Xero

Pros

Professional double entry software at a very affordable price
Accommodates both cash and accrual accounting
Links to financial institutions to get transactions
Uses standard importer recognized by the financial institutions instead of just trying to log in remotely (and triggering fraud alerts)
Can match multiple invoices to a single deposit transaction imported from bank
Can keep using Xero as company grows

Cons

Pre-existing expense categories/descriptions don't map 1:1 with IRS definitions, so I'm having to go back to all my receipts to make sure expenses are entered in proper accounts because I didn't realize this when I switched
More difficult to focus on specific expense categories to check transactions
Have not been able to import historic data from previous app (possibly because it's not double entry) so I am still paying the subscription on that software to retain access to my data
No integration with Craftybase, so I have to enter supply purchases and customer invoices there independently

Pros

As a former quickbooks user of about 20 years, it was a big deal to switch platforms. At first glance it looked like it would do everything we wanted. I loved the price point, the interface and relative ease of use. The multi currency was great as was the ability to integrate with Stripe. You make a lot of compromises to save on the huge monthly cost of quickbooks but there are workarounds.

Cons

There are so many things that are just common/must have's for any business. Things like progressive billing, job costing and even the ability to make your own journal entries are missing. We had to hire a consultant and spend around $800 just to get it to add purchases easier to the mix with HubDoc. You see job costing catagories at the invoice level but not software or 3rd party app to back it up. The single most annoying thing about it is the support. It's non existent. You complain, They tell you its not a problem and ignore your requests. I struggle daily with the search function. I can't get about 50% of my searches to work. The clients I'm looking for are entered. I'm typing them in fine but you often have to visit contacts menu and find them manually by quote number or just never ending scrolling. Upon complaining numerous times the best they can do is say "it might take up to two weeks for your contacts to sync. " Xero: It's 2020 and the dark ages of cloud software have passed. You need to fix the search function and add job costing to be considered a contender. So here we are in 2020, manually adding each of our sales to a spreadsheet and adding the subsequent bills to it to see if we made $. They make it incredibly hard to contact support and they are quite unresponsive when they do reply to your ticket. They try really hard to push you to support forums, where there are literally hundreds of complaints on the same issue with the ability to comment closed.

Pros

Nothing, nothing at all. The software is nothing more than a glorified analysed cashbook. Support is poor and some of the replies from Support demonstrate the advisor doesn't understand accounts, the accounts structure or the damage that can be done by the advice they are giving.

Cons

All purchases whether a supplier, or a bottle of milk from Tesco's is a contact. A bottle of milk for the office should be coded directly to the nominal code, not a new supplier "Tesco's" created.

Cash in an out of bank should be the same as the bank statement on a live bank feed, but it excludes transfers from savings to current account so not a true reflection of cash in and out.

Xero doesn't reconcile customer receipts, even through the name on the receipt in the bank is the same as the customer account exactly.

Xero dump a lot of support on to the accountant who provides the service.

Xero creates accounts for customers and suppliers on it's own if it doesn't recognise a payment or receipt in the bank account. Software should never be allowed to decide if it wants to create something automatically.

Xero isn't as automated as Sage Accounts, for instance when bulk invoicing over several days, you can't set the date at software level, you have to keep changing the date.

When importing from Sage into Xero for the first time, if Xero doesn't understand an item on the invoice, it simply creates a new line on the invoice whether you want it to or not and there is no way apparently to undo this once done.

Xero works with receipt bank and you can spend hours trying to tell it an expense is not to be coded to a customer.

I could go on.

Pros

I loved how easy it was to integrate XERO with my bank accounts and Paypal. XERO seamlessly connected and kept my balances up to date. I also liked how easy it was to invoice clients and connect invoices to Paypal or Stripe.

Cons

Unfortunately, the reconciliation process in XERO is a no-go for me. Rather than the Quickbooks and standard approach, where you do a monthly reconciliation against a bank statement, XERO had no such function. Once an item was matched up to a bank transaction, it was considered "reconciled." No option to close out a month and double-check transactions. I went back to QBO to get that feature.

Pros

As an accountant and bookkeeping business owner I have been using accounting software for well over 10 years. I have to say when Xero entered the market I was definitely curious as to what it could bring to the market. I believe Xero have captured a very nice niche of the industry with it's very business orientated user interface and simplisitic feel. It makes accounting somewhat fun for the business owner. The way that they have revolutionized the way the bank reconciliation is performed makes it easier for buiness owner and accountant/bookkeeper to work together. I love the comments functionality and the rules that can be set to repeating transactions. The AI in the bank reconciliation also has a very nice balance to it. It will allocate your transactions when you need it to, but not too aggressively - meaning you don't have to undo all the automatic allocations (unlike some other software like MYOB).

They also have a lot of resources to help business owners and financial professionals. In addition they make continual updates to their software to adapt to the times.

Cons

I think the biggest con of the software is the price tag. Many of my clients have found this to be a stumbling block, saying that the monthly subscription fee is too high for their business.

Other than the price, the only other con is the support is only via email (this is the last time I had an issue which was a few months ago). They do not have a support contact phone line (in Australia at least) - so response has to be via email (which may lead onto a call later if it cannot be resolved by email). Which takes longer to resolve the issues.