QUICKBOOKS VS XERO - WHAT TO CHOOSE? - WITH SPECIAL GUEST RACHEL, ACCOUNTANT_SHE!

hello and welcome to this video in this video we've got a special guest on today i'm going to let her introduce herself but the idea of this video is we're going to look at the difference between quickbooks online and one of its major competitors so let's see which one is best for our clients stay tuned hello my name is aaron patrick i'm a chartered accountant certified uk trainer and also that quickbooks chat and today here at boffix we have a brilliant video installed for you our idea is to make sure that you understand which software provider is best for your particular business and to do that we've brought in a heavy weight of the accounting world and we made sure that we're not just the only person talking about it but also we want to make sure that the other side has a fair representation as well so i'm going to introduce to you a brand new person to the channel who's going to be talking to you exactly about how that particular software that they're fighting and flying that flag for and our job is to make sure quickbooks is the right one for you so stay tuned for that [Music] give a little introduction to yourself and then let us know exactly why you're flying the flag today for your software hi everybody my name is rachel i am the founder of accountancy we are a female led accountancy firm who specialize in working with women in business and influencers so i'm in the blue corner today um advocating for zero um and i'll be going against aaron who's in the green corner um who is saying why he loves quickbooks definitely definitely so i mean they do share a lot of similarities don't you let's get that one over and done with first so when it comes to cloud technology and the idea of using cloud and this whole idea of you know not having to install anything what is the major benefits do you see what have you seen your clients so far getting from cloud technology so i think the reason the quickbooks versus say i'm so sorry i think the reason that the um quickbooks is so frequently is because they are so similar um and i think the reason sage almost isn't included in this conversation xero is quickbooks are completely cloud-based and for small businesses having access to all of their accounting data um on the internet on their phone is just ultimately so so powerful and so valuable for small business owners so being out a client being able to send the invoice before they've left and make sure that everything's okay so um yeah just having everything at their fingertips all the time is just fantastic and again yeah the reason this question comes up so frequently is because um xero and quickbooks are very very similar they are aren't they and i i what i tell clients as well and i'm sure you're exactly the same is that whole power of being able to look at the client's data as well we i don't know about you but during this time it's been it's been awful time hasn't it with the way we're transparent clients as much as we can we're trying to give clients that that you know hug basically that virtual hug during these times but having that ability to quickly jump into their data mid conversation you could be on a conversation with a client about something completely different but having that ability as an accountant just to jump into the data see what's going on is so important isn't it yeah we have a complete oversight all the time of all of our clients so even just from um in both quickbooks and xero to have the oversight of all of your clients in one go you know if one client's normally really really hard on getting their bank reconciled and you can see from the snapshot overview that they've got sort of 40 or 50 unreconciled transactions you just pick up the phone and say is everything okay can i help you um what's going on and actually that just you're like a little guardian angel for your clients because you've got oversight of what's happening in real time all of your clients in one place and it's just fantastic and to be able to give that back to a client and say here's the tools that you need to get on with your business and keep everything up today but we're here we can see what you're doing we can keep an eye on you and make sure you're okay it's fantastic because you're empowering them and giving them control over their financial information but you're also there to help them pick them up when they need it and that's amazing that's you know what more can you ask for as an accountant and as a client it's great definitely definitely and now with with that it's time to get the gloves off now we've been nice about it to each other and we've both been talking about how great the two softwares are but let's really deep dive into some of those extra special secret sources that each one go with and when it comes to cloud accounting i say this a lot on this channel but it's all about that bank connection and how important that bank connection can be to you and your business so what we're going to look at now is we're going to go in and we're going to look at the two different banking side of things and we're going to let rachel kick it off and we're going to see exactly how xero is brilliant at dealing with the bank rachel gone then explain to me exactly why xero is so good at handling with the bank transactions go for it okay so the first thing is that for both software's xero and quickbooks um automatic bank feeds were a complete game changer for the accounting industry so without getting too technical it's really important to know that as a client you can connect your bank most high street banks and most online banks are integrated into both softwares and you can tie in your online bank transactions into your accounting software so as you can see on the screen they pull through automatically so again i'm trying not to get to accountancy there's two sides to every transaction and by connecting your bank feed into your accounting software half of that is already done already your accounting software is pulling through from your bank