Not every business needs sophistication in their accounting. Sometimes accuracy and ease of use win the day. Xero offers a no-nonsense approach to online accounting– that’s all the things you really need, and little that you don’t.

Every business needs some way to track the dollars and cents. Whether that's a spreadsheet, a basic digital ledger, or a fancy ERP, the core need is the same: keep track of money flowing into, and out of, the business. There are many, many options for businesses, and it can be hard to sift through the noise. At the end of the day, one really important question to ask is, "what reporting needs do I have to effectively manage my business?" Xero is one online accounting option that answers this question with journeyman confidence, providing just what you need and cutting out lots of noise you don't.

Xero is a Software as a Service (SaaS) tool for accounting. It's not an ERP -- you won't find things like inventory management and labor costing. However, Xero is an exceptional online bookkeeping and financial reporting tool. Xero has kept features to the essentials: GL management, customers, contacts, transactions, and reporting. The software was intended originally as an online competitor to Quickbooks, but the execution of that vision has made it so much more.

GRAYBOX works with a lot of software platforms, and we love Xero. We love Xero so much that we chose it as the accounting software for our own business. There are a number of benefits Xero brings to the table that really set it apart from the crowd. First and foremost, the user interface is really intuitive and easy to use. As a company with creative services as a core offering, this is incredibly important to GRAYBOX, and we feel the Xero team has done a great job of creating an elegant user interface that effortlessly guides users to where they need to go. By removing unnecessary noise, the Xero team has made a product that's easy to navigate, and as a result, is a joy to use. Second, Xero keeps things to the basics. If your company needs high customization and flexibility, Xero might not be the tool for you. But for many of our clients, where a CRM contains lots of the Customer meta data, and project work is tracked in a PSA, Xero provides a great picture of just the numbers. A client record tells the financial story of dollars in and out, and leaves other relationship storytelling to other applications. Finally, all the key reports a business needs are built in. There's no need to build a lot of custom reports, because the core 90% of reports that are a small or midsize business would need come out of the box.

Xero is a great fit for the business that has dedicated tools for customer relationship management and project tracking, and needs something specific to tracking financials. The elegance of Xero comes from the fact that it's not trying to be everything to everyone, and instead it's focusing on its core strengths as a financial tracking application. For a business that wants a more 360 degree view of their customers, Xero may not be the right fit as a result. Xero is also great at allowing you to "link" multiple instances -- allowing a user to easily toggle between business entity accounts. However, Xero does not offer the ability to run a consolidated set of financial statements across the multiple entities. While there are external tools on the market that will do this for you, it's not a feature currently baked into the Xero product. So for organizations that have multiple subsidiary entities related to a parent, Xero may not be the best fit.

GRAYBOX uses a lot of adjectives to describe our approach, and one of those is pragmatic. Xero is an exceptional and pragmatic option for a lot of businesses. It's offered at a low price point, it's consistent, reliable, and effective, and it gets the job done well. It's not fancy, and it's not for every business, but where it's a good fit, it's a great fit.