Cloud Accounting Software

Xero Accountants in York

Xero is the cloud accounting platform we recommend most often for limited companies and growing businesses. It keeps your financial records live, your bank feed reconciled, and your VAT return ready when the quarter ends - without you needing to do much of the heavy lifting. When your accountant and your bookkeeping are both in Xero, everything moves faster and costs less than it would with a spreadsheet and a pile of PDFs.

In a nutshell: We’re Xero-certified. We set it up, configure it correctly for your business, and manage it on your behalf - or train you to manage it yourself if you’d prefer to stay close to the numbers.

What Xero does

Xero is a full cloud accounting platform. At its core:

Bank feeds - your bank transactions import automatically, matching against invoices and categorising by the rules you set. Reconciliation is a matter of reviewing and approving, not re-entering data.
Invoicing - raise and send invoices from within Xero, track who has paid and who hasn’t, set up automated payment reminders.
Expense recording - capture and categorise business expenses, including Dext integration for receipt capture.
VAT returns - MTD for VAT is built in. Returns are prepared from the live data and filed directly to HMRC through the Xero MTD submission route.
MTD for Income Tax - Xero is HMRC approved for the new MTD requirement for sole traders and landlords.
Payroll - Xero Payroll can handle PAYE, RTI submissions, payslips, and pension auto-enrolment for most small businesses.
Reporting - profit and loss, balance sheet, aged debtors and creditors, cashflow - available at any point in the period, not just at year-end.

For clients on Management Accounts, Xero is the data source that makes monthly reporting clean and fast.

Why we recommend Xero for limited companies

For a limited company - particularly one with employees, VAT registration, and a director who wants a real-time financial picture - Xero handles it all in one place. The bank feed and VAT module alone justify the subscription cost for most businesses. The management reporting is a bonus.

Xero also connects well with the specialist tools some businesses need: Dext for receipt and invoice capture, Fathom or Float for cashflow forecasting, Approvalmax for purchase approval workflows, and WorkflowMax (now BlueRock) for project-based businesses that want job costing alongside their accounts.

For sole traders and smaller businesses who want simplicity over breadth, FreeAgent is often the better fit.

What we do in Xero for clients

Depending on what you need, we can handle:

Setup and migration - configuring Xero from scratch, or migrating from another platform. Chart of accounts set up to reflect your business, opening balances imported, bank feeds connected, VAT settings checked.

Ongoing bookkeeping - bank reconciliation, expense coding, supplier invoice processing through Dext, VAT return preparation and filing. See Bookkeeping for the full service.

VAT returns - prepared from the live Xero data and filed via MTD. See VAT.

Payroll - set up and running in Xero Payroll, with RTI submissions and payslips produced each cycle. See Payroll.

MTD for Income Tax - we can prepare or review your quarterly MTD returns.

Year-end accounts - the Xero data feeds directly into your Company Accounts and Company Tax Return preparation. When the bookkeeping has been maintained properly through the year, the year end process is often simpler.

Training - if you’d rather run Xero yourself with us as the year-end accountants, we train you on the platform and check in at key moments. See Software Training.

Making Tax Digital and Xero

Xero is fully MTD-compatible for VAT - submissions go directly to HMRC through the platform’s built-in MTD route. For Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, which applies to sole traders and landlords above the qualifying income threshold from April 2026, Xero supports the quarterly update and final declaration workflow. If you’re in scope, we get you set up in Xero ahead of the obligation date.

Fixed fees, no surprises

Xero fees depend on the size of the business, the subscription tier needed, and what services we’re handling. The Xero subscription cost itself is separate from our fees - we’ll be clear about what you pay Xero and what you pay us, upfront.

Ask for a fixed fee

A couple of minutes on our online form, and we’ll come back to you with a number.

Frequently asked questions

Is Xero difficult to learn?

Not for most people. The bank feed and reconciliation view is intuitive once you’ve been shown it. Invoicing is straightforward. The parts that need care - VAT, year-end journals, payroll setup - are where we’re involved directly rather than leaving you to work it out. Our Software Training service gets new Xero users comfortable with the day-to-day tasks in a couple of sessions.

How much does Xero cost?

Xero’s subscription pricing is published on their website and changes periodically - rather than quote a figure here that may be out of date, the current pricing is on the Xero website. We’ll also confirm the right tier for your business when we set up.

Can you migrate my records from my current software into Xero?

Yes, in most cases. The cleaner and more complete your existing records, the smoother the migration. We’ve migrated clients from QuickBooks, Sage, FreeAgent, and spreadsheets. We assess the migration scope before we start and tell you what it involves.

Do I need Dext as well as Xero?

Not necessarily. For businesses with low volume of supplier invoices and expenses, Xero can handle it, but it still takes manual intervention and additional work. For businesses receiving invoices by email or handling high volumes of receipts, Dext alongside Xero removes the manual entry bottleneck and keeps records current rather than becoming a catch-up exercise. See Dext.

Ready to get Xero working properly for your business?

Three ways to start. Whichever’s easiest.

Call us Ask for a fixed fee quote Email us