account one side of the transactions so the only bit of work that you need to do is to actually tell your software in which pots and in which categories that money and that expenditure and income needs to go again with both xero and quick works um they both use ai um to remember to learn and to forecast exactly where those transactions are gonna go so the top two transactions here are amazing they're green xero has seen the spent category it's seen some money go out on one side and it already knows you you've spent this money with the um the bank line has come in with a supplier's name and an amount and xero has looked inside the back end of your xero and seen that you have a supplier with an invoice outstanding with the same reference and the same amount and it is suggesting that you click ok and match them off so you can click ok match them off and then just move on to your next one again very similarly you've received some money on a certain date from a certain customer and xero has acknowledged that you've also got a sales invoice outstanding due around the same day of the same amount and it's picked up match them off and is suggesting uh again they are just suggestions so if you're a client and you're thinking well that's great but i have loads of mrs smith's and all of my invoices are for 200 pounds zero will just suggest and you can overwrite it and make changes by any time it's not like loads of lag to like backtrack and go through that um again with things like bank charges um transactions that happen all the time once you've done them once zero quickbooks list is two uh xero will know that you've done it next time and suggest it again another great feature which i'm not sure does quickbooks have a feature to discuss items with your accountant well come on time when we get there but yeah carry on keep firing these shots thrown some shade in an area um okay yeah so um we absolutely love this feature clients love this feature we have a discuss tab so if you're a client you've had your training with your accountant and you actually still can't work out either you've forgotten what it was um you like you can't find it you've forgotten how to do it or it's just a monday morning and you can't work out how to do it in the discuss tab you can click in there i've got no idea what's going on please help me and your accountant can log in and see those notes so um the downside there's one downside to this feature is that a lot of people just type their um notes and move on you actually have to click save a lot of people forget to do that so they'll write a paragraph their accountant and wonder why they're being ignored so you have to click save um a lot of the online forums are full of like protests to get that removed um they're not all of me but it's a lot of people forget to click save so that's an important note but yeah so um xero uses a lot of ai it remembers it forecasts and it predicts where you're gonna go so if you are a small business that has a lot of recurring transactions i would say that within a month's worth of transactions if you had 50 bank transactions within a month a lot of people are only having to like manually code four or five of those transactions to one-off suppliers or people if it if it comes up as like amazon and actually you buy quite a lot of different things on amazon you might have to like manually code what that was because xero would struggle to predict that but i'd say on average if you're a client that um has a normal amount of transactions maybe 40 or 50 a month you'd probably only be looking to manually code four or five um transactions but i think that's it from me aaron unless you've got anything to add no but i'm gonna hold you to that four or five transactions i think that's i'm gonna hold you to that number as we carry on through today so you've heard it here first everyone if you use xero you only have to code four or five transactions at any point in time so we'll see how that goes along but no i i i look we're gonna go through this and we're gonna look at what's best and what's what's right for our clients and that we've said this already the most important thing is making sure from our clients point of view that we get this right you know clients and you guys as business owners you've got to make sure that you find the software that works for you and definitely with the banking screen here this definitely has a way of tuning into a particular type of client so the way that this and what i like about this is it's very much you can't get this wrong when as we go into quickbooks there's a few little bits where i'm having to tell people on a regular basis please do this please do that otherwise it's not going to work whereas in the zero point and zero camp it is very much a case of as long as you go through and look at all these different transactions and you deal with these transactions as they go through it's as simple as that and it says as straightforward as that and i like that that that whole mentality of get the transactions in those transactions xero is going to try and help you as much as it possibly can with them but ultimately you just need to clear this one reconcile button on this one reconcile page and then you should have all your transactions in there and i think that's quite powerful the way that it's just it's built that way round yeah i completely agree i think in terms of like training clients who have never used accountancy software before it's very straightforward to say like go to this tab all of these transactions this is your weekly task is to log in on a monday morning diaries let's see don't forget log in on a monday clear all the transactions down if you keep up to date with it you'll only ever be you know it's going to be the last week so you'll always remember what it was um this is your task keep it as low as possible and just remember that if you're going into xero you're running reports those reports will only ever be as up-to-date as your bank account that's super super easy and straightforward to be able to train people on like how