Andrew Tarantola for Gizmodo.com writes: April 15th will be here before you know it, and it's not like you've got complicated offshore holdings (or any holdings, for that matter), so why put off your taxes any longer than necessary? There are plenty of online services that let you do your taxes as soon as a you have your W-2. And unlike last year's debacle at the CPA, you won't be scolded for not putting on pants. Here's a guide to filing your taxes online—including the best services for your buck.
[Insert: ExactCPA we advises this path only for the most simple & straight forward returns only. Some of these products are designed to "get you in the door with a low introductory price - then unbeknownst to you the consumer have additional fees and costs for support, additional features, etc. you might need and only learn once you've bought the product and learn your Tax Return is more involved or detailed than you originally thought - at the end of the day you end up spending $100 - $300. It's actually less expensive to use us, ExactCPA (and a real CPA) than many of these products, call us at 973.996.2284 and we'll explain how in detail. If you do use one of these products, we offer at $29 "Second Look/ Review" of your return by CPA looking for errors, omissions, and mistakes.] Good Luck.
Your first stop should be to the IRS website, which is thankfully much less opaque and much more navigable than the tax code it covers. Here, you can download and print the various forms and schedules you'll need to complete and file. As such, this is the least expensive option for filing taxes, costing little more than postage and a few hours of your time. It is also the riskiest. Even if you're just filing a basic 1040, the chances of calculating an incorrect sum, failing to enter the correct ID information or attach the correct schedule are very real and could well result in an audit if you're not careful.
That's a lot of risk for the average taxpayer to bear but, luckily, the IRS Free File program was created for just such a reason. The program is a free service funded by a public-private partnership between the IRS and commercial tax software companies like TurboTax. It's free for all taxpayers; however, some preparation companies do carry their own restrictions. They nearly universally limit joint income to $57,000 (and also universally charge a fee for filing state your taxes) and some restrict their service based on age, while a proportion will also use your state of residence, necessary forms, and military status as criteria.
There are 15 Free File partners in all; you can see each one's individual restrictions and requirements here.
Basic or Deluxe?
As with all things capitalistic, the free service you receive is generally the barest-boned version that the company is allowed to market. The upside is that this is still very useful to a lot of people. If, for example, you are single, have no dependents, make about $40,000 a year, rent your home, and are filing a single W-2, you probably don't need to pay a dime.
If you've filed your taxes with the same preparer in previous years and don't feel like reentering the data, you might want to spring for a slightly upgraded version that allows for information importation. Or if you are married and have kids, a mortgage, investments, or a ton of deductions, you'd do well to spring for a more deluxe package that is either looked over by a real accountant before submitting, or provides some other form of integrity check is a good idea.
Freelancers, people trying to leverage shady tax shelters, and anyone who knows what a schedule C involves should probably stop reading now and just hire a good CPA—you'll need it. For everybody else, these are a few of the bigger, more reputable brands in online tax prep:
The Cheap One: Tax Act
The Free Federal Edition service from Tax Act is among the least expensive—and least restrictive—of the major online services, offering free federal e-filing and $15 state filing for anyone ages 18 to 57 with a maximum adjusted gross income of $51,000 living anywhere in the country, as well as citizens with foreign addresses. The free service also includes multiple automatic verification scripts, dubbed "Examiners," for your deductions, credits, and income calculations. It will even help you file an extension if you need it.
The next step up, the Deluxe Federal Edition, allows returning customers to import their ID information, includes a donations calculator for folks trying to write off their charitable giving, additional Examiners and calculators for major life changes that may have occurred over the last year (death of a spouse, joining the armed forces, etc). This service costs $10, but you get a $5 discount off the state filing, for a $20 total.
The Ultimate bundle is also $20—the service is $19.95 and the state filing is gratis. It includes everything the lower iterations do as well as free phone support, which otherwise costs a one-time fee of $8 for the 2012 tax year, and a litany of guarantees.
Why not just get Ultimate, since it costs the same as Deluxe? Good question! It depends on how put off you are by unnecessary bells and whistles. Sometimes, less (confusing) is more (helpful).
