The “war” between Xero and Quickbooks has been going on since the start of cloud accounting. Both Xero and Quickbooks were one of the first companies in the cloud accounting industry. While Quickbooks is supported by the multinational Intuit, Xero started from humble beginnings in Australia.
Both companies provide cloud accounting services and target SMEs. This means that any entrepreneur will likely choose either company to create their first chart of accounts (i.e. categorise for income, expenses, assets and liabilities) and use either software to start recording their first expenses or incomes.
For example, if John starts a shoe company, he’ll likely need to make a payment for his first shipment of 100 shoes to Singapore. If that shipment cost $10,000, his first entry in his cloud accounting software will be a debit of $10,000 for inventory.
Xero has more apps and is more open sourced
Xero is known for its plethora of apps. Software companies create integrations for users to connect to Xero and have a more integrated ERP system. For example, Hubspot has a Xero integration which allows SME owners to create invoices within the Hubspot CRM among other features.
Quickbooks isn’t known for being open sourced. While there’s also a Hubspot Quickbooks app, Quickbooks doesn’t provide as much documentation for developers. This means that developers are less likely to create apps for Quickbooks. As a SME, you may not care about this. But this will start to affect your business a lot more as you expand and require more softwares (which means that you’ll need more integrations).
Hiring a developer to build a custom-built Quickbooks app for a new software that your business is using can start to become really expensive and time consuming really quick.
Xero has reliable bank connections with major banks in Singapore
This next point largely applies to Singaporean SMEs. If you’re a Malaysian or non-Singapore based SME, this might not apply. Xero has connections with most major banks in Singapore including POSB and UOB. While Quickbooks has integrations with some of the local banks, the support is known to be less reliable and most Xero accounting firms are more familiar with connecting Xero.
Xero has many other neat features that Quickbooks doesn’t
Not every accountant may require these features but it’s nice to have them just in case. Xero has an app that allows you to take a photo of all receipts and invoices, and to quickly upload them to your Xero account. All you need is a phone and working internet connection and its super simple to use.
Another useful feature that Xero has is a fixed asset module. It allows you to better manage your assets’ depreciation and can be really handy for a SME with a lot of assets and depreciations that you need to manage.
Xero has better pricing
This might not sound like much since both Xero and Quickbooks are relatively affordable. After all, Xero only charges $50 per month for its standard offer. However, Xero allows for unlimited users for just one fixed monthly fee whereas Quickbooks’ fees vary depending on the number of users. Also, Quickbooks has had a history of slowly increasing its prices whereas Xero’s prices have more or less stayed the same over the past few years.
There are a lot more Singaporean accounting firms offering Xero accounting services
In April 2018, the PSG Grant was launched. One aspect of the PSG Grant was that it subsidised (then) up to 50% of Xero for SMEs in Singapore. Though Quickbooks was later added, a lot of accounting firms ended up recommending Xero to clients because of the grant. Therefore there are a lot more accounting firms in Singapore offering Xero services compared to Quickbooks or Wave or any other accounting software.
Looking for a Xero accounting firm?
If you’d like to find out more about Xero or your accounting options, contact WLP Group at +65 6493 2970.