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Xero Prices Increase By $2 Again But No New Features – Are They Desperate for Cash?

One of Australia’s most popular small business accounting software has upped its pricing again, but with no new major added features for users (like when they included Hubdoc features in a previous hike).

Xero has announced that from September 1, 2022, three of its plans will increase in price, with the smallest increase at $2/month through to a $14/month hike.

So why are Xero prices increasing and what does it mean for users?  Xero has some pretty expensive recent purchases, and their share price is still declining, so could this spell financial troubles for Xero?

Continue reading Xero Prices Increase By $2 Again But No New Features – Are They Desperate for Cash?
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NEW COURSE: QuickBooks Online Daily Transactions Course

Enrol Now for our Special Priceintuit-quickbooks-accounting-software-training-courses-logo

We’re coming to a rather frantic yet very exciting end to the 2016 calendar year with a whole bunch of new course announcements coming — the first of which is the creation of our QuickBooks Online Daily Transactions Course! It’s currently only $50 so hurry up and enrol now to enrol at this price — it’ll go up soon as we develop new content to beef it up!

I written a lot about Quickbooks Online since Intuit, a MASSIVE accounting software company in the US, started to promote itself directly in Australia after breaking up with Reckon, their local distributor. And why did this happen? Because of the power of cloud accounting for software companies to deal direct with the customer!

Why a New QuickBooks Online Training Course?

Our QuickBooks Online Daily Transactions Course is the result of comparisons we’ve made between the accounting software programs and the belief that this software will start to take a larger chunk of the accounting software market in Australia — if for only one reason: the cost for the software is very low and remains low while they try to win market share. The functionality of QuickBooks is excellent, and as far as navigating and “user experience”, it is far easier and less clunky than having to install a software program on your computer, like you need to do with MYOB!

 

At EzyLearn we use each of these main accounting software programs (MYOB, Xero and Quickbooks) and for me, personally, QuickBooks is the pick of the bunch!

— Steve Slisar, Managing Director, EzyLearn

 

Our course has been created by highly qualified professionals — in this instance, Tracey, our registered BAS agent and Helen, a qualified accountant, so you can feel confident the information is covered thoroughly and precisely. You can view our course prices and enrol now to take advantage of the great price on this new course.

If you’re looking to improve your current skills set or you’d simply like to learn a new one, visit our website for a full list of our training courses and details on how to enrol. If you enrol in any of our MYOB, WordPress or Excel online training courses, you’ll receive Lifetime Membership to our course materials. This means you can stay up-to-date with each new version of software that’s released for no additional cost! What’s stopping you? Enrol today!

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Intuit Quickbooks: take a 70% discount or free trial ultimatum

Intuit Quickbooks sign up ultimatum – clever marketing or a turn off

Intuit Quickbooks Setup Training Course - 5 Sign up for the free trial or get a 70% discount and pay nowI was reviewing the course content for our soon to be released Intuit Quickbooks Setup online training course and noticed the interesting offer that the company makes when you sign up for the free 30 day trial – take the discounted price or lose the offer of a discount!

For their premium online product, Quickbooks Online Plus, that’s a free trial OR the 70% saving of $294.

On the flip side they do offer the ability to cancel at any time. What do you think of that? Feel free to like us on Facebook and share your opinion.

I use MYOB, Xero and Quickbooks and I like Intuit Quickbooks

Intuit Quickbooks Setup Training Course - 6 Share price and enterprise value of Intuit - publisher of QuickbooksCall me a masochist but I believe the best way to be able to use and recommend accounting software is by getting exposed to the programs and how they work by using them yourself – I also think most good bookkeepers should be doing this too.

I confess that I currently use each of these major accounting programs (MYOB, Xero and Quickbooks) and find the Quickbooks Online software very impressive.

Intuit Quickbooks has all the features small businesses expect, including mobile phone apps that make it easy to keep track of receipts using your phone’s camera, for a price that is VERY attractive to small businesses.