to just nail their accounts um you're also absolutely right in terms of i would say this almost counts as like a dopamine hit it the way xero set up their bank reconciliation makes it incredibly satisfying to reconcile it and everything goes green and like when you're finished you get a great job um yeah so you literally get a dopamine hit every i mean most people aren't as lame as me maybe they don't but i get don't mean it like every time i take okay and then it comes up a great job at the end it's very straightforward it's very simple and like you say it's it's i don't want to say you can't go wrong but it's very very straightforward i mean quickbooks got a lot to fight for now we've got only four or five transactions on zero and actually you get don't need hit as well so i'm a little bit to sweat in my corner at this point in time so we've learned quite a lot about xero so far and we've all understood exactly how that banking screen looks so let's remind ourselves what quickbooks has to offer and then what we can do then and start to compare and contrast okay then rachel so we're going to have a look now at the quickbooks side of things and we're going to understand exactly what the banking screen is now as opposed to xero i must admit the banking screen is a little bit more complicated and there's a little bit more going on here but once you get your head around it is relatively straightforward and also starts to get really satisfying like you've already said in terms of having that ability to get that nice big green tick to say the job's done so example number one is on this particular bank account i get that wonderful green tick that wonderful green element to say that i've done everything right here and that i've got everything in place and i'm good to go and we've always talked about on this channel about how we want to make sure that we're getting all that data in as much as possible as quickly as and on top of the data as much as we can because the more data we have in any system the more we're going to get out of it from in the long term so with the data that's coming through just like on the xero aspect of things we're going to connect to bank account up and it's going to start showing us the transactions but it shows us in a different format the format here is it's basically telling us in these three tabs for review categorized and excluded and our main job is to make sure that every item that's in the full review tab so that's the one that basically quickbooks knows that some transactions there we want to make sure that information is put into either the categorized tab or the excluded tab and that's what we our aim is to do we want to get that information into one of those two categories all those two tabs now if we move into the excluded tab we're saying that we don't want that information very rare but that could be because there's been an error or an issue or some reason why you don't want the information in but our main job is to get everything into the categorized and just like on xero the idea of that is that we're putting information in and we're basically saying what that information relates to so one of the key differences to the way that quickbooks is approaching it to the way xero is yes we've got to clear this screen but we don't have that that kind of that that table view if you like of having what's on the left-hand side is what's in the bank what's on the right-hand side is where we're going to we have to drill down into our transactions here and we have to bring each transaction and deal with them in that way so for example if i wanted to deal with this transaction here this um this deposit then i click into the transaction and it opens up and it gives me my information there so that's when i can start doing exactly the same as what we've been talking about just like on xero it starts learning it uses that ai it starts bringing that information in for me so we're very similar in terms of that and one thing you did tell me was well how do i tell my accountant that there's an issue or there's a problem well in quickbooks the way they deal with it is tags so tags is a brand new feature in quickbooks where we get to basically tag a transaction for discoverability reasons so what we can do there is we can say that i want my accountant to look at this and i want to make sure my accountant's got the vat right and you can give any type of tag you need to any typical transaction but the idea is then that you're telling your accountant or you're telling someone else in your firm or you're telling your business partner whoever it needs to be that they really should look at this transaction or it's a transaction you need to find a later date so we have that ability to to to bring in there and then the only other difference i find on here is that you then have to deal with a transaction in a logical sense so you've got to decide are you categorized it so is this a transaction that you've never put on quickbooks before and do you then need to put it in the information that it needs to require to post that transaction so do you need to say what the what it was for who you paid or what the vat was and all those different aspects that we need to think about on a transaction by transactional basis or do we want to find a match so if quickbooks hasn't quite found the particular transaction that's already in quickbooks you can force it to find it and bring it in from there so it's achieving the same solution but it's looking in a completely different way now one thing that i would say has an advantage from the quickbooks and i'm happy for you to argue with me here and tell me i'm wrong but the one thing i would say is yes i think this screen here can be a little bit more complicated in terms of just that simplicity of dealing with the bank that whole aspect of you've got to move everything from for review to categorized and sometimes i found clients who have kind of left everything on the screen and not realize they've had to do that one step further to actually get it into quickbooks so i completely