ou are running your small business, but sometimes it seems more like it’s running you, as you spend more and more of your time doing administrative work, rather than the things you love. Often, nothing is more straining than maintaining your books — which, nowadays Excel spreadsheets are replacing ledgers. Most small businesses are either chained to spreadsheets or have housed on their desktop Intuit QuickBooks. For years, Quickbooks has remained synonymous with small business accounting.
But lately, other small business accounting apps
have been cropping up ready to take that throne, each positioning themselves as an alternative to QuickBooks.
The biggest stir seems to be coming from one app — Xero. (At least it’s the one that Quickbooks is spending the most of its resources trying to combat.) Haven’t tried out or even heard of Xero accounting software yet? Maybe that’s because you’re over there stateside. As you can see in this graph, Quickbooks dominates the U.S. marketplace, while the New Zealand-bred Xero is the household name in Australia, the United Kingdom and their home country. But that six percent isn’t too bad when you know that translates to 18,000 U.S. small businesses. Plus, while Quickbooks is marketing heavily to Australia, Xero is doing the same in the U.S., having moved their office to San Francisco and eyeing an American IPO for 2015.
However, while we all really like a David and Goliath story, the battle of Quickbooks vs. Xero for your small business accounting all comes down to what each can do for you. That’s why today we set out to point out the differences that matter to you and your business.
What do they have in common?
Well, they’re accounting apps, so quite a lot. They all come equipped with these necessities:
- Online accounting
- Accounts payable / accounts receivable
- Banking synchronization
- Invoicing
- Payroll
- Financial reporting
- Quick view of cash flow
- Bank reconciliation
- Multi-currency
- Document sharing
- Billing management
- Countless integrations and add-ons with other
- See outstanding balances
- Both are mobile friendly
- Both you can take for Free Trials (no credit card required)
But the similarities largely end there.
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