Turbo Tax is the largest online tax service in America and offers five levels of service, with federal returns running from free to $100 and state returns from $28 to $37 Its free-offering state filing charges nearly double that of Tax Act, but includes free live chat tax advice. The Basic package costs $20 for federal and jumps to $37 for state but offers step-by-step guidance, information importing (both your personal info and your W2 info from participating employers). The Deluxe, Premier, and Home & Business packages above that offer improved deduction and donation calculators, and are designed for people with more complex tax liabilities such as landlords and the self-employed.
eSmartTax is a very inexpensive service as well, charging only $13 per state filing. Problem is, the service only handles 35 states: AL, AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, GA, HI, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MI, ME, MD, MA, MN, MS, MO, MT, NE, NJ, NM, NY, NC, ND, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, UT, VA, VT, WA, DC, WV and WI. It is further restricted to people under the age of 52 with a maximum gross adjusted income of $57,000. The free version does also offer free information importing, free live chat support but does not support itemized deductions. You'll need to spring for the $20 Deluxe package for that.
H&R Block is the second-largest online tax service in America behind Tubo Tax and offer pricing and plans roughly inline with them. The Free Edition includes automated prep help, deduction and credit checks, a free federal e-filing, and one free session of live chat or email tax advice. The $20 Basic Edition also includes information importing and a step-by-step guide wizard, while the $40 Deluxe is geared towards home owners and allows users to import tax information and receive additional help with investment income questions. State filing costs $28 under the Free Edition and $35 under the others.
- • Flag as inappropriate
4
9I have created the bank of america file format for other software. And I am pretty sure that we would be able to create and bank interface using the API. I would need to confirm this with our developers.
Australia were smart because they have a standard bank file format that all the banks adhere to I am not sure if this is the case for America or if different file formats are needed for the different banks.
1Any thoughts and comments welcome on the thread over on our Xero Business Community site https://community.xero.com/business/discussion/81281/
Xero add-ons: http://www.xero.com/accounting-software/add-ons/
@Russ - right now US users are processing their payroll in their existing external system and entering the data into Xero via our Pay Run function or as relevant accounting transactions. Stay tuned though - we're working with US payroll companies for direct integration into Xero as we have in other markets.
Xero pay run: http://help.xero.com/us/#Accounts_Payrun
One of the major differences of QB and Xero (except as a the product) is the integrations which you can achieve.
Xero: Has a long list of add-ons. One of them is us (www.OneSaas.com) where we integrate Xero with over 40 other cloud products from SalesForce to Magento, BigCommerce, Adobe Business Catalyst, MailChimp and many many more). There are other addons out there as well.
QuickBooks Hosted: 0 (Zero) Integrations. Due to the design of the hosted environment (at least the one from Reckon Australia) you can't have any type of integration/automation. It could be a good product but if you can't automate any process, it means all you have is a good product with a lot of manual work involved.
1There are things Xero does not do that QB does - however the efficiencies that come from Xero plus the enhancements from Xero add-ons truly rock. This financial year I finally switched to Xero for my own practice... and I love it... After years as a QB partner I intend to let my partnership with them lapse this year (even as I dumped MYOB)
That said, Xero is not for every business - if you have large volume of transactions, extensive inventory/shopping cart requirements, then there are other cloud solutions that may be better suited.
However for the vast majority of SME's I would suggest Xero (with perhaps a partner add-on) will do an outstanding job.
JCurve is another cloud solution I am now using and recommending - the power of Netsuite enterprise solution in three affordable SME editions. Truly a 'suite' of integrated solutions that not only host your accounts, payroll, inventory, but website, shopping cart, payment gateway, intranet, CRM and a whole lot more included....
Compare both cost and features of JCurve against combination of individual solutions.... JCurve is the space to watch
Netsuite can do the migration for you, or follow the Migration Wizard instructional.
I am exploring this for a client now.
You are not locked in to Xero at all. The Xero CEO made it extremely clear that this was one of his bedrock principles. You can cancel at any time without penalty and get access to your data for some time. However, after heavily using and consulting on many computer accounting programs, for more than 30 years, I never heard of one program that had an export to a competing program. As with many programs, it is easy to export Xero data to Excel, but it is up to you to arrange it and import Xero data into other programs.
I was a former Netsuite enthusiast and featured spokesman, in PC Magazine (cover) and Business Week articles. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm died when Netsuite made big promises and kept few of them, while increasing fees from $5 to $10 and then to $100 a month, in around 15 months. I also found that it had no beta testing. We recently converted a client from Netsuite to QuickBooks. It was shocking to learn that no contract provision let users cancel. Netsuite wanted about $30,000, for a year's fees.