see that and i can see that as being something that xero definitely has a a more elegant solution if you like in terms of dealing the bank but one thing i would highly point out though that i find quickbooks has a slight advantage is this whole aspect of reconciling a bank now it's a contentious topic it's one as accountants we talk about on a regular basis reconciling this reconciling that but in terms of you as a business owner what it means and what it's important to you it's just having confidence in those figures so here just like on xero we can see that we've got 140 1046.56 in our bank and 1046.56 in quickbooks so our bank balance is agreeing to our quickbooks and in theory that's perfect we shouldn't have to go any further we should have no issues and that's where zero is really good as well because it will tell you that the bank balance and the zero balance match and we shouldn't be okay we should be okay but it doesn't give us that ability to go one step further and that's where i really do like the aspect of having this ability to just go in and reconcile the bank so what you're saying is i have a physical bank statement in front of me here we are trusted bank statement in front of me and what i want to do is i want to make sure that bank statement agrees to what's in quickbooks so i literally go in and i reconcile it by going through the transactions and finding if there's any issues or any problems and quickbooks is really good at telling me if i've done something wrong i've come from there what'd you think to that rachel um i was actually just gonna jump back to your revolut accounts where there's a green tick that says it's it's all up to date but there is a difference and i was just wondering if you could like talk to the audience about what that means and how that would happen wow okay so shots fired straight away and you're absolutely right so whereas on the zero one we can't have that green tick because it just physically it won't let you do that in this uh or in quickbooks itself you do have the option of being able to let's say be creative in the way that you're putting bank transactions in and it is definitely something that's caught a lot of people out and this is one of those bits where people are definitely having to consider which accounting software is right for them depending on the way they work and the way that they deal with transactions now if you only ever consist or care about transactions going into your bank and the only ones you're ever going to deal with you're absolutely fine but like on this case where we might have had a client who may have put in their own transaction or they may have edited a transaction or they've gone through and they've made an adjustment later down the line this can throw out the balances on here and even though the two items are the tick here is only telling us at this point that we've dealt with all of those categorized transactions it's not telling us that our balances are the same so you're right there is a that is one where clients do find really um not frustration but they do find it as a pitfall and when they're using quickbooks and that whole idea that well i've dealt with all the transactions so why do i not have a balance hence why the bank reconciliations are important oh yeah i think in xero's favor as soon as you log into xero it's given you your task list it's showing you what your reconciled transactions are straight from the dashboard whereas in quickbooks it's actually quite easy to log in and ignore unreconciled transactions like you have to go to the tab on the left hand like it's like two clicks to get into your banking screen whereas zero like almost would let you pass the first screen without reminding you that you've got items to reconcile and you've got like tasks to complete so from a client and an accountant point of view it's very straightforward in order to like push people and prompt people to know what their responsibilities are yeah and i think you've put an absolute spot on there and the ability when you first go in there to be just from that dashboard and we talk about this dashboard so much on this channel about how important it is but you're right it just smacks you directly in that face it tells you let's get that done and in fairness to quickbooks we get the same call to action but the opportunity there of being able to like say miss that is much more prevalent in the quickbooks world all right i feel like a slight advantage to zero there only slightly i mean i'm not i'm not gonna i'm not gonna go too far but there's a slight advantage to zero there but let's think about the next stage so the next stage that i want to bring up now is the mobile experience and how important how useful that mobile experience is to our clients at this moment in time so let's have a look and see or at least talk about what that mobile experience is and how they differentiate between the two different platforms okay i'm gonna score an old goal here but when i'm using so we use zero internally bar accounts and when i have to use zero on my phone i actually use it on safari because i much prefer the web experience to the app um so in terms of mobile experience it again it comes down to preference but i prefer to use the mobile web version of the mobile app on xero i think it gives you much better functionality i think when you're going from desktop or web to the app you actually lose quite a lot of functions where on quickbooks i think going from web to your phone can actually enhance a lot of the options so being able to take pictures of receipts directly into quickbooks things like that i think it's enhanced whereas i actually think some of the really really good juicy bits of xero are actually lost when you use it on the app so we actually if it was if it was me and i'm you know doing my background on my phone i would actually use um a web browser to access xero so i feel like i've scored an own goal there but um i'll let you have a look well that's i mean it's become more and more prevalent when it comes to the mobile experience