Xero vs QuickBooks | Standard Plan vs Essentials Plan

Since similarities between Xero vs QuickBooks Online are same as described earlier in "Xero Starter Plan vs QuickBooks Start Plan". So lets discuss about the differences between Xero Standard Plan vs QuickBooks Essentials Plan.

VS

Winner: XERO

1. Pricing: 
Winner: Quickbooks

Xero offers the initial package of $30/month which is named as “STANDARD”. Whereas QuickBooks offers the package of $26.95/month which is termed as “ESSENTIALS”.


2. Users: 
Winner: Xero
Xero offers unlimited users and collaborate with your team and invite your accounting professional to view your business data for valuable real-time advice. On the other hand QuickBooks Online allows only 3 users who can simultaneously use Quickbooks online.

3.Integration with apps:  
Winner: Xero
Over 350 business applications like inventory, time tracking and payroll connect with Xero. On the other hand, QuickBooks Online offers roughly 248 apps integrated with it.

4. Ease of Use: 
Winner: Xero
Xero is remarkably easy to use as it is an open source and there is no need of installing software – just log in. Xero has invested in class-leading infrastructure to ensure that your data is always accessible to you. It's easy to change your plan. You can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time depending on which features you need and when. Email or drag and drop files into Xero and store them all in one handy place online.
QuickBooks Online is also an open source but it lacks behind Xero as its efficiency is poor than Xero.

5. Features: 
Winner: Tie
There are certain features of Xero vs QuickBooks Online which are given below in the table:

Key Features	Xero	QuickBooks Online
Track your income, expenses and profits	Yes	Yes
Automatic bank feeds	Yes	Yes
Security	Yes	Yes
Invoices and Bills	Unlimited	Unlimited
Access data online tablet, or smartphone	Yes	Yes
Back up your data automatically	Yes	Yes
Free support, 24/7	Yes	Yes
Bank transactions	Unlimited	Unlimited
Multi Currency	No	Yes
Free self Service Payroll	Up to 5 Employees	Up to 10 Employees

6. Reviews:
 Winner: QuickBooks
 
Positive Reviews for Xero:

• It offers unlimited users for free. 
• More than 350 apps are integrated with it.
• Secure
• Ease of use
• 24X7 customer support

Negative Reviews for Xero:

• Cannot handle multiple currencies.
• Gives free service payroll to only up to 5 employees. 

Positive reviews for QuickBooks Online are: 

• Track your income, expenses and profits.
• Send unlimited quotes and invoices on the go.
• Back up your data automatically.
• Security
• Handle multiple currencies.

Negative reviews for QuickBooks Online:

• Cannot track billable hours by customer.

• Gives free service payroll to only up to 10 employees.

Conclusion:
Hence Xero is the winner in Xero Standard Plan vs QuickBooks Essentials Plan. 

Ved Paliwal
Owner of GD Outsourcing Services 

Xero vs QuickBooks | Starter Plan Start Plan Comparison as a User

As of 23rd June,15

Well it is difficult to compare Xero vs QuickBooks Online as they both offers different plans which have many similarities and is differentiated in many aspects too.
Similarities are:

• Both Xero vs QuickBooks Online are cloud-based.
• Both include free mobile apps for iPhone/iPad and Android devices. Etc.
  VS
  
  Winner: QUICKBOOKS

Talking about similarities is not our concern. Our point of concern is to differentiate both and finding which is better.. Xero Starter Plan or QuickBooks Online Start Plan for Micro Business?
If you want to compare other plans, visit:

• Xero Standard Plan vs QuickBooks Essentials Plan
• Xero Premium Plan vs QuickBooks Plus Plan

Xero vs QuickBooks Online starts here:

1. Pricing: 
Winner: Quickbooks
Xero offers the initial package of $20/month which is named as “STARTER”. Whereas QuickBooks offers the package of $12.95/month which is termed as “SIMPLE START”.


2. Users: 
Winner: Xero
Xero offers unlimited users and collaborate with your team and invite your accounting professional to view your business data for valuable real-time advice. On the other hand QuickBooks allow only one user who can simultaneously use Quickbooks online.