Besides a ridiculously lower price, Xero uses an open platform, with a free industry-standard Restful interface. This lets developers integrate Xero with more than 100 free to very powerful add-ons (Google Xero add-ons or apps). Xero provides free add-ons listings and publicises many new ones in its blog each month. With the number of Xero users doubling in 10 months, the number of these add-ons doubled in a year (to more than 100 some time ago). This means there is almost no reason why you have to outgrow Xero. Powerful add-ons not only extend what Xero does well, but they let you summarize entries (to avoid the high Xero transaction limits). You also run on a network of multiple redundant Rackspace computers, at multiple highly secure dispersed data centers, with near continuous backup.
By contrast, the number of listed QuickBooks add-ons has been around 600 for many years. This is probably because QuickBooks stopped supporting its incomplete, proprietary, still-buggy, free add-ons interface some years ago. It has since been favoring a more incomplete, proprietary, buggy, web version, which costs developers about 20% of their fees. QuickBooks also charges a substantial amount for a listing in its Marketplace add-one listing, especially considering the cost of needed testing and reviews. That is why my http://QuickBooks-add-ons.com/ website once had up to 75,000 hits a month. As a result, the number of QuickBooks users has been declining for years, except for the rather anemic QuickBooks Online version.
Netsuite appears to have many add-ons, but I suspect they cost substantially more than the Xero or QuickBooks versions. By the way, we are internationally famous for QuickBooks ( http://BestQuickBooksCPA.com ) and pass on the 15% discount that Xero gives us on their charges. We also provide Xero free if you use some of our very inexpensive and closely-supervised international CPAs and bookkeepers. That is why we are #3 for U.S. Xero clients ( http://www.xero.com/advisors/ ).
Xero isn't the only tool to use to use to take your practice into the cloud.
I use Skype to talk to my clients so my hands are free to use the mouse and keyboard, and I when I need to show them what to do rather than just tell them what to do I share my screen - I upgraded to Skype premium which allows group video chat and screen sharing. I think it currently costs about £36 a year.
Dropbox to share files. Workflowmax for pipeline and client management. Duedil.com for basic customer check ups. Etc etc.
3As to lock-in, the old Netsuite contract I saw was not an annual contract and had no cancellation clause.
The JCurve price and capabilities look interesting, but the five partners and 10 customers (on its website) make me think it has relatively few users. Its big problem is Netsuite. I dislike anything without published prices, but see http://askville.amazon.com/Whats-full-cost-Netsuite-Small-Business-Package/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=3910150
It says the Netsuite cost of implementation and ownership is at least $10K in year one. The not obvious costs include high priced consultants, heavy year one discounts and difficulty exporting. My experience was much worse, as a rather low-end QuickBooks Enterprise client was paying Netsuite $2,200+ a month.
JCurve could have a much brighter future as a Xero add-on, since Xero got 100% more users in 10 months. The free Xero industry-standard RESTful add-ons interface can make this very easy.
Xero should soon increase system limits, as Rackspace redundant hosting makes that easy. There should be no problem with Xero Yodlee feed limits, as banks are offering direct industry-standard feeds. Multiple inexpensive Xero accounts, with combined reports, can avoid Xero system limits. There are even some relatively inexpensive Xero add-ons that batch entries.
Just a few clients? Hardly. The customers on the website were just a few testimonials. Netsuite is global and larger than Xero, Saasu, Quickbooks, Reckon and MYOB combined.
Xero doubles it's users about every year - no wonder, its a great service with a great price. Yet Xero is yet to turn a profit. It is unlikely ANY business will continue with such a pricing model - I suspect a big change soon, even as there have been big reductions in partner/reseller commissions this year (and the margins weren't big at all).
JCurve are re-sellers of Netsuite in Australia (there is also a JCurve in USA) and they make available ''lighter' editions of Netsuite - the same powerful engine and reporting, at an SME price. It is not an add-on for Xero, but an alternative to Xero with an array of 'add-ons' included at not extra cost, or it can play nice with an add-on you might already be using, such as your existing CRM. Your JCurve subscription can even host your website, email and shopping cart - ONE port of call for support from people who understand how the elements all work together. What does JCurve/Netsuite do? Would be quicker to answer 'what doesn't it do?'