and how the mobile works with any accounting software and that's because i mean less like or less relevant now that we're kind of all stuck indoors at this moment in time but in normal day-to-day circumstances that ability to go out there and be able to deal with transactions when you're there which you can be on the train or you could be sat for a coffee or whatever it's going to be is really powerful and where i'm really liking the fact or the one that the bit i'm trying to drill home to a lot of accountants out there are listening as as opposed to you guys as business owners as well but it's that whole point where more and more prevalent to us is that clients are just using that mobile app they are watching i'm a celebrity on on on tv they're seeing that that advert coming up they're downloading the app there and then and they never once will go into the browser experience that me and rachel really love and we we use on a regular basis on both platforms but they are running their whole business everything about their business they their and successful businesses at that just by using their mobile phone so that whole idea of that whole aspect of making sure that that mobile experience works for people is important and i think that's where quickbooks really do have a a great understanding of they've put some great features in there lately like the ability to do mileage tracking and the ability to take a photo of a receipt and it just magically appears in the solution so i think little features like that just making that mobile experience more more useful so i think that's might be a slight victory uh well okay quite quite a big victory on that one but let's keep it nice and fair and let's say that we're equal pegging into the next round how's that yeah good job okay rachel we're going to throw a bit of a spanner into the works now we're going to go through innovation and we're going to talk about basically what quickbooks and xero brought to the table over the last six months a year whatever it's going to be and we're going to understand exactly what innovation has come into the product and how it's benefited more importantly you as a business owner so rachel it's over to you what has quit what xero should say brought to the table that you find has been a real innovation okay so um number one i think for this year would be um the business snapshot function which can help small businesses to forecast their tax um help their tax planning it gives them like a whole dashboard of financial metrics that make it really really easy to compare profit and loss turnover expenses and like different efficiencies during different periods um so i'd say for us that's been a really big change again it was a very timely change in line with coron virus so being able to give business owners that visibility that oversight and some clients don't like it it's a bit too much and they'd rather leave that sort of stuff to us um but a lot of a lot of clients have found it really really valuable especially so i i run accountancy it's an instagram platform i work with a lot of clients that um run on instagram platforms or like they sell on etsy and have lots of like shopify accounts and actually being able to track different products different revenue streams different profitability metrics all in one place is super super um like helpful for them i'd say the second thing again is the short-term cash flow update that was released um it's now been extended it was released as a pilot but it's been extended and it actually visually projects your bank balance 30 days into the future showing the impact on um like existing bills and invoices if they're all paid on time what impact that would have on your cash flow um so i'd say the short-term cash flow um add-on has been amazing again during rotavirus it's been a fantastic feature that's really helped to give the small business owner a lot of a lot of control calm a lot of anxiety i think that's been the biggest thing this year um it's just anxiety everybody's anxious and actually to be able to to have those business insights to be able to forecast your cash flow 30 days in advance and actually 2020 has been about can we just get through the next 30 days and as a small business owner that's okay so being able to use that feature um to your advantage and really look at are we going to be okay for the next 30 days um it's been a really really valuable add-on so very very timely um releases from from xero so i would say the business natural and short-term cash flow are probably the top two releases of this year for me yeah and i think yeah absolutely spot on i i can't believe the timing of and it's both companies a bit of a spoiler alert there's a cash flow forecast that i'm it's like they knew it was gonna happen that's it isn't it they knew didn't they and but actually let's get those um those silver hats on um but actually just just pushing away from the curtain a bit and i'll speak into intuit and quickbooks about it and they actually pushed it forward so it wasn't due they weren't looking to release this anytime soon it was going to be something they were going to build upon build up and it was going to be probably next year's release but they they and the same with zero the reason they released it was because the need of the clients and the needs of the small businesses at that point and that's really reassuring isn't it from both parties i mean you know at the end of the day they've both got the same um the same kind of manta and the same um realization that it's all about helping the small business isn't it so you know it's great that both of them have had that point and i love the business snapshot it's one of my really favorite bits about xero at the moment about that ability just to have that quick little okay let's have some talking points let's talk to you about actual figures that make sense to you an understanding that you can help so yeah i think you've got absolutely spawn i would say one final thing i'm going to bring up just because i loved it was um xero ran a special offer this