What Is Xero?
The award-winning accounting software, Xero, is one of the favourite financial collaboration apps available in the market. The software is heavily popular among leaders and top players in the accounting category.
The design of Xero is set to meet the requirements of small businesses, irrespective of their industry. The popular app is often the handiest asset for an accountant to manage their financial activities. What makes Xero great is its friendliness and usability while assembling top-notch features that help close important gaps in accounting.
A great advantage that Xero boasts is even someone with zero accounting knowledge finds it easy to manage, as even the most standardized and complex financial concepts become enjoyable. For instance, one can trace back double bookkeeping to the origins of the business, but Xero breaks the stigma of it being uncomfortable by non-expert users. The logic and the terminology of the accounting practices stay intact, but operations become simple for even a commoner to understand and use as per their business needs.
The ease of use and makes Xero a noteworthy name among the top-ranking companies around the globe, outperforming the accounting job than most prominent players in this competitive industry. Even though one feels that they do not have ample knowledge in the best accounting practices, Xero’s certified advisors’ guidance assists you all the way along the journey.
Founded in New Zealand in 2006, Xero has been recording outstanding growth rates on the global markets, especially in Australia, America, UK and Europe. Today, over 475,000 business and sole accountants are using Xero. Partnered with various accounting systems and third-party apps, Xero extends its usefulness in making your accounting journey a smooth outing.
Pricing
Xero offers variable pricing plans that suit your unique business needs. Currently, Xero no longer includes payroll and has put limits to a few features likes expenses and multi-currency support to its most expensive plan. However, each plan offers unlimited users and live bank feeds, letting businesses download, categorize, and perform their transactions as usual.
The accounting software offers three different pricing plans, which are billed monthly. One can cancel the subscription plan at any time they need, but with a notice period of a month. Xero offers a free trial period of 30 days with a demo company set up for one to explore the software before buying it. A nonprofit organization or owners of multiple companies can avail discounts from the accounting software company.
Let us have a look at the pricing plans by Xero:
Starter
Xero’s Early plan costs $20 per month and is ideal for freelancers, sole traders and new businesses. The plan includes:
- Sending up to 20 invoices and quotes
- Entering up to 5 bills
- Reconciling bank transactions
- Capturing bills and receipts with Hubdoc
The optional add-ons include claim expenses and track projects for $4 and $7 respectively.
Standard
The standard plan costs $30 per month and is ideal for growing small businesses. The plan includes:
- Sending invoices and quotes
- Entering bills
- Reconciling bank transactions
- Capturing bills and receipts with Hubdoc
The optional add-ons include claim expenses and track projects for $4 and $7 respectively.
Premium
The premium plan costs $40 per month and is ideal for established businesses of all sizes. The plan includes:
- Sending invoices and quotes
- Entering bills
- Reconciling bank transactions
- Capturing bills and receipts with Hubdoc
- Using multiple currencies
The optional add-ons include claim expenses and track projects for $4 and $7 respectively.
Features
Bank Reconciliation
Xero imports all financial transactions into its database, before linking them to the corresponding accounting transactions. On confirming the match, the transaction will be reconciled in the system. The application can import feeds from more bank accounts, credit cards and PayPal accounts. The software also lets you perform more complex transactions by creating your custom rules. You can import and automatically reconcile pre-coded bank statements with the fast cash coding feature.
Dashboard
The Xero dashboard lets business owners get a complete picture of their key accounts, income and expense reports, upcoming bills and pending invoices, helping them understand all their company’s financial activities. You can turn on notifications to monitor certain accounts if needed.
Xero’s dashboard is easy to use and navigate and helpful for the user to understand every information they need. You can also perform tasks such as adding accounts, bills and issuing invoices in the dashboard.
Invoicing
The invoicing system is an important part of the accounting suite, helping you in generating and customizing business invoices. You can add your company’s logo, perform foreign currency conversion, and save different templates for separate clients.
The system can issue invoices for payments from various sources like PayPal accounts, bank transfers or credit cards. Xero’s invoicing tool provides alerts when your invoice has been opened by the recipient.
Xero can automatically convert the invoice into the currency used by the client, reducing the burden of manual conversion.
Security & Automatic Updates
Security is highly important for a cloud system that holds private information, making it safe from hackers and other malevolent attackers. The developers understand the threat, hence providing a dedicated security team to keep the data safe.
Xero team strive for constant improvements to their service, adding new features constantly. This ensures that the efficiency of the app and your user experience is always optimal.
Competitors
QuickBooks
QuickBooks is a cloud-based accounting solution, helping small businesses in managing their accounting and finances. A customer can view all accounts with auto-synchronization. The necessary accounting and client communication feature can also be done on their native iOS and Android apps.
Zoho Books
Zoho Books is another smart accounting solution, which is ideal for small businesses in helping them manage their business and cash flow. The app is user-friendly, has a clean design with vital features to generate actionable, data-based insights.
FreshBooks
FreshBooks is an award-winning robust cloud accounting app, ideal for small businesses to make easy billing. The software lets users manage key processes with ease while providing special modules to manage projects and taxes.
Ending Notes
With ample integrations and strong features, Xero is an ideal software for accounting purposed. With multiple automation, the application saves your business time in performing otherwise manual tasks. Hence, Xerox is the ideal accounting software for businesses.