JCurve subscription pricing clearly advised on the website
http://www.jcurvesolutions.com/Pricing
Xero has determined the market share they aim for, and the product has been engineered for that space. Xero has published limitations of 'about' 500 bills OR sales invoices, and 1,000 spend or receive money type transactions (also depending on whether 'simple' or multi-line). Going over that can increase report generation time significantly, even resulting in browser time out errors. To protect other users from service degradation, limits on resources (CPU power ?) have recently been imposed on each individual account to ensure other users are not affected. This now means more definite and absolute limitations on transaction volumes in Xero.
Batching entries CAN make a real difference, but if you then need another program for your inventory, another for sales invoicing, another for CRM - then there could well be pain with integration. the accumulation of various 'inexpensive' add-ons could well make such a solution untenable - and who do you go to for support? JCurve/Netsuite is a full solution - and their people understand how their parts co-operation with each other.
I really, really love Xero - the way it drives and they way it handles large volumes of transactions... only it won't handle large volumes of transactions ! I agree, Xero SHOULD increase their transaction limitations - but they NEVER will, and they have stated such directly to me...
Which is more important? Price.. or value?
There are many who want 'cheap' - these might even find there way tohttp://waveaccounting.com Is this a viable alternative? It has bank feeds and is FREE. After testing it carefully I feel it is NOT business ready, nor can I endorse it, but it is suitable for tracking personal accounts.
Business that is genuine about growth will not set up their accounts on a platform they are likely to outgrow in as little as 12-24 months - to do so will result in headache and likely more expensive.
JCurve is the space to watch. Likely many in Australia will become more aware of this 'secret' thru increased marketing planned for the New Year. And with support center expansion planned to cater for increased support will still be able to ring JCurve for help - business owners can't do that with Xero.
Yes, Xero encourage it's partners to be the subscribers of the client's Xero account, also to bundle the service in a retainer arrangement. Xero is not free to your users, it is included in your costing and not listed as a separate item on your billing.
This especially works to your advantage if the client only has access to add comments to bank feed lines - meaning they require your service to generate basic reports.
This would certainly suit accounting firms that want to keep tight reigns on the books - preventing clients from entering transactions themselves for your review, or generating reports directly.
Free Xero to clients? Hardly.
1If the client is the bookkeeper, then it's still a bookkeeper opinion.
Really, the opinion of someone who doesn't/won't actually use the accounting software can be of limited value (even irrelevant)- it's the end USER and their experience, ease of processing transactions, and suitability of the reports that is important.
My experience - business owners trust the advice of accountants, and wanting direction on which software to base their accounts on, generally turn to them first.
However, most often the accounting practice don't even use the software recommended to their client - they extracting the data file into their own practice management software, or relying on reports generated by the software.
Professional bookkeepers have experience working with a wide array of industries, business sizes and structures at a hands-on, transaction processing level, and in reconciling the various accounts, they review and analyse the reports generated. Most, too, have experience with a number of different accounting platforms - MYOB, Quickbooks, saasu, Xero, JCurve, Netsuit - and others.
The professional bookkeeper is likely in the best position to help determine and recommend the best software platform options to choose, than someone distanced from the everyday transaction processing.
Otherwise - for opinions from end clients - every software provider has a testimonial/case study section on their public website with comments from happy users.
1Here are user numbers I recall: QuickBooks desktop - 4.4 million; Quicken - 14 million; QuickBooks Online - 0.3 million; Xero 0.1 million. I added Quicken and omitted the rather small Saasu, Reckon and MYOB. We both omitted Zoho Books and others. However, this already totals about 19 million.
The rest of the 40 million small U.S. businesses mainly use paper, outside accountants and Excel. The U.S. Census Bureau 2010 "U.S., all industries" Excel, athttp://www.census.gov/econ/susb/ , has 5,734,538 firms. 5,160,404 had under 20 employees; 475,125 had 20-99 (cumulative 5,635,529) and 5,717,302 had under 500 employees. I do not see where this can leave Netsuite with more than 19 million users.
To the contrary, I saw many leave Netsuite (Netscape) after they had me featured in related PC Magazine and Business Week stories. This continued with NetSuite's Net Customer Loss http://www.erpblogger.com/netsuite-customerloss.htm . The company now says it has 12,000 organizations http://bit.ly/WKdygf . Xero alsone has 100,000+ organizations, as they do not count the many users that use each paid account.