year for the month of september which was um if you took out xero in september you got a free coffee machine a free pair of headphones or a printer it was a printer headphones or a coffee machine if you took out xero in september of this year which i thought was amazing and um i was trying to persuade all of my clients to do it and give me the coffee machine no one did but that for me was like deal breaker of the year that is a bit of a bit of a game changer really isn't it getting a coffee machine i mean it could it should really come hand in hand with in your bookkeeping junction you get a coffee highly highly recommend okay let's jump onto quickbooks and their innovation now i can't top a coffee machine that is a bar too high for me unfortunately um but it is first of all very very similar to what rachel just said in terms of those innovations as i said that cash flow forecast that came into uh quickbooks only the beginning of or during lockdown shall say has been so crucial to clients it's been one of our biggest talking points every time we're having a conversation with a client we always bring up their cash flow forecast we always look at that 90d um projection more than anything to get an understanding that these are accurate these are something that because both in xero and in quickbooks they are clusters betas are clusters you know in progress there are bits that we know we we need to make sure we're happy with and as i've said a lot during these videos it's all going to be down to how how how up-to-date your data is and how reliant your data is before any of this will be useful but it is great to have that ability just to look and see what they project as your 90-day turnover 90-day cash flow going to be what to look at and then having that ability to add scenarios in so furlough extended furlough flexible furlough all of those conversation topics we've been having with clients just having a little tool like this come in absolute lifesaver so i completely agree i think the um cash flow plan has been huge again like they've been talking to one another and they've actually been developing this in in in tandem we have a performance center that's that was also released and also something that you know again just as rachel's been saying is great tool to be able to have that conversation topic and be able to talk and go through um but the other two that i think has been big is and i've spoke about one of them already was that whole tagging solution so you can tag and then find discoverability so the ability to go in have a look at my tags and just go look i've got all these items that i need to look at in more detail for my client or my client wants me to look at it in certain way so just a discoverability point of view i find that really powerful and then they've also brought in the receipt capture as well so the idea here is you take a photo on your phone of a bill and then you go in and it will record that transaction now i know xero has a very similar option to this using one of the third parties but having it just built directly into the software into quickbooks has been really powerful and then one final one is the new self-assessment estimate as well we've been finding this really useful and just be able to have that conversation topic with clients just be able to talk to them about um the fact that we have this ability to go in there and really understand what your pre or what your tax bill is likely to be so powerful going forward so with that one i mean it's too hard to tell really isn't it i think maybe maybe we get a draw on that one as both of them were singing along the same hymn sheets and in fairness the other innovations have been brought in are kind of light for like in each one okay then so with that pretty much sums up the kind of main key points is there anything else from a zero point of view that you want to showcase bring in or talk about or show off i think the biggest comparison of the biggest question we get asked is the biggest one for small business owners which is price um i'm sure you have a lot to say because quickbooks generally comes under the line um on price and you might not get a coffee machine but you could probably buy a couple of extra coffees if you want quickbooks rather than zero so today's date is um the 10th of november 2020 just in case you're watching this um in the future that was weird um okay so at the moment there's three different packages we've got starter standard and premium um starter a lot of clients find this very very restrictive we generally wouldn't put somebody on the starter package um it's limited to only being able to send 20 invoices and quotes at five bills and i think you're limited on actually how many transactions you have a month so we normally would put people onto the standard package which means that you can have unlimited users which is great for adding colleagues staff your accountant so unlimited users you can send invoices and quotes straight from the app you can enter bills you can connect all the bank transactions and submit um so the standard package basically for xero covers everything apart from multiple currencies and then that's where you would need premium which is 30 pounds a month so the basic standard package that most small businesses would go on we're currently looking at 24 pounds a month for xero yeah and it's interesting as well i think we'll see this when we come to the quickbooks but this tier system is very much kind of in line with every kind of service provider and software solution out there um but i i'm i'm the one and i'm basically doing this sort of solution for because i'm that person who goes through each one and i'm looking at which sweeties i don't get on on each one so for me i'm always trying to figure out am i actually better off being in the the higher mode and going from there i like to fall in that same trap as well it is difficult or in fact let's get this right from a zero point of view it's far more simple to pick which version you want as you've said most of the time you were kind of