- Xero suits businesses with employees and an accountant who already runs it. QuickBooks suits lean, invoice-light sole traders.
- The licence fee is the smallest cost in this decision. Reconciliation, BAS preparation and end-of-year work are where the real money goes.
- Both platforms handle GST, BAS and Single Touch Payroll. Neither one lodges anything on your behalf.
- The ATO requires most business records to be kept for five years. ASIC requires seven years for companies.
- Before you switch, export everything. The ATO expects digital records to be convertible into a standard format such as Excel or CSV.
Xero vs QuickBooks in Australia comes down to something most comparison articles skip: what you’ll still be doing yourself once the subscription starts. Both platforms handle GST, BAS and Single Touch Payroll competently. Both connect to the major Australian banks.
The real difference shows up in how each one fits the shape of your business, and in who ends up reconciling it at the end of the quarter. Choose wrong and you pay for a migration. Choose right and you’re still left with the work no software does.
Paying for accounting software and still losing your Sundays to the books?
Xero or QuickBooks: the short answer for Australian businesses
For most Australian small businesses with employees, Xero is the easier platform to live with, because its payroll and Single Touch Payroll workflow is the one Australian accountants and bookkeepers most commonly work in. For a sole trader with a handful of invoices a month and nobody on the payroll, QuickBooks Online is usually the lighter and cheaper place to start. The biggest deciding factor isn’t the feature list; it’s the platform the person who does your books already opens every day.
That’s the whole answer. If you recognise yourself in one of those two descriptions, you can stop here.
If you don’t, the rest of this article is organised by business shape rather than by feature, so you can find your situation and skip the rest:
- Sole trader, few invoices, no employees
- GST-registered service business with employees
- Product or inventory business
- Business whose accountant already has a strong platform preference
- Business planning to hand the books over within the next year
What actually differs between Xero and QuickBooks in Australia
Less than the marketing suggests. Both are cloud ledgers built for small business, and both will get you to a BAS-ready position if the coding underneath is right. If you’re weighing them up as part of a broader look at accounting and tax support for Australian companies, the platform is the smaller half of that decision.
Where they diverge is narrower and more practical: how much payroll each one bundles into the plan you actually need, how much software a one-person business is made to carry, and how many local practices know the system inside out.
Read the table below and notice how many rows are effectively a tie. That’s the point. The differences that decide it for most Australian businesses are the rows about ease of use and accountant availability, not the feature rows above them.
| Decision point | Xero | QuickBooks Online |
|---|---|---|
| GST and BAS | Produces a BAS-ready summary from coded transactions | Produces a BAS-ready summary from coded transactions |
| Payroll and STP | STP-enabled payroll bundled into every current plan, with the number of employees covered rising by tier | STP-enabled payroll listed on every plan, with the full payroll module charged as a paid add-on |
| Australian bank feeds | Direct feeds from the major Australian banks | Direct feeds from the major Australian banks |
| Inventory | Available on higher plans, though not itemised on the current Australian plan page | Included from the mid plans upward |
| Multi-currency | Mid plan and above | Mid plan and above |
| Ease for a one-person business | More capability than a sole trader needs | Lighter to set up and move around in |
| Accountant availability in Australia | The platform most widely used by Australian accountants and bookkeepers | Well supported, but a smaller local pool |
| Data export | CSV export of core ledgers and reports | CSV export of core ledgers and reports |
Plan names and tier boundaries move around, and both vendors have restructured their Australian line-ups more than once, so confirm the current tier on the vendor’s own Australian pricing page before you commit to one.
Which one handles GST and BAS better for your setup?
Neither has a decisive edge on the mechanics, which surprises people who expect one to be obviously better. Both platforms let you set a GST accounting method, code transactions to tax rates, and produce the figures your activity statement needs.
The difference is what happens either side of that. GST registration is compulsory once turnover reaches A$75,000, the GST rate is 10%, and no software makes either call for you: the wider set of Australian tax requirements sits with the business, not with the ledger. With GST turnover under A$20 million you report quarterly, which means four rounds a year of the same reconciliation work.
