QuickBooks bills itself as ‘smart, simply accounting software – with no commitment’⁴. It’s particularly good at helping businesses to streamline repetitive tasks, and manage accounting processes from just their smartphone. QuickBooks by Intuit is a well-known accounting software designed to help small to medium-sized businesses manage their finances. QuickBooks is a great bookkeeping solution for freelancers, small to medium businesses, and companies that want a full product suite. Its more complex interface and higher learning curve make it best suited to those with accounting experience or who are willing to hire an experienced accountant.
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Aside from helping us to determine which solution is stronger overall, these scores also help us to determine which product is better suited to different types of businesses. Both services will allow you to modify your main dashboard to display the stats that matter most to you, but QuickBooks offers a little more flexibility. Meanwhile, a vertical sidebar can take you to more in-depth dashboards dedicated to topics including Workers, Taxes, and Reports. QuickBooks also offers a number of tailored reports, including QuickBooks reports for nonprofits, which let organizations track their donations and finances with one tool. Still, if your business relies heavily on other software services, Xero is a better bet then QuickBooks for making them all work together and ensuring everything is easily accessible.
Accountants praise Xero’s automatic bank feeds, usability, and simplified payroll. When it comes to doing your tax return at the end of the year, they have everything they need to get going. It’s also easy for accountants to fix user errors in Xero, and there are built-in proper audit trails and safety checks. Accounts & Legal Consultants shared how Xero successfully managed the accounting for one of their large clients with 50 stores in the UK.
Spotlight: Product Updates
- QuickBooks Online and Xero are well-known cloud-based business accounting software solutions that are a favorite of growing companies due to their affordable pricing and scalability.
- This user review score helps us give more credit to software products that deliver a consistent service to their customers.
- QuickBooks’ sidebar is vertical and on the left, while Xero’s is horizontal across the top, both deliver about the same user experience, and user satisfaction is high for both.
- QuickBooks Online and Xero both have a large collection of integrated apps, which should be enough to cover your business automation needs.
- It’s particularly good at helping businesses to streamline repetitive tasks, and manage accounting processes from just their smartphone.
However, despite Wave’s advantages, its overall offering is pretty basic and support tools leave a lot to be desired, giving it a 4/5 score overall. With this in mind, if you’re after feature-rich software and can afford to pay a slight premium, QuickBooks and Xero will be more reliable options. Xero and QuickBooks are two of our best-rated accounting tools, but Wave is undoubtedly the safest bet for businesses watching the bottom line. Unlike Xero and QuickBooks, businesses can get started on Wave for completely free and the software is also available to an unlimited number of users — extending its use even further. Unlike QuickBooks, Xero users do not have any phone support options. To get it, you’ll just need to log in, visit Xero Central, and submit a query.
You can’t initiate a call, but you can submit a ticket and wait for an agent to call you. Another option for QuickBooks Online users is finding an independent QuickBooks ProAdvisor for assisted bookkeeping. You can search the online directory to locate financial professionals who specialize in working with your industry. Xero does offer Xero Advisors, but the QuickBooks ProAdvisor network is much larger. Note that fixed asset accounting isn’t part of our case study, so there are no scores. QuickBooks has a wide network of banking partners, making it easy to securely import your bank feeds from a variety of banks and credit card companies.
Startups & Small Businesses
Compare the features, pricing plans, and add-ons available with both QuickBooks and Xero to find the best accounting solution for your business. FreshBooks is one such option that has gained popularity in recent years. It’s designed specifically for small businesses and offers invoicing, time tracking and expense management. One of the advantages of using Xero is that it can save businesses time and money. With Xero, businesses can eliminate the need for paper records and reduce accounting fees.
Support network refers what is turnover in business importance and calculation to a community of software users that can extend professional help to businesses. Having an independent software expert perform the bookkeeping is good for overall ease of use. Lastly, our expert opinion score is our subjective rating based on our experience in trying the software. This section focuses more on first-time setup and software settings. Even after initial setup, the software must also let users modify information like company name, address, entity type, fiscal year-end, and other company information.
QuickBooks is also better for businesses that need to track inventory, as it has built-in inventory management features. Xero also has inventory management, but it’s not one of its core functions. One of the most important features any accounting tool can offer is integration with your business bank accounts. Ideally, you’ll want all your transactions flowing seamlessly into the software, with regular updates helping you keep on top of your cashflow.