You said bookkeepers are the best ones to pick a bookkeeping program. One or a few people decide to use Netsuite in an organization. Most users of other products decide this themselves. That means that there are probably 100+ bookkeepers who chose not to use Netsuite for every one that choses it.
Mike ~ "You said bookkeepers are the best ones to pick a bookkeeping program. One or a few people decide to use Netsuite in an organization. Most users of other products decide this themselves. That means that there are probably 100+ bookkeepers who chose not to use Netsuite for every one that choses it."
Popularity is not a guarantee that a product is 'best' or even well suited to a specific business. Case in point - I was an early adopter of Xero, and so went against the trend at that time. Then there were relatively fewer bookkeepers using it, and so fewer bookkeepers able to recommend the product. That is now different - since Xero markets well to bookkeeeping and accounting practices.
Mark ~ "...having been a Quickbooks ProAdvisor, Xero is much more usable and understandable for the clients. We intend to have all our clients on Xero."
Why were these clients on QB to start with if Xero is a better fit? Did they choose it them-self? Were they guided that way by their accountant or bookkeeper?
Likely Mark is most fortunate in that all the clients he has would also suit Xero better. If not, then some clients will need change to an accountant willing to work with their QB, or you will not be a Xero exclusive practice. Likely also, many/most of these clients have already been thru the initial pain of learning QB - so a change to Xero will not be about what is best for client, but about what the accountant finds convenient, and for what? Xero exports it's data into many practice management software packages and provides quality reports.
- Refer earlier comments - the platform used should be about the end user's experience. Unless the accounting practice also provides a bookkeeping service, then the client will go thru paint of a whole new learning process.
I love QB - it was my first accounting package and continues to have a place in 'the space'. I love Xero. I also speak highly of JCurve/Netsuite. Each has it's strengths, with one or two being more suitable that other for individual businesses. I care about my clients and aim to guide them toward the platform that best suits THEM.
I don't doubt for a minute you know what you are talking about. perhaps some of my figures or statements aren't precise and I'm certainly not a wordsmith, I'm a bookkeeper.
What I was trying to say was Netsuites market capitalization is about 4 times the size of MYOB, backed by the 3rd richest person in the US. Where if you value the McKinsey approach which I don't, values MYOB at about $1.2 billion up from $500 million in 4 years, but with no extra cash flow. Is this solution 6 all over again?
Last time I checked Xero was running at a loss of about $18 million dollars a year.
The figures look really good from what your quoting, but even Xero's numbers didn't look that good a few years ago. Does that mean it was a bad product? I don't thing so.
I look at the new Jcurve product being released first quarter of next year with a POS, payroll as standard, bank feeds, free trial, kicking off with a roadshow on Adelaide in February, from about the equivalent of $11 per week. Unlike most I will be attending to listen to what they have to say.
Couple that with rumors of the biggest global development team being located in-house in Sydney and it looks like an exciting time for small business.
Mike keep up the good work as a bookkeeper - we need more of you advocating the industry!
1I suspect that we both take a similar approach. Our loyalty should be to users, employers and co-workers. We must try to give them the best tools at the best prices. That can change quickly. I sure hope that Jcurve is everything you feel it will be. It will only push QuickBooks, Xero and everyone else to do far better, at lower prices. One of the best things Bill Gates ever said was to talk about business at the speed of light. Well Bill, it is like Steve Bennett (former Intuit CEO and now Symantec CEO) and many others say, "the best is yet to come."
Perhaps this is not the right place to make these comments. If so, my apologies. Could someone suggest where I could go to fast track the answers to these questions and others?
I really appreciate all of your most candid comments here. Very imformative!
1Great timing... Xero is actually hosting a 1 credit CPE dedicated to showing best practices related to write-ups on 1/9/13 ( http://www.xero.com/writeup/ ). I encourage you to watch the video and register for the CPE at the bottom.
Regarding your questions:
"Is it the client that "reconciles" their own bank/cc accounts? "
Depends on the client, some of ours do and others don't. You'll know which of your clients it makes sense for them to handle it, others will value the service you can provide by staying on top of their accounts for them. If the client is coding, I would encourage you to review their activity over the first few weeks to spot any recurring errors (like personal expenses).
"I understand the notion of bank rules, the system remembering prior transactions, etc., but is the idea here to get the client to do some of the traditional tasks we as bookkeepers/accountants use to do in terms of a write-up practice?"