Where Xero pulls ahead is the density of Australian bookkeepers who already run BAS through it, which matters when you hand the file over. QuickBooks does the job well, but fewer people will open it and immediately know where everything is. Getting the coding right during the quarter is what makes lodging your BAS quick rather than painful, on either platform.
What this actually costs you: the licence difference across a year is small. A quarter of miscoded transactions, cleaned up by someone charging hourly, is not.
What about payroll and Single Touch Payroll?
Both platforms are STP-enabled, so this row separates them on economics rather than capability, and for a business with staff it is where the cost difference shows up most clearly.
Single Touch Payroll has been mandatory for all employers since 1 July 2019, and STP Phase 2 has been in effect since 1 January 2022. So payroll isn’t optional software once you have staff; it’s a reporting obligation you have to meet every pay run. The super guarantee rate has been 12% since 1 July 2025. The platform calculates it, but paying it on time is still your responsibility.
If you have employees
Xero’s payroll is the more widely supported option in Australia, and the one most local bookkeepers will assume you’re on. That matters less for the software itself than for how easily you can hand payroll over, or get it fixed when a pay run goes wrong. Handing payroll management over entirely is the third option, and it takes the pay-run risk off your desk rather than moving it between platforms.
If you don’t have employees yet
You’re paying for payroll capability you aren’t using. Xero bundles payroll into its plans, so a sole trader carries that cost whether or not anyone is on the books. This is the most common reason a sole trader ends up on the more expensive platform for no benefit.
If staff are 12 months away rather than next quarter, pick for today and migrate later. The mechanics of Single Touch Payroll reporting are worth understanding before you hire, not after.
What this actually costs you: because Xero bundles payroll into the plan, you cannot opt out of paying for it. QuickBooks keeps the full payroll module as a separate add-on, which is the cheaper shape for a business with nobody on the payroll yet.
TIPTip: if you’re within a few months of hiring your first employee, set the platform up on the plan you need now and diarise the upgrade. Both vendors let you move up a tier without migrating your file, and neither refunds you for a year of unused payroll.
What changes if your accountant already uses Xero?
“Do you currently have a Xero account for the business?” is one of the first questions an Australian accountant will ask you, and it’s not small talk. It decides how much work your file is going to be for them.
An accountant working inside a platform their practice uses daily is faster, catches more, and bills less time to admin. One working in a second system is slower at everything, and that shows up on your invoice or in how long you wait.
So if you already have an accountant and they have a preference, take it. The licence difference between the two platforms is trivial next to the labour difference.
If you’re between accountants, sort out who’s doing the books first and let them tell you the platform, rather than picking a platform and then finding someone who tolerates it. Switching accountants without disrupting your books is a solved problem, and it’s the right order to do things in.
What should you use instead of Xero?
People leave Xero for two reasons, and only one of them is price.
The first is cost creep. The plan that made sense with three employees costs more than it’s worth when you’re back to being one person.
The second is that Xero is built for a business with moving parts. If you invoice a handful of clients a month and have no stock, no staff and no foreign currency, much of the interface is scaffolding around things you don’t do.
That’s the reader behind searches like “simpler alternative to Xero for a one-person business”. The honest answer is that QuickBooks Online’s entry plan, or something lighter still, often fits better than a Xero plan you’ve outgrown in the wrong direction.
The realistic Australian options
MYOB is the other established Australian platform, and it’s a genuine alternative rather than a downgrade, particularly for businesses with more complex payroll. How MYOB compares with Xero is worth a read before you decide between those two specifically.
Beyond the big three sit lighter invoicing-first tools, which suit contractors who need to bill, track expenses and hand a clean file over once a year. The wider field of AU accounting platforms covers those properly, and Sleek’s Australian business resource library goes deeper on individual tools.
One caution before you move. Leaving Xero because it feels like too much software is reasonable. Leaving because your books are a mess is not: a lighter platform won’t fix coding that was wrong on the old one.
What won’t Xero or QuickBooks do for you?
