Xero vs QuickBooks Online: Features Comparison, Pros, Cons

Standard phone support is available Monday through Friday, 9 AM to 8 PM EST, and 24/7 with the QuickBooks Online Advanced plan. Service or project-based businesses should what is marginal revenue choose accounting software that can track project costs, revenues, and profits. The software must have tools to track time, record billable hours or expenses, send invoices for progress billings, or monitor project progress and performance. Xero and QuickBooks Online are both powerful accounting software solutions for small businesses. However, when you compare features, QuickBooks Online inches ahead for its stronger feature set, ease of sharing with accountants and customer support.

Plans to suit your business

Access Xero features for 30 days, then decide which plan best suits your business. With QuickBooks Online, you have to upgrade your plan level in order to add a certain amount of users—and even with the Advanced plan, you have a maximum user count of 25. Overall, to determine the better cost of Xero or QuickBooks Online, it largely depends on your business’s size and what features matter the most to you. Both QuickBooks Online and Xero generally cost the same, but overall, Xero is slightly cheaper. However, QuickBooks Online has a little more value than Xero in terms of features and capabilities, which is something to keep in mind as you compare the two. In Xero, there’s simply no way to run this view in the reports section of the software.

Xero vs. QuickBooks Online: Entering Transactions

For example, although Xero offers the cheapest software plan ($9 per month) and QuickBooks Online offers the most expensive ($180 per month), on the whole, their pricing falls within the same general range. Plus, when you factor in the accounting tools and general features involved with each individual plan, it’s easy to argue that both Xero and QuickBooks Online are appropriately priced for their services. Xero vastly outperforms QuickBooks in its fixed asset management tools. With QuickBooks, you can record the purchase of a fixed asset, but with Xero, you can track fixed assets, calculate and track their depreciation, and much more.

Although there’s no doubt that QuickBooks offers substantial integration opportunities, including with some of their own branded tools, it’s hard to compare to Xero’s over 700 options. If you wanted this view, you would have to go to banking (bank feeds), then to the account transactions. Then, you can sort by reconciled status, or use the search feature on this section.

The software must have bank integrations to automatically feed bank or card transactions. The bank reconciliation module must also let users reconcile accounts with or without bank feeds for optimal ease of use. You can rely on Xero and QuickBooks Online for project accounting, as both allow you to create estimates and set up and track projects. With QuickBooks Online, you can track expenses by project in the Plus plan, but you can’t compare it to estimated costs unless you have the Advanced tier.

1. This includes the ability to accept payments, view reports, and assign expenses to customers or projects.
2. 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.
3. The best accounting software received top marks when evaluated across 10 categories and more than 30 subcategories.
4. Live Bookkeepers aren’t responsible for errors resulting from incorrect information that you provide, or if you re-open the books by overriding closure after a Live Bookkeeper completes the month-end closure.

Xero and QuickBooks Online are robust accounting software programs, and—in our case study—both prove why they’re the leading tools in the industry. They may have almost the same features, but each has its own strengths and drawbacks. The software must also have a mobile app to enable users to perform accounting tasks even when away from their laptops or desktops. Support network refers 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.

Features

In evaluating pricing, we considered the billing cycle (monthly or annual) and number of users. QuickBooks Online’s customer support is better than Xero’s since you can interact with an agent through a phone call. You can’t initiate a call, but you can submit a ticket and wait for an agent to call you. Note that fixed asset accounting isn’t part of our case study, so there are no scores.

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. Both have great A/P features, but QuickBooks Online is slightly better due to its ability to generate recurring payments. Xero lets you create a recurring bill but not the payment, which means it doesn’t charge your checking account automatically. You might prefer QuickBooks for invoicing and A/R management, and it earned a perfect mark in this category. It offers plenty of customization options, which can be a great deal for those wanting to present and maintain a professional brand image.

Sign up to receive more well-researched small business articles and topics in your inbox, personalized for you. We consider this a draw, and the ratings presented above are simply reflections of the average scores of Xero and QuickBooks Online on review sites. We looked into the positive and negative feedback of both software, and we found that they received a fair share of praise and complaints.