Sage Vs Quickbooks Vs ?

Evening all,

Looking at taking my book keeping / VAT / Payroll back in house so looking where best to set up camp.
Accountant currently uses Sage but I like the look of Quickbooks. I can get Freshbooks free as I bank with Barclays but that looks pap.

For context.
1/ Accountant retiring next year so not particularly tied to Sage despite him using it.
2/ Needs to cover three small businesses, all VAT registered. Two have PAYE, one is just dividends (I appreciate I’ll need three different subscriptions).

I’d welcome any pointers.

TIA Dave

Quickbooks or Xero seem to be favoured by a lot of small businesses I know.

I have to say, I find Sage very, very easy and wouldn’t even think of changing.

I moved from Sage to Quickbooks for a small business, books and payroll. QB's is a great system once you get the hang of it, I find it quicker to use than Sage. Very happy with it.

QuickBooks is ok until you have to raise a credit…..find it very long winded and not at all intuitive
We call it s*1tbooks.
You would think you could just scan in a credit and it would do the rest but no.
When we had the online training course for it the chap didnt understand the concept of credits which was strange

If you're taking things in house, it might be worth thinking about if there are any Apps which might make your life easier.

As an example, Xero offers additional apps which connect to web stores, Shopify, debtor management and chasing, taking DD payments using Go Cardless, taking payments using PayPal etc.

https://apps.xero.com/

This might be an opportunity to upgrade your back end processes at the same time.

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I used Sage for about 15 years, moved to Xero and never looked back. Makes Sage look clunky in comparison. You have the additional benefit of Hubdoc with Xero (for free) for uploading invoices from emails/your phone and it all auto syncs to Xero. No more files of paperwork and all accessible when you need

I have a small bug bear with Xero in that you can’t make batch payments in foreign currencies but I realise that’s not a common problem

I have literally just started my new business and I have gone with Xero which is working great with Monzo business as well. My Finance Director (Wifey) is finding it a breeze, in fact she is in the bath watching more tutorials on YouTube, I can hear from my home (head) office. LOL.....

Pitch

Outside the scope of your question really but I use Freeagent here, seems to do the job and I haven't found anything it's particularly bad at. It's not free by the way!

FWIW I use QuickBooks and have found it very good. Have rarely had problems with the software itself and it links reliably to my bank. I’m sure the other options would work equally well for me though, I just went with QBs on the recommendation of my accountant

I moved from Sage to Xero around 18 months ago, my only regret is I wish I had done it years ago!

Xero isnt perfect, but it knocks spots off Sage and saves me so much time.
Quickbooks vs Xero is a harder comparison, made more so by the recent Xero 'light' package which makes Xero pricing more competitive than it used to of you don't need the full 'unlimited invoices' package.

I should also add that the support is where the packages really differ between Xero and Quickbooks.

Xero support is all online based, whereas Quickbooks has telephone support, so there can be a delay in receiving a reply to a support query if something within Xero needs you to contact their technical support team. All of my replies (Xero) have been received within 18hrs and most are responded to much faster.

Thank you all for the tips / opinions.