Anyone here use Xero?

[ladymuck]

As a side note, I just had a nosy around their website.

Fees seem a little high to me!

Multiple Currenciews not supported unless you use the premium version at £33 per month, + another £5 for payroll +£2.50 for expenses + £5 to track projects?

They like an add on sale don't they!

I only pay for the basic module plus payroll. It was cheaper than Sage when I took it out but with the recent price hike I'm not so sure.

I trialled Projects for a while (on a discount) but it assumes that everyone works on an hourly rate (no option to select daily or hourly) and doesn't tell you what's left to invoice against a project budget, only what you have invoiced. I did also use Expenses for a while but, to be honest, it added no value. I can just as easily raise a 'Bill to pay', which is where expenses end up anyway once you've processed them. Maybe it would have nicely tracked mileage for me but it's not something I need to claim regularly enough to care about paying a fiver a month for.

[Maslins]

As we've grown from 2 people to have ~10 people on payroll they basically want to switch us from their "basic Ltd" package which uses FA as standard, to their "small business" package for which they use Xero and includes payroll. Effectively they want to transition us to the 'grown up' package which seems somewhat reasonable we're not the only one using different software. We plan to ask them about how this affects us but in the main, they do nearly everything anyway apart from us reviewing transactions.

That seems fair enough then. FreeAgent does aim at the micro business, and it works brilliantly for that.

If you grow (and at 10 staff you're already beyond FreeAgent's target market), there will be pain points. Sounds like possibly you've not experienced any personally yet, but perhaps your accountant has.

It sounds like you're fairly hands off in terms of bookkeeping etc, so I'm unsure what you personally do on FreeAgent. Just review balance sheet/P&L occasionally? You'll be able to still do those easily. Indeed another thing I'm hoping to get from Xero that FreeAgent doesn't cater well to is fancier reporting, potentially via 3rd party app integrations.

[Andy2022]

I use FreeAgent for my Ltd, and Xero for a Community Interest Company I'm a director of (and have used things like Sage and others in past)

I find FA straightforward and easy, it's got a few rough edges and limitations that annoy me from time to time but mostly it's OK

I dislike Xero with vengeance and dread having to update the CICs books even though they're simpler than my Ltds - everything seems way more complicated than it needs to be, that might be because it's aimed at larger Cos than the CIC but even then I can see ways the UI could make things so much easier.

Of course this isn't an objective assessment and YMMV

[eek]

I use FreeAgent for my Ltd, and Xero for a Community Interest Company I'm a director of (and have used things like Sage and others in past)

I find FA straightforward and easy, it's got a few rough edges and limitations that annoy me from time to time but mostly it's OK

I dislike Xero with vengeance and dread having to update the CICs books even though they're simpler than my Ltds - everything seems way more complicated than it needs to be, that might be because it's aimed at larger Cos than the CIC but even then I can see ways the UI could make things so much easier.

Of course this isn't an objective assessment and YMMV

Got to say my reaction to Xero when I looked at it in the past was this is way more complex than it needs to be.

What comes of targeting a world audience and not caring that much about localizations...