3.Integration with apps:  
Winner: Xero
Over 350 business applications like inventory, time tracking and payroll connect with Xero. On the other hand, QuickBooks Online offers roughly 248 apps integrated with it.

4. Ease of Use: 
Winner: Xero
Xero is remarkably easy to use as it is an open source and there is no need of installing software – just log in. Xero has invested in class-leading infrastructure to ensure that your data is always accessible to you. It's easy to change your plan. You can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time depending on which features you need and when. Email or drag and drop files into Xero and store them all in one handy place online.
QuickBooks is also an open source but it lacks behind Xero as its efficiency is poor than Xero.

5. Features: 
Winner: QuickBooks
There are certain features of Xero vs QuickBooks Online which are given below in the table:

Key Features	Xero	QuickBooks Online
Track your income, expenses and profits	Yes	Yes
Automatic bank feeds	Yes	Yes
Security	Yes	Yes
Invoices and Bills	Only 5 invoices	Unlimited
Access data online tablet, or smartphone	Yes	Yes
Back up your data automatically	Yes	Yes
Free support, 24/7	Yes	Yes
Bank transactions	20	Unlimited

 

6. Reviews:
 Winner: QuickBooks
 
Positive Reviews for Xero: 

• It offers unlimited users for free. 
• More than 350 apps are integrated with it.
• Secure
• Ease of use
• 24X7 customer support

Negative Reviews for Xero: 

• Limited mobile functionality.
• Create and send only 5 invoices and bill.
• Reconcile 20 bank transactions.

Positive reviews for QuickBooks Online are: 

• Track your income, expenses and profits.
• Send unlimited quotes and invoices on the go.
• Back up your data automatically.
• Security 

Negative reviews for QuickBooks Online:

• Cannot handle multiple currencies.
• Don’t have control on what your users can access.

Conclusion:
Hence by comparing Xero vs QuickBooks Online, we had gone through the conclusion that on a basic level i.e for a micro level and single handed business QuickBooks Online is the winner as Xero limit to 5/20 invoices/transactions while QuickBooks allows unlimited transaction.

Ved Paliwal
Owner of GD Outsourcing Services 

Common Causes for Out of Balance Errors in Xero

Sometimes the transaction details may vary between the Xero statement and the bank's statement of transactions. These variations in transaction details among Xero and bank is termed as Balance Errors. These errors are very common whether you are the first timers or even if you are very keen to it then also these errors can occur.

The most common reasons/causes for Out Of Balance errors are:

• Incorrect Conversion Balance – When you are setting up your Xero ledger for the first time you have to enter an opening balance for the bank account. If you entered a number that is different from your bank statement balance at conversion date then you will face many problems. The most common reason to enter a different balance is that you entered your ledger balance in which there are an outstanding payments/receipts details that hadn’t yet hit the bank statement. If this is the case then you will need to follow the steps given below:

1. Change the Conversion Balances and post only the actual bank statement balance to the bank account,
2. In Conversion, Balances post the total of the reconciling items to Suspense, and
3. In the Bank account, enter the reconciling items as Spend/Receive Money transactions coded against Suspense and dated prior to the conversion date. You have probably already coded the incoming statement lines for these reconciling items so you may need to remove these and re-match the bank statement lines to the pre-conversion transactions you have just entered. 

• Manually Reconciled Transactions – Using the “Mark as Reconciled” function should be rare. It should never be used when you have reliable bank feeds coming in as it is the most common cause of problems created by the clients. These can easily be found by looking at the Statement Exceptions tab on the Reconciliation Report or by sorting the Transactions tab of the Bank Account screen by reconciliation status. You may need to investigate each manually reconciled transaction to determine whether it is valid and, if not, ‘remove and redo’ it.

• Duplicate Bank Statement Lines – These are much more common especially in Yodlee feeds. Xero does attempt to identify them but is not much reliable as they are very hard to identify. You could troll through the bank statement import logs which are in a bank statements tab in the bank account screen. The next step is to compare your Xero generated statement to the physical statement.

