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I used Quickbooks desktop and found it antiquated; create an export and email it to your accountant? No thank you. I then tried Quickbooks Online and it was ha

I used Quickbooks desktop and found it antiquated; create an export and email it to your accountant? No thank you. I then tried Quickbooks Online and it was hands-down the worst piece of software I've ever used. I ultimately landed on Xero, which is "good enough". To echo a number of other comments on this page, my accountants were generally slaves to the software. I actually had to change firms going from QBO to Xero as my existing accountant said they only worked with Quickbooks. This is all a reminder the current tax system in the US is an unnecessary game made unnecessarily difficult.

nulbyte 5y ago
I also use Xero for a nonprofit. They seem to be trapped in a growth mindset to the exclusion of finishing half-baked functionality, but still better than QuickBooks, IMO. Their support is also a lot easier to reach, compared to Intuit, and the folks at Xero seem to know their product better, too. Luckily, our accountant was perfectly fine figuring out Xero. While it's said to see more software go to subscription models, I will gladly pay Xero more for better functionality. Or until I roll my own, which I keep threatening, but never get around to.
- mariushn 5y ago
  What would an alternative solution need to offer for you to switch?
  - nulbyte 5y ago
    That is a great question. Some feature parity would be needed; I appreciate much of the Xero API, though some parts are incomplete. Built-in support for Stripe is great. Both have been beneficial for integrating with some business processes, notably reporting. More flexible reporting would be a killer feature. They have standard reports, but they aren't flexible enough for a nonprofit, and the reports through the API are pretty lame. I have to pull 7 reports just to automate a proper balance sheet, because a) I don't want to export reports manually and b) the API only lets you filter by a single tracking category at a time.

nulbyte 5y ago

I also use Xero for a nonprofit. They seem to be trapped in a growth mindset to the exclusion of finishing half-baked functionality, but still better than QuickBooks, IMO. Their support is also a lot easier to reach, compared to Intuit, and the folks at Xero seem to know their product better, too. Luckily, our accountant was perfectly fine figuring out Xero. While it's said to see more software go to subscription models, I will gladly pay Xero more for better functionality. Or until I roll my own, which I keep threatening, but never get around to.

mariushn 5y ago
What would an alternative solution need to offer for you to switch?
- nulbyte 5y ago
  That is a great question. Some feature parity would be needed; I appreciate much of the Xero API, though some parts are incomplete. Built-in support for Stripe is great. Both have been beneficial for integrating with some business processes, notably reporting. More flexible reporting would be a killer feature. They have standard reports, but they aren't flexible enough for a nonprofit, and the reports through the API are pretty lame. I have to pull 7 reports just to automate a proper balance sheet, because a) I don't want to export reports manually and b) the API only lets you filter by a single tracking category at a time.