Xero Price Increase (2023) and Alternatives

Here we explain the 2023 Xero Price Increase. How much Xero’s Prices are increasing. Why Xero’s prices are increasing. Also, the alternatives to Xero. With CloudBook Online Accountants, you can choose whichever software suits you the best.

The Xero Price Increase

Here are the Xero Price increases over the past two years:

Why are Xero’s Prices Increasing Again?

Xero state that they are continuing to invest in their platform to deliver more efficient tools, powerful insights and access to faster payments. The only noticeable change over the past year is that all of the reports have changed to allow you to edit them. They have now removed the old reports.

Has Xero improved?

In our opinion, Xero is certainly improving all of the time, however those changes are small. Where the changes are not small, they usually come at an extra cost, such as the Expenses or Projects add-ons. The core platform, in our opinion, has not improved enough over the past two years to justify up to a 50% increase in the Xero price over the past three years. Having said that, it is still the best online accounting software for small businesses. So if you can afford to continue using it, you should.

Alternatives to Xero Price Increase

Use CloudBook Online Accountants

With CloudBook Online Accountants, unlike other accountants, you can use whichever software you prefer. We don’t make you use Xero software, so you don’t have to pay their high prices. As well as that, you’ll probably save on accountancy fees too, with our low fixed monthly fees.

Downgrade Xero Plan

To avoid the price increase, could you downgrade your Xero plan? The Starter plan now has unlimited bank transactions and allows up to 20 sales invoices and 5 bills per month. Instead of using bills you could just attach them to the bank transaction. The Standard plan is only missing multi-currency which is only essential if you have foreign bank accounts. If you have few foreign currency transactions you could convert them manually.

Use Move My Books

Move My Books is a free service that helps you move your accounting data to Xero, QuickBooks or Sage Accounting. This could be useful if you are thinking of moving from Xero to QuickBooks or Sage.

Pandle

Pandle is unlimited and comes with multi-currency and bank feeds for £5pcm. We can get it for £2.50pcm. It’s relatively new, sometimes slow, and takes a while to get used to. However, it should cope with most things you use Xero for.

QuickBooks

QuickBooks is our next most popular software after Xero. It does most things that Xero can do and is quite easy to use. Their Self-Employed package is £10pcm, Simple is £14pcm, Essentials £24pcm, Plus is £34pcm.

FreeAgent

FreeAgent is geared towards small business and freelancers. Natwest, RBS and Mettle bank customers can get it for free. We can get it for our clients for £17.50pcm.

Kashflow

Kashflow is less popular than it used to be. However, if you have straightforward accounting transactions, it can work well for you. Starter is £10.50pcm, Business is £22pcm or with payroll is £29pcm.

QuickFile

Quickfile is used by a few of our clients. It’s less easy to use but it can be free if you have less than 1000 entries per year, otherwise it’s just £60pa. If you want automated bank feeds, that’s an extra £15pa.

MyT

MyT accounting is a new software with a built-in receipt reader using AI to categorise your costs automatically. The Standard subscription is £5pcm, Plus is £15pcm and Pro is £30pcm.

Sage Accounting

From our experience Sage have struggled to keep up with their online competition. As such, we still don’t have any clients using Sage at the time of writing but we’d be happy to help you use it. However, it’s not much cheaper than Xero. The Start price is £14pcm. Standard is £28pcm and Plus is £36pcm.

Spreadsheets

If you’re not VAT registered, you could use a spreadsheet (e.g. Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers) to do your accounting. While we prefer online accounting software, if your accounting transactions are straightforward, a tidy spreadsheet would be ok. All transactions need to be categorised. Read more on our bookkeeping using a spreadsheet page.

Our Own Software

We have our own free software which very basically allows you to list your sales and expenditure. It can also submit MTD VAT returns.

Other Online Accounting Software

There are many other online accounting software platforms available. We’ll consider doing your accounts etc using any online accounting software. Look out for ones that can link to UK bank accounts and are MTD compliant. Unfortunately, this excludes Wave accounting which is a free alternative if you don’t need those things.