We’re proud to announce that CPA Practice Advisor, one of the USA’s most prominent accounting publications, has given Xero a glowing 5 star review. The only other online accounting application to receive 5 stars was Quickbooks Online. Xero has been going for 7 years and on the ground in the US for just over a year, while Quickbooks Online launched back in 1999.
CPA Practice Advisor notes “The investments Xero are making are causing the entire online accounting small business segment to be much more competitive than in prior years.”
Whether you choose Xero or another solution, moving to the cloud is making small businesses at large more efficient, and that’s good for everyone. In the US, more than 95% of businesses are classified as small businesses. Together they contribute to over half of annual GDP.
Many of our prospective customers ask me about the differences between Quickbooks Online and Xero. The reality is Quickbooks Online has some features that we don’t and Xero has some features that Quickbooks Online doesn’t. What I tell prospective customers is that Xero has been designed from the ground up for the web and built in a way that is simple, elegant, and intuitive for a small business. Below is a list of things that customers tell us what sets us apart from our US competition.
For any business:
- Beautiful design: Every feature is easy-to-use so that customers are telling us: “it just works and saves time”.
- Mobile: We’ve optimized our web app to work on any device. We have native apps for Android and iPhone with invoicing, bank reconciliation, and photo capture of expenses that automatically upload to Xero.
- Unlimited users: Yes, that’s right, add as many users as you like with no extra fee.
- Unlimited support: 24/7 customer support.
- Expense management: Built-in expense management and approval process that extends to our mobile applications.
- Multicurrency: We make it easy to capture live spot rates in over 160 currencies so you don’t have to reconcile rates at a later date.
- Add-on ecosystem and developer network: We have over 150 add-on partners and over 1000 active apps that work with Xero. The next closest is Quickbooks Online with 32 add-on partners.
- Accountant collaboration: The ability for different users to discuss and make notes related to a transaction right inside the application.
- Forward thinking accountant network: If you are looking for a tech-savvy accountant who wants to work with you in a paperless fashion … take your pick from this list.
- 99.99% uptime: We’ve had industry standard uptime since we started and have never had a multi-day outage.
Xero has over 135,000 small businesses using its software. We constantly hear glowing remarks from customers, for example from Bridget Labus, the CEO and founder of Sixth Course chocolatier in San Francisco “Xero has cut my accounting time by 80%. It gives me goose bumps thinking about all that extra time I have”.
For the accountant
- No annual fee to use Xero Partner Edition. It’s free.
- Includes compilation reports
- Includes write-up capability
- Includes built-in management reports
- Includes dedicated Enablement Specialist to get you up and running
- Includes full practice management software at 25 organizations
- Includes work papers software at 100 organizations
Our network of accountants continues to grow quickly in the United States. Accounting partners tell us that they are saving up to 40 days a year by using Xero for their customers, time that they can now dedicate to growing their business.
The accounting landscape is truly changing and we are happy to be a leading player this accelerating shift to the cloud. If you are a small business and are interested in Xero, you can try our 6 month free trial here. If you are an accountant and are interested in learning more about how to become a Xero Certified Partner sign up here.
Great to hear good traction being made in this key market. Excellent ***** result.
Totally deserved and +1 to all of the comments above, Xero brings simplicity and efficiency to what is normally a painstaking process for many business owners. Xero’s definitely a game changer.
It’s great to see some shake-ups in the accounting software niche! Love seeing a newcomer (relatively) challenge the establishment! We may have to give your product a try soon 🙂
This all sounds great but our experience with Xero is that is doesn’t connect with Citibank and it can’t import QuickBooks legacy info — Xero’s own support team could no import files — its a great product for lemon-aid stands but serious business needs much more — right now we are looking for a data entry person in India so that we can get past info into Xero and then test it — way too much effort!
@Russ We are working with a number of conversion partners that may be able to assist you, as converting past data can be a pain point.
We do have a feed for Citibank through our integration with Yodlee that many of our customers are using successfully. We understand your company has been in contact with support. As you do seem to still be having issues I’m happy to arrange someone to contact you.
Yeah, Russ, I would agree with you. We would switch from QuickBooks in our small business if Xero made it easy to convert. Their ecosystem is clearly better, but they still haven’t figured out how to get the millions of small businesses using QuickBooks to join them as customers. If that switch was easy, they would see a huge surge in revenue.
Hi Prescott. We have rolled out at least 20 Qbks conversions to Xero in the past 6-8 weeks for our client base. It really isn’t too bad once you have done it a few times. Once our clients have made the switch we / they have not looked back. They are loving xero and it is revolutionising the way we roll out services. Cheers, Billy
@Billy, so can you elaborate how you’ve done the QB conversions efficiently?
7 years of XERO and still no multilingual support? There are other languages in the world you know.