• Missing Bank Statement Lines – Before bank feed starts – When you set up a bank account in Xero the bank feed data might be missing for the first few weeks. You can see when your feeds started by looking at the Bank Statements tab in the bank account screen and sort it according to start date. The easiest way to solve this is to import the missing data from your bank account and then reconcile these transactions.  If you have already manually reconciled then check whether you had done it correctly.  

• Missing Bank Statement Lines – after bank feed starts – This is somewhat common with Yodlee feeds and is very hard to find. The only option is to compare your Xero generated statement to the physical statement.

• Deleted Bank Statement Lines – Users usually delete the bank statement line from the reconciliation screen and thereby throw your reconciliation out of balance. The easiest place to see if this has happened is by looking on the Statement Exceptions page of the Reconciliation Report.

Hence, these are the Common Causes for Out of Balance Errors in Xero and should be found and sort in order to make your transaction details bug proof.

Ved Paliwal
Owner of GD Outsourcing Services

Easily Convert Quickbooks to Xero

To Convert Quickbooks to Xero, there is a tool which is widely used. The name of the tool is FlashConvert. FlashConvert supports "convert Quickbooks to Xero."

As standard Flash Convert converts:

Easily convert Ouickbooks to Xero

• Transaction Data: By default, all open sales and purchasing transactions will be migrated to balance your ledgers.  If you want more detail, select the number of years of history you would like to migrate and we will be bring it across for you and give you the data behind your opening balances;

• Sales History 

• Purchasing History

• Business Data: Migrate Customers, Suppliers and Inventory painlessly, just tick what data you want, review it, if you need to clean it up and when you’re happy publish it to Xero;

• Customers

• Suppliers

• Inventory

• Suppliers

• Inventory

                   
The team at Flash Convert are working hard to release more Xero conversion tools to simplify your life.  If you operate another accounting package and would like to use Flash Convert, simply upload your datafile and we will provide you with a quote to manually convert your datafile within 3 business days.

Before you run Flash Convert, please make sure you have: 

1. Created a Xero Account    
2. Defined your General Ledger (check with your accountant or visit www.xero.com for help)
3. Reconciled your existing accounting system and closed the current  financial period. 

Hence, you can easily convert Quickbooks to Xero is simplified using Flash Convert.

 

Ved Paliwal 

Owner of GD Outsourcing Services

How to Apply Sales Invoice to Bills in Xero?

"How to Apply Sales Invoice to Bills in Xero?" Solution to this is little tricky. 

Some software do not follow this as they took both vending and supplying a different thing and generate the different bills for the same. For instance let's have a look on barter payment with a supplier.

Follow these steps to record a barter payment with a supplier (by a transaction of goods or services to reduce debt you owe to them), rather than paying money through a bank account. You might also refer to this as offsetting sales invoices with bills.

Barter invoicing should be treated the same as a normal invoicing situation. 

You'll need to firstly record the two transactions separately by raising a bill and a sales invoice. What you can then do in Xero is effectively show the sales invoice as being paid and recognize the reduction on the amount owing on the bill, by following these steps:

• Go into your Chart of Accounts, select the Suspense account and tick the box 'Enable payments to this account'.
• Go into the sales invoice and enter the payment details, instead of selecting the bank account, select the Suspense account. In the invoice payment Reference field you may want to enter 'offset bill' or other suitable note for yourself. 
• Go into the bill and enter the payment details (being the amount of the sales invoice), again select the Suspense account. This time in the Reference field you may want to enter 'offset sales invoice' or similar.

The net effect in the Suspense account for this transaction should be zero, the Sales outstanding balance should be zero and the Purchases balance is now reduced by the amount of the sales invoice.

You should check with your accountant or bookkeeper about offsetting any debt and check with them that this is the way they would like you to offset sales invoices and bills.

Hence, "How to Apply Sales Invoice to Bills in Xero?" is been easily be solved by using this.

Ved Paliwal 

Owner of GD Outsourcing Services