We use Quickbooks Online, Xero and Clearbooks - have around 30 clients and these packages meet their needs for keeping their invoices, payments and VAT up to date.

The BW tearm use QB and Xero more than the other two as most clients who come to us are already using them or they have heard about them and want to changeover.

A few clients come to us using Sage and are keen for us to help them transition onto the one of the more user friendly cloud based packages.

In our view, QB has a really easy to use customer section - so for clients who are happy to set up new customers and send invoices from their phone we find they usually prefer QB. With a name and email address you can set up a new customer and send them an invoice as soon as you finish the work.

For a VAT registered business QB has enough capacity to deal with most small businesses. QB is able to file VAT returns using Making Tax Digital.

The Advanced Payroll on QB is the better of the two available choices and in this one respect QB has an advantage over Xero as their payroll needs to be improved - however this is being done behind the scenes so they will probably catch up.

Multiple bank accounts can be linked to it so that you can see the transactions as they are happening.  This means your books are almost as up to date as your banking app if you stay on top of everything regularly.  Some of the newer 'online only' banks do not link to QB so we would recommend finding this out before you make a choice.

You or your bookkeeper can set up templates for custom reports which show your figures monthly, quarterly whatever makes the figures more usable for you.

With Xero the search facility is better, when you are trying to find a supplier or customer the search is more user friendly. More of the 'online only' banks can be linked to Xero although ironically one of them did need to receive a letter in the post to get this sorted!

Xero is really good for putting reports into spreadsheet form - if you are comfortable with figures and spreadsheets you may prefer this package.

For a VAT registered business Xero has enough capacity to deal with most small businesses. Xero is able to file VAT returns using Making Tax Digital.

Uploading a budget to Xero is quite easy which means you can run reports to show the difference between what you expected to spend and what has actually been spent.

The cost is fairly similar for the two but always ask your bookkeeper if they can get you a discount as it can be cheaper to buy through them than it is to pay directly.

Hopefully this is a helpful insight into the two packages.  Contact us if you would like to know more about using BW Bookkeeping and Project Solutions Ltd for your ongoing bookkeeping needs.