Xero Vs Zoho Books: Which One Is Better?

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rayhan.aleem
February 14, 2024

For any business, using the right software can make a world of difference down the line. You could spend hours of your day working on getting past a glitch or you could get everything done efficiently and in one go. This is even more important for accounting, where the smallest error could lead to a world of trouble! To make sure you don’t go DOWN THIS RABBIT HOLE, choosing the right accounting software for your business is extremely important. 

Xero and Zoho Books are both reputable and well-known accounting software commonly used in accounting, and choosing between the two of them could leave you scratching your head. Don’t worry - we’re here to help you make a decision. We’ll run through the three main differences between Xero and Zoho Books, and the two accounting software and their features to help you make an informed decision that’s right for your business. 

Plans & Pricing Xero

Xero provides three plans taking into account your company or team size, and provides these plans with different prices. These plans are Early, Growing, and Established.

  1. Early: Xero’s starter plan provides users with access to all of its basic features. The basic plan limits invoices and quotes to 20 per month, caps bills to 5 each month, and is relatively cheap, making it ideal for freelancers or businesses with little accounting needs. Even though it's Xero's most basic plan, it doesn’t limit the number of users, allowing as many users to make use of the software as possible.

The plan’s subscription fee is 10 GBP per month.

  1. Growing: Xero’s Growing plan is a huge step up from its basic plan despite the price still being relatively cheap. The Growing plan allows for unlimited invoices and quotes, unlimited bills, and unlimited reconciliation for bank transactions.

The plan’s subscription fee is 24 GBP per month.

  1. Established: Xero’s Established plan provides limitless possibilities, allowing accountants to work with more than 160 currencies, as well as manage and track their expenses with ease. The Established plan allows for a lot of quality features the Growing plan doesn’t have: capturing invoices and receipts using Xero’s mobile app, assigning expenses to projects, and categorizing and labeling items with ease.

The plan’s subscription fee is 30 GBP per month. Zoho BooksZoho Books provides three plans: Basic, Standard, and Professional.

  1. Basic: this is Zoho’s starter plan with the least amount of features, and it’s most useful for freelancers or very small businesses with minimum accounting needs. The plan allows for all basic accounting needs but limits the number of businesses you can invoice to 50 businesses and only allows for two users to make use of it.

Zoho’s basic plan costs 6 GBP per month (60 GBP for a yearly subscription)

  1. Standard: Zoho Books’ standard plan offers everything the basic plan offers, with higher capacity. The standard plan lets you invoice up to 500 businesses and allows three users max to use the software.

The plan’s subscription fee is 12 GBP per month (120 GBP for a yearly subscription)

  1. Professional: Zoho Books’ professional plan is it's most expensive and offers all of Zoho Books’ features with minimum limitations. The plan allows you to invoice an unlimited number of businesses and allows up to 10 users to use the software per subscription.

The plan costs 18 GBP per month (180 GBP for a yearly subscription)

Integrations Xero

Xero allows integrations with a very wide range of apps and services, including marketing software such as Mailchimp, payment software, chat, customer service apps, and many more. This makes it a particularly effective accounting software as it integrates with the vast majority of apps and services that you could be using. That allows your business’s existing setup to connect easily with your accounting software. 

Zoho Books

Compared to Xero, Zoho Books’ integrations are much fewer. Zoho Books allows for integrations with payment gateways, such as Stripe and Paypal, as well as integrations with other Zoho software such as Zoho CRM. Unfortunately, this can be limiting to your business if you’re looking to integrate existing services and apps into your new accounting software. 

Support: 

Xero’s customer service and support are available 24/7, every single day of the week, making it easy to get help and overcome any issues whether it’s with the technical aspects of the software or with renewal and subscription assistance. Zoho Books: While Zoho Books' customer service and support are available 24/7 as well, it’s only available 5 days a week. If you’re new to the software and need a little extra support, or if your team works in shifts or outside of Zoho Books support team’s working days, it could be difficult getting the assistance that you need on time. 

Overall. Zoho Books’ plans are cheaper but have fewer features:

While Zoho Books’ subscriptions are generally cheaper, many of the features that your accounting team needs would be locked behind more expensive memberships or additional fees for add-ons to compensate. Xero’s plans are priced reasonably and provide the bulk of the features an accounting team would need. There are no limitations on the number of users that can access Xero at a time, which is a huge plus, especially for larger businesses. 

Xero wins the integration game:

Integrating your accounting software into your existing systems should be a priority if you’re a business that prefers to work smart and efficiently. Integrating apps and services is a necessary part of automating your workflow and making sure your accounting and reporting are accurate, and Xero has far more integration options than Zoho Books. 

Xero provides constant support:

A huge advantage that Xero has over Zoho Books is that their support is available 24/7, and every single day of the week. Getting an error when trying to work through your accounting activities could be especially frustrating if there’s no one around to guide you through it. Zoho Books’ support is available 5 days a week could mean that at a certain point, you’ll have a two-day wait time before getting a system issue solved or a subscription renewed.

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