based bookkeeping software's specially the Xero and Kashflow Iris. The problem with Xero is they don't have payroll and its quite expensive. Kash flow acquired by Iris and have quite a reasonable options. We can import data from different sources, it has payroll and could be linked to other IRIS software's. It is also not expensive. So I decided Kashflow for my clients

-- Edited by Shamus on Monday 23rd of June 2014 04:02:20 PM

Unwize Owl · Senior Member

It will be interesting to see what happens now KashFlow is owned by Iris - I think the pricing structure will head upwards at speed - Iris is not exactly cheap!

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Morning Theresa,

Did you know that 12pay is also now owned by IRIS?

ClawzCTR · Guru

Oh and my two pennys... Kashflow payroll... AWFUL!!!! Its clunky, has only 3 reports to run, none of which are easy for client to read... Its a rushed product, they shouldn't have bought it out this year for the new tax year and just left it till next year... And when you phone for support some of the people in Kashflow HQ dont understand it, which is a shame but they do try to help and you get to the bottom of the issue in the end.

Would like to see what Xero has to offer in regards to payroll, but saying that a lot of the payroll softwares out there can import journal entries in Xero anyways...

kjmcculloch83 · Expert

For what it's worth, I don't see Kashflow being increased in price. When Iris took it over they rationalised the prices and actually lowered it for a few. Kashflow model was one price, everyone paid the same and got everything, even if they didn't need it. I think with the number of cloud accounting packages out there and given that they are all pretty similar in price, it would be difficult for Iris to increase prices too much, if at all.

Kris