Xero vs QuickBooks Online: scheduling and emailing reports
If you are choosing between Xero and QuickBooks Online, or you have used both, you will have noticed one difference quickly. QuickBooks Online can schedule a report to be emailed. Xero, for its standard reports, can't. Here's the difference and what Xero users do about it.
What QuickBooks Online does
QuickBooks Online has had scheduled report emails for a long time. You open a report, save it as a custom report, and set a schedule so that it's emailed to chosen recipients at a regular interval. It's built in on the Essentials, Plus and Advanced plans (not Simple Start). For a business that wants the same profit and loss in the same inbox every month, it works and needs no extra tool.
What Xero does
Xero lets you run any report, change the dates and columns, and export it to PDF or Excel. You can also save report layouts. What you can't do is tell Xero to email a standard report to someone on a schedule. The request on Xero's product ideas forum, titled "Automatic generation and emailing of reports", has about 790 votes and has been open since 2014.
In the thread, a Xero admin pointed people to Syft Analytics, which Xero owns and which can schedule its own reports. Several commenters said it isn't what they were asking for, because they want the standard reports. We have a separate comparison of Syft and a simple report emailer.
Where each one is stronger
Xero is liked for its bank feeds, its interface, its app marketplace and its accountant and bookkeeper community, particularly in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. QuickBooks Online is strong in the US and has features Xero users sometimes ask for. Report scheduling is a gap in Xero, and it's one that QuickBooks fills out of the box.
If report emails are the single thing you need and you have no other tie to either product, it's worth knowing about. In practice most people choose an accounting system because of their accountant, their country, their bank connections and the tools they already use. If your accountant uses Xero, switching systems to get a scheduled email is almost never worth it.
Working around it in Xero
The manual route is the same as it ever was:
- Reports, then All reports, and open the report.
- Set the period and columns, and click Update.
- Export to PDF or Excel.
- Attach it to an email and send.
Workflow tools such as Zapier or Make can connect to Xero, but their Xero actions focus on invoices and contacts, not formatted reports. You could build something, though it tends to be fragile.
Where Reportpost fits
Reportpost is a small app that closes this one gap. You sign in with Xero (read-only), choose from Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet, Aged Receivables Summary, Aged Payables Summary, Bank Summary, Trial Balance, Executive Summary and Budget Summary (plus lists of unpaid invoices, invoices raised, drafts and unpaid bills), pick the period and schedule, and add recipients. It runs weekly, monthly or quarterly, on the day and hour you choose in your timezone, and sends the reports as PDF, Excel or CSV. You can set a custom subject and message, and replies go to you.
Compared to QuickBooks, it's an extra subscription: $12 a month for one organisation, $39 for ten, $99 for forty. There is a 14-day free trial with no card. QuickBooks includes scheduling in its price, whereas with Xero you add it separately.
Which should you pick?
Pick the accounting system that fits your business, your accountant and your country. If that is Xero, scheduled report emails are something you can add in a few minutes. If you are on QuickBooks Online already, you don't need us.