It tends to be the smaller clients with 'less complicated' businesses that do more of the tasks. It also helps keep our fees down.
"Are we the ones doing the payroll entry? accrual entries? other "higher-level" stuff? "
This is more in line with our approach. Simple things like '$59.99 for Staples' are best left to the client, but other things like double-declining depreciation are best left to the 'professionals'. We import the payroll entry from the provider, or in the case of ADP-RUN, it will feed into Xero automatically like any bank line would.
"Do we "present" financial statements to them? Or just make certain statements available in the software to them?"
Xero's "publish" feature is great for presenting/making available statements. I would also encourage you to take advantage of the 'lock periods' feature as it's a shared system.
"Is Xero offering us a change in roles here? From a task oriented CPA to more of a business advisor? Are we more proactive or more reactive with the Xero software? "
Bingo. Xero makes it easier for everyone involved to compile or write-up the business activity. So your time as a CPA can be spent more towards CFO level items.
2QuickBooks Online is a terrible subset of QuickBooks desktop. A top Intuit executive apologized to us for not making QBO changes when we detailed them, 7 years earlier.
Once Intuit fixed the initial QBO inability to memorize and rerun reports, the main QBO – Xero deal breaker was Xero automatically importing all bank and credit card entries nightly. QBO now does this, so differences now relate to speed and top management. It is far faster to assign entries with Xero Cash Coding and global bank Rules than in QBO.
I was a QB insider for 10+ years (frequent email exchanges with Intuit CEOs and top assistants, Advisory Councils, Intuit website blogger, magazine stories, etc.). Before the current Intuit CEO arrived at Intuit, the prior CEO had him write me. He asked about the most important thing he could do. I said we needed a website to let us write about and vote on new features. He soon had a top management meeting and created the site. However, it had many problems and did not integrate with QB or its forums. My repeated comments did not get this fixed, so Intuit dropped it. Xero now has this and listens closely.
The top issue, in my first Advisory Council, was complaints against QB ProAdvisors. We heard they all related to those not passing a QB test, so Intuit wanted to drop them from its public Advisor list. We agreed, so it was very bad when Intuit later reversed this twice. Giving QB ProAdvisor titles, with no test, is very misleading. Rate surveys let me quantify it ($1 BILLION /year wasted by QB users), but it took extreme efforts, over a long time, to stop referrals.
There were very long delays in authorizing QB desktop hosting, after a later Advisory Council strongly recommended it. Commercial hosting companies must disclose financial, infrastructure and customer – revenue detail. Intuit can disclose it publicly or use to compete against them. They also pay $18,000, $5/user per month and $3,000/year. This limits QBO - QB desktop hosting – Xero competition.
Many such things made me see that Intuit’s near monopoly is the top issue. Quicken and QB both had 95% of their markets. Only after record QBO outages, did we hear that Intuit had a single data center in earthquake country. Long after its CEO promised change, we had more outages. Xero has long had multiple redundant Rackspace systems, with continuous backup, at multiple data centers, for terrific up time.
QuickBooks always had a proprietary database and access methods. It twice dropped support for its primary access method and now has a 20% toll. Xero has free open access (an industry-standard RESTful interface). It also has no charge for add-on listings and blogs posts, compared to an effective $5,000/year for Intuit QuickBooks add-on listings. Now Xero listed add-ons double annually. QB listed add-ons are static.
Intuit gave lip service to working with accounting professionals, but made us non-competitive on QB sales. Some QB reps used information we gave Intuit to call Enterprise customers and give them lower prices. Competition recently got better, after the top QuickBooks ProAdvisor exec left Intuit for Xero. His said he wanted a company focused on accounting professionals.
(length limited - continued in nest post)
Xero focuses on accountants (Partners) with client integration, recurring discounts and no competition. 8 years after my QB Advisory Council begged for a QB integrated workflow manager, only the expensive Intuit Lacerte tax had it. QBO got an accountant edition a few months ago. Xero bought top workflow manager and reporting programs. It now gives partners the workflow manger and should soon give us the reports. It also should soon integrate with the terrific inexpensive Drake tax package. It still does not yet export Rules to Excel, for review and import into other client companies, but should soon have this and Rule libraries.
