Competitors

Review of Xeroom vs WooCommerce Xero Link

Limitations of WooCommerce Xero Extension

WooCommerce upgraded their offering in October 2018 to catch up with some of Xeroom’s functionality and there are some similarities in for example the way the two plugins communicate with Xero.  We do get a lot of customers switching to Xeroom from theirs which indicates a lack of functionality.  We believe it still lags far behind Xeroom in a number of important areas and lacks a lot of the functionality needed to make your system run smoothly:

  1. No Xero invoice management screen – Xeroom adds a visual colour coded status so the posting of all orders can be seen at a glance.
  2. Inventory – No synchronising of inventory data either way, either in real-time singularly by order or in bulk for all products. Xeroom does this and also allows for backorders in WooCommerce
  3. No ability to post sales into different nominal accounts according to product category or geography.
  4. VAT/Goods sales tax account  – Cannot be set which is important for your clearance accounts to run correctly and ensure VAT returns will be correct.
  5. Complex GST mapping – Xeroom can map all of the GST rules set up in WooCommerce for all geographies and tax types.
  6. No option to hold product prices inclusive or exclusive of sales tax in WooCommerce.
  7. No choice of creating an invoice paid or unpaid in Xero.
  8. No automatic creation of unmatched products in Xero.
  9. No control of invoice creation trigger – ie on order creation, on payment, on processing or on completion.
  10. No automatic generation of credit notes in Xero when an order is cancelled.
  11. Product codes in Woo and Xero limited to numeric only.
  12. No ability to repost orders.
  13. No 2-Way Dataflow – No data can be synchronised from Xero to WooCommerce which means you have to manually import new products or changes in prices that you make in Xero.
  14. No option to set Xero as Master for prices and descriptions – Invoices are simply dumped across and amounts posted to the appropriate accounts.  They cannot be set to pick up the relevant Xero codes with accompanying descriptions and prices to harmonise the invoices with the rest of the invoices created in Xero. This can mean different descriptions and prices between your two systems for the same products.
  15. No historic dataloader – No ability to upload and process a large number of historic invoices.  This powerful tool is essential if you are migrating from another system or are implementing part way through your financial year and want to reflect history and complete picture instead of part-way through the year.
  16. No bulk or batch processing throttle – When multiple orders are selected and sent to Xero they can only be processed within the speed limit set by Xero.  Any faster and an error occurs resulting in the process aborting.  Xeroom has overcome this limitation with an automatic throttle. This is significant if you have other shops such as ebay or Amazon feeding in to your WooCommerce that need to post orders on to Xero in batches.
  17. WooCommerce’s Focus – They are not accountants and are focused on making their main plugin better against their direct e-commerce competitors such as Magneto and Cubecart.  Their extension has been developed by external programmers.  As a result their offering has and will continue to be minimalist plus their upgrades, knowledge and support will reflect this.  Look at the frequency of updates and lack of a dedicated support bulletin board.
  18. No installation services to speed your implementation.

It is cheaper at $79/year compared to $197/year for Xeroom but after paying a 60% cut to WooCommerce and covering support costs it leaves them with little revenue to develop and extend the functionality which we believe is important as we get a regular flow of requests for enhancements.  However, $100 is nothing if you work out the total costs of the man-hours needed to implement a WooCommerce – Xero integration and set that against the substantially greater functionality and cost-savings that Xeroom will give you.  It is the typical cost of half-an-hour of an accountants time!

 

Other Competitor Offerings?

I have come across a number of general data migration (ETL) tools that claim to be suitable for use with WooCommerce and Xero.  They all require an additional platform to learn and manage the data plus they tend to have high onboarding costs, expensive monthly fees or transaction limitations especially for inventory synch.  I have tried OneSAAS which is reasonable but the operation is clunky and limited.  They do not appear to deal with any of the real practical issues of the necessary dataflows between the two applications.  Most of them seem to just dump a flat copy of orders into Xero on a daily schedule without much, if any consideration, for the knock-on accounting implications or Xero processes.  Their invoice creation triggers tend to be limited and work on a batch schedule rather than in real-time, ie when an order is placed by a customer inventory should be checked and updated in real-time.  They also have very limited options, flexibility and little sign of enhancements being released.  Only Xeroom can truly future-proof your ecommerce setup!

 

Quickbooks Buys OneSaas – Xero No Longer Supported

We have been contacted in March 2021 by a number of Xero users using OneSaas who have been told that after June 2021 they will no longer be supported as a result of Intuit’s acquisition of the company.  We have already had a steady and growing stream of former OneSaas sites switch to Xeroom who are very happy.  So if you are currently using OneSaas you can be sure that we will be a better and cheaper option for you and since Xeroom is very quick and easy to setup, there will be very little cost to rescue you!

 

Futureproof your Investment

It is interesting to note that despite being a big Xero certified partner it did not protect, futureproof or secure those who invested in the OneSaas Xero integration.   This has turned out to be “one big dud” turning their “safe” investments in OneSaas (with software, integration, IT, setup, maintenance, training etc) into a sunk dead cost.  This will never happen with Xeroom as we have one raison d’etre which is to integrate WooCommerce with Xero only.  That is what we are focussed on – nothing more and nothing less!

For details of the acquisition please follow this link. OneSaas acquired by Quickbooks.