discount that starter and you just got to decide between standard and premium um but it is kind of that one extra step for them isn't it to make sure but how easy is it from zero point of view to jump between them if you need to oh very very easy so as long as you have um i think it's administrator rights within um within xero you can change your package so um if actually you are a sole business owner and you decide that you need to pop yourself on payroll or you take on some staff and you need to actually upgrade um i think you get three months free payroll but um if you do decide that you need to add on payroll to your package um you can literally do it straight from your app you don't need to call them um you don't need to do anything else you can do it straight from the app so it's it's very straightforward definitely definitely and when it comes to quickbooks then unfortunately we get a lot more of a complicated and difficult conversation because yes we have those three tiers just like we talked about in xero so we do have this ability to talk about a simple star instead of standard essentials and plus but also just to throw another bit into the mix is self-assessment as well so quickbook self-employed which is a completely standalone product um is also out there and we found this to be really confusing for clients we've had a lot of clients who just went on the self-employed one because that's the first one that popped up and it looked more competitive on price but it isn't really designed for their business i bet you found the same aren't you rachel 100 i think the self-employed model is so is really really clunky and i think actually quickbooks almost selling themselves out because people just then have a bad experience with quickbooks and actually it's just that they've they're not putting clients in touch with the right plot products and i think they to to streamline this process would would give them a lot of benefits yeah 100 100 and one of the disadvantages if you jump on self-employed to begin with is you then can't move yourself over to the um full-blown books easily either which again you know rachel's already said it's just they've just shot themselves in the foot there um but when it comes to prices simple start starts at 12 pound on a normal basis but there's always some discounts out there um and then it goes up to 20 pound for essentials and 30 pound plus so you are looking at pretty much the same price point the only thing i would say though is that the simple start is far less um of a restriction than it is from a zero point of view so there's none of this having to only be able to do so many transactions and everything else what it does limit you though is just extra functionality so as you start going up the scale you start adding up more sweeties more toys um and you start looking at it more on a cruel basis but for most of our kind of cash-based simplistic clients you'll actually find that the um simple start on the essential it's the simple start is pretty much okay for them and as rachel said in zero it's the same here we just get to add on and upgrade you it simply as time goes on and it's seamless or literally you start paying that extra tier and all those extra features come your way so i do feel like there is kind of really advantages in that in the cache element of it as well and also just like in in with xero and with quickbooks you know talk to your accountants talk to rachel talk to myself about different uh pricing structures because we get access to preferential rates and we can pass those savings on to you guys as well so that's the pricing point and i really um really like the idea of bringing the price in and going forward but it wouldn't be right for me if i didn't bring in one of the extra steps as well and you know i'm a little bit biased on this one because i am a certified trainer with quickbooks themselves so you know this may be a little bit of an unfair advance of unfair talk here but rachel go through with me and tell me the training offer from zero themselves good question so um we actually within our practice we offer a free one-to-one um trading session with all clients on any software so we actually bypass this quite frequently in order to just really bespoke the training to to the client their company and exactly what they need so we actually like zip past this quite a lot um however in terms of what xero offer there's a whole range there's a whole training center what's available to use a small business owner um and it varies in detail from a one hour whistle stop tour of what xero is how to use it and like how to nail it all the way down to they have some really really in-depth courses and training sessions that you can do on really specific things so if you're a small business and you just become that registered and you just want to have a really quick session on um how do i make the change how do i tell zeroline about registered all the way through to actually running and filing about return from zero um because from this there's lots of really really really good bits that you can jump in and out of this does however raise one of my downsides of zero it which is actually zero support so again um having an accountant that is a certified advisor is i would say actually becoming more and more important for whatever software you have um so i'm sure aaron's exactly the same like we never charge clients for asking questions we don't we don't charge for our time we'll just jump on zoom do a quick sheet screen share and solve the problem and firefight for them it's in our interest to do that however if you were using xero on your own didn't have someone to call contacting xero is actually very difficult and can take quite a long time so you can't call xero they don't have an online chat you can only i think this is right and you can actually only email them at the moment i don't know if that's changed yeah so you can actually only email xero which is just not great and it's a bit outdated i know it's because they're not a uk based company and um like there's a