Here is an excellent accounting software task comparison chart on provided by Growth Path.
Bookkeepers should be familiar with the strengths of each software package in order to make good recommendations to clients.
Module
MYOB Essentials
Xero
QuickBooks Online
Sales
Very minimal
Minimal, but improving. Quotes are now possible. Pricing and credit terms are very minimal. Third party options are very strong.
OK, similar to Xero
Purchasing
No
Basic. Receipt & invoicing in the same step.
Basic.
GST
Excellent
Excellent
Excellent
Payroll
OK for small payrolls
Very good. Xero’s subscription includes web-based employee self-help and apps for easy phone-based expense claim submissions (snap a receipt). Xero is pushing ahead in this area, and has increasingly strong differentiation (plus good third party modules for more complex situations). Xero is confident to offer solutions of 100 staff, plans go beyond that.
OK
Perpetual Inventory (i.e. “real” inventory)
No
Yes, as of March 2015 . As of October 2015, the API fully supports ‘tracked inventory’, as Xero calls it. Single location. No batch or serial.
In the top-tier, there is basic Perpetual Inventory.
Job costing
Basic. Accountants are supported by MYOB’s practice management software
3rd party solutions, including Workflow Max, bought by Xero. Accountants are supported by Xero’s practice management version. Using tracking categories to do this is unsatisfactory; there is not really native support for job costing. However, there is support for tracking expenses to be recovered from clients.
Limited. Like Xero, you can track expenses to be billed to clients as recovery (you can assign a default mark-up too)
Intercompany (auto-balancing entries)
No
No
No
Segmenting the business
No
Yes (tracking categories, two dimensions, like having acct + two segments). ‘New’ reporting module allows consolidation of a subset of tracking categories.
Yes (classes). Similar to Xero.
Budgeting
Budgets per account. Can upload from spreadsheet, but no breakdown features. Multiple bugdets. Budgets by tracking category.
Can budget by ‘class’ (segment) and/or by customer.
Securing Access to functions, period locking
OK
Good: ‘advisor’ user can continue entry in a date period locked to ordinary users (e.g. for month end processing)
To be assessed
Cashflow management
OK
OK
To be assessed
Analytics and Dashboard
Not really
Not really. But it has the best report writing tool, even though that just lets you customise traditional accounting reports. Integration with 3rd party.
To be assessed
Audit trail
Not enterprise class.
Not enterprise class, but deleted transactions are mostly viewable.
To be assessed
Multi-currency
No
Optional. Basic.
To be assessed
Third-party integration
Example: Kounta POS: Yes (Native). Unleashed sales and inventory: No DIY: Easy.
Example: Kounta POS: Yes (Native). Unleashed sales and inventory: Yes (Native) DIY: Easy Shopify: yes Best in class Zapier and OneSaas support
To be assessed. No CSV import of sales.
Online payment integration
To be assessed
Yes
To be assessed
API & integration
API is satisfactory, after years of no API. Not much out-of-the box support, but possibly growing.
Outstanding, best in class and with momentum. Every cloud package offered to the Australian market will offer Xero integration, and the API makes it cheap to build your own integration.
Very good API. ‘Out of the box’ integrations are very good, close to Xero. Zapier and OneSaas support is almost as good as Xero.
Cost
From $40 p/m
From $50 p/m
From $25 p/m
High volume manual data entry
Not really expected
Some optimisation has been made, but browsers are not ideal for this. High volume data entry should be done via the API. The API is mature.
Same as Xero
User training requirements (e.g. new staff) (assuming the user has basics GST and double-entry bookkeeping)
Very minimal
Very minimal, although non-standard events like customer overpayments are not obvious. There are plenty of YouTube videos and help documents. There are many certified book-keepers
Same as Xero
Transaction limits (sales) [these are rough estimates, not official vendor numbers, and this is an uncertain science]
Unknown
2000 to 4000 invoice lines a month (probably). 5000 customers max. Consolidation via the API may be a fall-back. Stress testing indicates that it performs well above claimed limits.
Similar to Xero
User support
Good online chat support
The worst support of all (sorry to say). Really no easy way to get immediate human support. You are expected to contact your bookkeeper or accountant. Compensation is excellent community support and very good training and documentation.
The support winner: fast access to a helpdesk supported by screen sharing which is extremely effective.
Recruitment for specific package skills
Rare
Reasonably easy
Possible