Xero vs FreeAgent Comparison

Nice and simple but the UI is really poor and they clearly haven't invested their time in tax experts for payroll for the UK. Great for small companies.

Support is slow and un-helpful, help guides are missing. Impossible to move from Freeagent to Xero and data import just fails

Xero has a nice layout and is intuitive to use. Also integrates seamlessly with accountant - no more ugly spreadsheets! It's so helpful to be able to see my tax reports and balance sheets at a glance, throughout the year. I especially love the expenses app, where you can take photos of receipts with the phone camera, and the app will automatically log the expenses for you.

Xero is expensive compared to other cloud accounting software out there. Nowadays, most business banking apps offer basic bookkeeping & expenses functions. Plus you can get FreeAgent - another very good accounting software - for free when signing up to a business account with Natwest or Royal Bank of Scotland. For the above reasons, I'd say Xero is no longer a top choice for small businesses or sole traders on a modest budget.

I've started using Xero a few months ago to manage all the money coming in and out as a freelancer. Compared to other platforms, Xero provides the widest array of features that can help any business no matter the size. It also comes with outstanding integration with banks and online banking tools, and great customizable features for invoices, quotes, automatic email, etc.

Unfortunately, this platform is not very user friendly when it comes to freelancers or small businesses. It's overly complicated for those like me who don't have a team of accountants or employees to manage. In that sense, their competitor FreeAgent does a better job at simplifying these operations for those who run their own business. If Xero gave their users the options to chose between a simplified or expert mode, it would be a killer platform.

For bookkeeping, small and medium-sized businesses this software is a dream. It is the most intuitive and easiest to use of all the accounting software that we reviewed. As an accountant, it is easy to fix user errors and mis-postings. There is a proper audit trail and safety checks built in. There are so many time-saving features like find and recode, repeating bills/invoices/journals, bank rules. The move toward AI is exciting too.

The reports aren't GAP or IAS compliant so it is no good for reporting, final accounts production or tax. To get accountants interested and recommending Xero in the early days, they promised accountants that Final Accounts Production and Corporation Tax software was in their development queue but it never materialised and they burnt a lot of bridges with accountants when they announced that they had...

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Having switched from Xero, which I used for a decade, I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to use FreeAgent. I would say the user interface and functionality are more intuitive than Xero. The best thing is, the software is free if you have a business account with NatWest or Mettle.

It isn't able to split the actual income and fees when reconciling Stripe transactions. I use the DoubleAgent plug-in as a workaround.

We receive free access to FreeAgent as part of our bank account package. It makes accounting for our club so much easier than the previous excel sheets

It’s not quite as good as Xero, but it’sa fraction of the price. For a non-profit it’s a winner

Easy to setup and use - the mobile app is pretty good making it easy to add expenses. Bank feed is handy. I use the API to import expenses.

Expensive compared to competitors like Xero, bank feed is slow. Perhaps you can add integrations for credit cards too to automatically pull in expenses.

I think FreeAgent does its job well. I've never run into technical faults or found anything I needed to do that it couldn't do. My favorite thing about FreeAgent is that my accountant can access the platform and see everything I can. That makes getting information to my accountants or asking questions incredibly slick.

I moved to FreeAgent from Xero because it's what my accountant knew how to use. I think Xero has slightly better tech and integrations so I would say I don't find FreeAgent as engaging to use. It's hard to criticize for that though because although it's nice to integrate with other systems, I haven't had any major issues getting information into FreeAgent as required.

I always know my financial and tax situation. I'm never in the dark. You put in the info as you generate it and you'll never be in any doubt about your financial health.

I know Xero has lots of bells and whistles but Freeagent is simple to use, predictable and the support is from UK or US based specialists who really know what they're talking about.

Interface is pretty good.

They say they are "working on" this crucial feature but a year later, nothing.

Hi there. FreeAgent has multi-currency, multi-language invoicing and as of early 2014 allows you to record bank accounts in a foreign currency also.

I got access to this software FREE of charge through banking with RBS. Having previously used Xero for our book-keeping, I found it had the same great functionality but a much slicker design. It's simplicity and ease of use is the best thing going for it.

Had some issues at the beginning with connecting our bank feeds but this was sorted out quickly by the team at FreeAgent - can't think of any real faults with the software.