whole list of reasons they don't offer as a service and actually they invest that money into training accountants instead but it can actually be a really big barrier and i think for me if i was a user it might actually cut me off yeah but i think you you reach now on the head there you have to find someone like yourself you know or myself and have that support network have that ability to be able to talk to them because one of the advantages of turning to people like ourselves is the fact that we know your business as well so you know when you ask rachel exactly what your problem is zero she's going to know from your point of view as a business so you know how to deal with that and go from there so you can see the advantage there um but yeah that is one of those things where from a training point of view and a support point of view it's not as strong and talking about training and supporting i will toot uh the quickbooks home on this one so when it comes to the training solution they have massive amount of training so from webinars to um support to actual um exams and to qualifications and to be able to make sure that you've got every aspect from it as well and then as rachel talks on about support as well we've got the opportunity to call an actual real person so i jump into any file up in the help section you actually get to ask the question um from anyone directly from here so you can as ask a little chat and actually talk to the person and it's a real person as well because sometimes you even get their camera popping up if you need to and it's not a robot that's talking there but you also get to phone them and go through from there but from training support there is lots and lots of details on there and lots of opportunities and also you've got content on youtube as well so you've got people like myself there's other people out there doing content as well i know rachel you're going to be starting to do content aren't you on businesses so you know that's great yeah yeah so accountancy um we are segueing into the youtube space just for value um and to really really get across what accountants are what we do and um just the face behind the companies that um support small businesses yeah and we definitely will be supporting that as well here at buffett's because i think that's what that's what it's all about we want to make sure it's many people get eyes on that content as quick as they can but you know that's pretty much it then from when it comes to quickbooks versus xero i think we'll kind of say that there is a let's let's call it a draw begrudgingly i mean i don't really want to draw but you know let's put my pride to side for one second and let's call it a draw how do you feel about that yeah absolutely i think for a lot of clients it just comes down to either preference or finding the right software that matches and resonates with their business the best and again finding accountants like aaron or me um are really really important to help you make that decision um and to take a lot of that stress away from you definitely definitely 100 well rachel has been brilliant thank you so much for coming along and talking and fighting that fight for zero um it was a hard fought battle in the end and i think you know you did well you did zero proud they could be proud to have you fighting their corner going forward so really appreciate you uh coming in and coming along and talking us through thank you so much for having me no problem whatsoever and with that we're gonna end this one here but do stick around for more content like this and then hopefully we'll be able to come and give you content just like this for your business stay tuned and there we have it a nice little insight into xero versus quickbooks now as we said at the beginning of this video one thing to remember is that the most important thing is you as a business gets the right one so even though we're going through and we've told you kind of ins and outs of each individual software what they have to offer and everything that's in between do you remember you still need to take into account everything that software has to offer and do make sure you get this right because it's going to be so important to you and your business and making sure that you've got the information you need to understand exactly how your business is operating it's been great to have rachel out on as well so make sure you do give her a like follow and i'll make sure all her social links are below and keep an eye out for her content on youtube as well coming very soon quickbooks versus xero it's a fight that we will keep on looking at and keep on understanding but hopefully you've got a bit of an insight now into exactly how that works my name has been aaron patrick it's been an absolute pleasure to do this video again big thank you a big shout out to rachel accountancy and i will see you in the next video hello and thank you for watching that video what you may not know is this channel that you've watched this video from is part of a wider group that wider group is called apple core production and the three channels that we have involved are as follows aaron patrick the quickbooks chat boffix tax tip finally we have apple core live in geeky all the links everything are down below in description but it really mean a lot to us if you can go and give a like to the other channels as well [Music]

Channel: Boffix - UK Small Business Support

Views: 5,729

Keywords: ACCOUNTANT, ACCOUNTANCY, ACCOUNTING, BOOKKEEPING, FINANCE, BUSINESS, COMPANY, TAX, TAX TIPS, TAX ADVICE, SUPPORT, ADVICE, SMALL BUSINESS, NEW BUSINESS, VAT, HMRC, MONEY, BITCOIN, STOCKS, SHARES, SOFTWARE, QUICKBOOKS, XERO, STUDENT, LIMITED COMPANY, SOLE TRADER, CONTENT CREATOR, RESELLER, SELF EMPLOYED, YOUTUBER, UNITED KINGDOM, EU, UK, BOFFIX, STREAMER, GAMER, INFLUENCER, ENTREPRENEUR, BUSINESS OWNER, EUROPE, TRADING, LAW, LAWS, ACCOUNTANTS, INFORMATION, EDUCATION, FINANCIAL ADVICE, SAVINGS, PROPERTY, MORTGAGE, INVESTING

Id: GLsw82dLqxM

Length: 45min 44sec (2744 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 13 2020