QuickBooks vs Xero 2024: Which Software Is Better for You?
Entry-level plan limits bills and invoices to five and 20 per month, respectively. Evaluate functions and features for different kinds of businesses. Xero and QuickBooks have similar pricing, except when it comes to QuickBooks Desktop. The Enterprise Desktop plan offered by QuickBooks starts at $1,922 per year. Follow our quick guide and our migration partners will have your data moving in no time.
The A/P section focuses on vendor management, bill management, bill payments, and other payable-related transactions. A/P features include creating vendors and bills, recording purchase orders and converting them to bills, creating service items, and recording full or partial bill payments. QuickBooks Online takes the lead because it’s generally easier to use than Xero. While Xero is easier to set up, QuickBooks has a more intuitive and customizable dashboard and has time-saving features. For instance, QuickBooks Online allows you to add an inventory item from the invoicing screen, something you can’t do with Xero.
Payroll
If you want access to their Gusto full-service payroll (available across all 50 states for US customers), pricing starts at $39/month base + $6/month per person. If you need to track income, expenses, invoices, and time, you’ll likely be paying $35/month for QBO or $60/month for Xero. For the top plans, you’ll get similar functionality from both providers. The chart of accounts is easy to manage, customize and track spend for each category. Both accounting softwares are easy to navigate, allowing you to find your required feature from a main dashboard with a sidebar. 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.
Popular features
The Established plan also supports a multi-currency function, which converts 160 different foreign currencies into your business’s local currency. QuickBooks Online has always been a great option for small businesses. With the addition of the Advanced plan, QBO is a good choice for larger businesses, as well. If you don’t want to handle your books yourself, you can sign up for QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping. This add-on is available for an additional charge and assigns a professional bookkeeper to manage your books.
Why small businesses love Xero
For this section, we considered customer service, support network, and a subjective expert opinion score. Users must have easy access to customer service channels in case of problems, questions, or assistance. The software must have features that allow users to set sales tax rates, apply them to invoices, and enable users to pay sales tax liability.
Xero and QuickBooks both offer a good number of integrations in their respective marketplaces. QuickBooks Online is rated 4.2 out of 5 on Capterra by 3520 users, while Xero has an average of 4.3 from 1880 users. QuickBooks works on Windows PCs, Macs, and major browsers including Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Edge. If you have Windows, you’ll need to be running Windows 7 or newer, with at least 4GBs of RAM and a processor comparable to the Intel Core i5. Both services are available on all the most common devices and browsers. Discover BusinessLoans.com’s lender network offering up to $3M in funding, no minimum credit score required.
The desktop version is installed on a computer, while the online version is accessed through a web browser. QuickBooks Online includes all the components of the desktop version, plus additional features such as more app integrations, a fully functional mobile app basics of lifo and fifo inventory accounting methods and more attractive pricing. The Online plans start at $35 per month while the only current Desktop version, Enterprise, must be paid annually and start at $1,922 per year. If you upgrade to at least the Essentials plan from QuickBooks, you can enter employee time by client or project and automatically add that time to invoices. For more robust scheduling and PTO management, you’ll need to purchase the separate QuickBooks Time product in addition to the accounting software. All of the QuickBooks plans allow you to create unlimited invoices and quotes and customize them to reflect your company branding.
- Xero does not offer built-in payroll but partners with Gusto, which has plans starting at $40/month plus $6/month per employee.
- It includes everything in Growing, plus multi-currency accounting, project costing and tracking, expense claims, and in-depth analytics.
- Merchant Maverick’s ratings are editorial in nature, and are not aggregated from user reviews.
- More specific categories – Business, Accounting, Payroll, Projects, and more – have their own dashboards, accessible with a horizontal sidebar.
Xero’s unlimited-users feature makes it a winner among larger businesses and well-established small businesses that require more than five users. It’s also less expensive than QuickBooks Online and a bit easier to use, thanks to its customizable dashboard and simple layout. 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 Online outclasses Xero in this category as it offers more useful features that aid in setting up the software. Xero took a hit for its lack of assisted onboarding support and new company wizard, but it does offer the ability to import beginning balances—a feature that QuickBooks Online lacks.