Why Intuit Quickbooks can take the Aussie accounting crown

I wrote about the threat that Intuit represent to MYOB and Xero in my blog about whether these two accounting software companies could end up being SMASHED by Intuit in 2014 and if you look at the share price of this company over the last 5 years you can see how they are in a very healthy position (with a valuation just shy of $30 Billion) to maintain strong and constant pressure on the two most widely used accounting software programs. Except for the fact that people don’t like change these are the 3 factors that I think can win Intuit the Accounting software crown in Australia:

  1. Excellent features, including Payroll and bank feeds as basics – they have it all
  2. Great user interface that is easy to use – Xero seems to be trying to emulate parts of the Quickbooks dashboard
  3. Attractive price compared to Xero and MYOB – They constantly have good specials and regular cheaper prices
  4. An App marketing place for project management, point of sale, CRM and other online tools – Intuit have the benefit of being a massive global company with millions of customers (US market leader)

Payroll included for no charge and they’ll convert your current Xero or MYOB data

Payroll has always been a premium feature for MYOB, who earnt significant annual income from businesses who used the software for their payroll and HAD to upgrade to get the new tax tables (even though this was previously a simple file update). Intuit QuickBooks give this to you for their normal subscription prices. The other pain factor for most people is getting the data across from their existing system into Quickbooks and Intuit have sorted that out with a free conversion offer.

When we talk about Quickbooks you should be aware that Quickbooks has always been published by Intuit, but when it was a computer based software program that you had to download, it was distributed in Australia by a company called Reckon. You can read here about the changes since Intuit Quickbooks became a cloud accounting program.

Pre register now for the free training workbook

Pre-register your interest in our forthcoming Intuit Quickbooks course to receive the first workbook for free!

This offer will only be available to everyone registered in our system before the release announcement date and of course it is free to register and free to receive the workbook!

 

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Is Xero really the easiest accounting software to use?

Xero was a market leader, but what do accountants think of it now?

xero cloud accounting software works on tablets phones and desktop computersWhen Xero was launched a few years ago, one of its selling points was that, compared with other accounting software – in particular, MYOB – Xero was incredibly easy to use, and it was also cloud-based, which meant you could access your accounts from any computer, any device, anywhere, anytime. This helped Xero to get a major foothold in the marketplace here in Australia, where MYOB had always reigned supreme.

But it wasn’t long before we started getting requests from bookkeepers and accountants for a Xero training course, in addition to our already existing MYOB training courses. It turned out that, as more businesses (tradies, for example) started using Xero because of its cloud functionality, their bookkeepers and accountants were finding that they needed training in some of Xero’s features and functions, despite Xero being billed as the easy alternative to MYOB.

Perhaps Xero isn’t that intuitive to use without a training course?

Since introducing our Xero training course, we’ve also noticed a significant upswing in enrolments, especially from bookkeepers, with many noting that the bank reconciliations and adjustments features in Xero are difficult to navigate. This got us wondering as to whether Xero really is that easy to use compared with MYOB, or whether it there might be an easier alternative out there, especially for small businesses managing all of their own accounts.

QuickBooks wants to be the small biz accounting software of choice

Since QuickBooks re-emerged in Australia, with full backing from their US-based parent company, Intuit, they’ve been cornering the small business market, with their inexpensive pricing plans and now by announcing a partnership deal with PayPal (paypal want you to be paid quicker) that enables a two-way flow of data between both QuickBooks and PayPal.

The QuickBooks-PayPal deal follows a similar union between Saasu and Westpac, which promises Saasu and Westpac customers with direct bank feeds to provide business owners with real-time insights into their cashflow. As one of the Big Four banks – and, quite often, the preferred bank for most Australian businesses – the union is hoped to give Saasu a leg up into the increasingly competitive cloud-accounting market, which saw the shuttering of the Australian-owned Reach Accounting earlier this year.

QuickBooks is well-placed to topple Xero

At more than half the price of Xero’s ‘standard’ plan (the starter plan at $25 per month is the most limited ‘starter’ plan I’ve seen), QuickBooks’s starter plan is already appealing to the money conscious small business owner; the PayPal deal only strengthens that.

Ever since PayPal spun off from eBay earlier this year, it’s been announcing new services that specifically target small business owners primarily doing business online – first by introducing inexpensive invoicing, card readers, and now by integrating with QuickBooks. As PayPal is the only online payment service operating in Australia, the two companies are now exceptionally placed to take the Australian small business market.

Perhaps losing the small business market isn’t a primary concern for Xero, which seems to be aligning itself to take the MYOB medium-sized business market, anyway. Regardless, QuickBooks is definitely a force to be reckoned with (forgive the pun) in the Australian cloud accounting space.

Join the wait list for our Quickbooks Online training course

We’re in the process of developing a QuickBooks training course, so if you’d like to register your interest to receive alerts and announcements about its progression, you can do so at our website. Alternatively, if you’re looking for training courses in either Xero or MYOB, you can enrol in either course online today and do your course over the Christmas and holiday season when you might have some time to do one while you reflect on your goals for 2016.