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Xero Reviews: 4.4/5 — Solid Choice
Xero is a mature, cloud-based accounting platform for small and growing businesses that offers invoicing, bank reconciliation, expense capture, reporting, cash flow forecasting, multi-currency support and a large integrations ecosystem.
| Company | Xero Limited |
|---|---|
| Year founded | 2006 |
| Company size | 1000+ employees |
| Headquarters | Wellington, New Zealand |
| Capabilities |
AI
API
|
|---|---|
| Segment |
Small Business
Mid Market
Freelancer
|
| Ease of use |
Beginner
Advanced
|
| Deployment | Cloud / SaaS / Web-Based, Mobile Android, Mobile iPhone |
| Support | Chat, Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base |
| Training | Documentation, Videos |
| Languages | English |
Xero Pros and Cons
- Comprehensive core accounting, invoicing, expense tracking and reporting features
- Unlimited users with no per-user license fees in core plans
- Strong mobile app support and substantial feature parity on mobile
- Large ecosystem and open API with many integrations
- Transparent pricing with introductory discounts and multi-currency/localization support
- Some advanced features (multi-currency, project costing, expense claims) are available only in higher tiers
- Payroll in the US is via partner (Gusto), so native payroll varies by country
- No standard inbound phone support; phone contact is by callback rather than a public phone line
- Some features (e.g., auto-reconcile) are in Beta and may evolve
- Developer API terms prohibit using API data to train AI/ML models
Compare Xero with other popular tools in the same category.
Xero is quite useful and despite accounting not being my best side as a small business owner I can pull out quite a lot of data that is easily understandable. It's easy to use and money reconciliation with direct connection to bank saves a lot of time.
Unfortunately Xero is for only sole traders or people who do small / tiny business and don't care about growth. Xero support is beyond bad, there's no phone support and emails are usually answered after a day or two. In case where the business is literally running on its toes, growing quickly and need to adapt very quickly to any change, lack of support is a deal breaker. There's also a few things that are really confusing (like attaching a file to the invoice, you need to attach it a couple of times to make it work) but according to Xero they're working on it.
As mentioned we're small internet based business but growing about 100-150% a year. After using Xero for about 2 years I passed all of the management to our accountants who are Xero partners. Even them have problems with Xero and ask us (as account managers) to contact support. To be honest reviewer - this is a review of the user who is leaving Xero after 3 happy years, because the last year was quite unhappy and Xero just couldn't handle it. As a side note I'd like to mention that from Xero support it slipped out that Xero company is not using Xero themselves! (as accounting software)