Did you know Intuit, Google and others violated anti-monopoly laws by not competing for employees? This stopped when the Department of Justice investigated, despite the Intuit, “integrity above all.”
Do you know Intuit released QuickBooks 2009 (I believe), knowing it had a bank reconciliation bug that made one-hour jobs take a day? It took more than a month to fix this, while many talked of heart attacks. This made me call QuickBooks 2009 the Pinto edition. I feel that QuickBooks 2009 probably killed more people than the infamous Ford Pinto.
This over-long post contains only a small fraction of the reasons why I would now rather lose clients than work with Intuit. much less QBO.
But I still haven't had that "aha!" moment where I get what's really better about Xero. Maybe I'll just need to keep poking around.
The dashboard tells you both what the account balance in the Xero 'register' is at that point in time, and also the bank balance as per last bank feed/statement import.
To get the register balance in Xero you should
1. import latest statement if that is what you do - or bank feeds usually suffice being just one working day behind.
2. reconcile your bank for items that may not be in Xero yet (eg. bank fees, interest, customer payments).
If the Xero balance still differs to that of the actual bank, then there are items in Xero that have not arrived in the bank, and/or still items in the bank that have not yet been entered into Xero that need your attention.
This is neither hard, nor is it out of ordinary compared to any other accounting platform.
Use the Xero bank reconciliation report which is most useful for seeing at a glance why Xero and bank balances may not agree.
After doing this, use the Xero balance as per dashboard.
Juliana - have you considered taking full advantage of the free training webinars available where you are? The Xero Online Help system is wonderful - nearly everything you could ask has already been answered, along with screenshots and video tutorials. If you have Xero roadshows where you are, these are also excellent opportunities to have all your questions answered.
Catherine - likewise, you said you didn't proceed because you had unanswered questions. Are you looking for and wanting answers?
It sounds like you asked Xero support for a register that 'looks' like QB Online - and they provided you a way to have that. If you merely need Xero to tell you what is actually available in your bank to spend, then ensuring all items in bank are recorded in your accounts is a common step for every software - an unreconciled balance just should not be relied upon.
Why import bank files monthly or wait for a statement to arrive to check off?
Xero bank feeds make reconciliation so easy to stay up to date on a daily basis that it is awesome !
Even tho Xero is the World's Easiest Accounting program, it does behave and drive differently to other platforms, so a learning curve is to be expected.
Your LinkedIn profile indicates you are - Expert in Government Marketing & Business Strategy for Technology Firms
May I suggest you seek some training from a Xero Certified Advisor who can show you HOW to do all the things that your business needs Xero to do. This should prove excellent value and have you working it like a pro in short time.
Juliana - the bank feed, daily reconcile and bank balances in Xero are built to allow the business owner to quickly understand their cash position. If the bank accounts are connected to bank feeds and reconciled each day the business owner can see their most up to date cash position all in one place.
An outstanding check register with total outstanding check unfortunately gives only one piece of the information needed to understand your true cash position. So we've design the dashboard so you can see all transaction effecting your cash position in one place.
It would be great for us to schedule some time and I can walk through the reconciliation and daily balances with you. Happy to do that
I completely agree with your expressed business needs. I have clients that call their bank everyday to find how much cash they have. I try to tell them that the bank balance is NOT their actual true cash balance. When you talk with the folks at Xero they don't seem to get that either. I have yet to talk to a Xero representative that seems to have an accounting background. Having said this I must be assuming something about Xero that is not true. I thought one could use Xero to print checks; same check stock as QB too. I also thought one could post journal entries in Xero. If that is true wouldn't it also be true, then, that one could simply open up a balance sheet report in Xero and it would reflect the true cash balance? If fact, if you knew your bank reconciled everyday to the bank balance and you had all uncleared transactions accounted for in the balance you would have the best situation possible. If Xero cannot do this, then Juliana you are correct, this software is merely child's play for people who are best left to themselves not knowing what they don't know, bouncing checks and wondering, "how the heck did that happen"?
Would someone please set the record straight here. This seems to be a fundamental issue. How can anyone run a business not knowing their true cash balance?
Thanks in advance!
The key concept we're talking about is "Balance in Xero", which is different than "Balance in Bank". As long as you've recorded all activity on an accrual basis, the Dashboard and Balance Sheet will report the 'net cash plus/minus any outstanding activity'.
Let me know if this clears it up or if you still have questions about how Xero handles cash reporting.