“Can I still create the bank account without it?” is a question Australian founders ask a lot, and it points to a broader misunderstanding about what accounting software is for.
Software is a ledger. It records, categorises and reports. It does not make decisions, and it does not carry your obligations. Specifically, neither Xero nor QuickBooks will:
- Lodge your BAS. Both prepare the figures. Lodgement is still an action you or your registered agent take, and the deadline is yours to miss.
- Decide when you must register for GST. The A$75,000 threshold is a turnover test you have to monitor. The software will happily let you trade past it.
- Open your business bank account. That’s a bank process with its own identity checks, entirely separate from your ledger.
- Make you compliant. Clean-looking reports built on miscoded transactions are still wrong, just faster, and the ATO penalties for getting it wrong land on you rather than on the vendor.
- Tell you your numbers look wrong. Neither flags a margin that’s quietly collapsed or an expense category that’s tripled.
That last point is where most of the value of a human sits. If you’re still deciding whether you need a ledger at all, whether you need bookkeeping software yet is the prior question.
What does it really cost: licence fees, or the work that’s left?
The licence is the number everybody compares, and the smallest number in the equation.
Both vendors sit in a similar band, both discount the first period and step up afterwards, and both move pricing more than once a year. Compare the ongoing rate, not the introductory one: what Xero actually costs in Australia has the tier-by-tier detail for one side of it.
The number nobody puts in the comparison table
Here’s what the subscription doesn’t buy you, on either platform:
- Reconciling bank transactions that the feed guessed wrong
- Chasing and coding receipts so the GST claim holds up
- Preparing and lodging the BAS, four times a year
- End-of-financial-year adjustments, depreciation and the tax return
- Answering the ATO when it asks about something from two years ago
At even a modest hourly rate, that work costs several times the annual licence for most businesses. It also grows with your transaction volume while the subscription stays flat.
What this actually costs you: the platform decision moves your annual spend by a small amount. The decision about who does the work moves it by a lot, and it’s the one most people make by default rather than on purpose.
What can you take with you if you switch later?
Less than you’d hope, and the gap is a compliance problem rather than an inconvenience.
Most business records must be kept for five years, and the ATO’s own guidance notes that ASIC requires companies to keep records for seven years. Those clocks don’t reset when you change platforms. If your old subscription lapses and the file goes with it, the obligation stays exactly where it was.
What the ATO actually requires of digital records
Two rules matter here. Records must be in English or able to be easily converted to English. And where you keep records digitally, you must be able to extract and convert your data into a standard data format, for example, Excel or CSV.
That reframes “can I export my data?” from a convenience question into a compliance one. It’s also a good test of any platform you’re considering: if you can’t get a clean CSV of your ledgers out of it, it isn’t fit for purpose in Australia.
What usually survives a migration, and what doesn’t
Contacts, the chart of accounts, and invoice and bill history generally move across. Bank reconciliation history, attachments, payroll history and any customisation you’ve built usually don’t, whichever direction you’re going.
So migrate opening balances plus a defined period of transactions, keep a full export of the old file as your archive, and time the move to the start of a financial year or a BAS quarter.
Which should you run, based on your business shape?
Find the row that describes you and take the recommendation.
Two caveats. If your stock already lives in a dedicated inventory system, the integration between the two matters more than the ledger you pick. And if you’re in the last row, ask before you subscribe: a preference you discover afterwards is a migration you’ve paid for twice.
How Sleek helps you pick a platform and then stop thinking about it
Most people asking whether to run Xero or QuickBooks are really asking a different question: who is going to keep this up to date, and what happens at BAS time. Sleek answers the first question, which usually makes the second one much smaller.
You get a named accountant who handles the day-to-day bookkeeping, reconciles the books, prepares and lodges the BAS, and handles the end-of-year work, on a fixed fee agreed up front rather than an hourly bill that moves. The platform your file sits in is confirmed during onboarding based on what you’re already running and what your business actually needs, not assumed before anyone has looked at it. If the entity itself is not set up yet, company incorporation and the compliance that follows it sit with the same team.
Not sure which platform your business should be running?
Pick the platform once, then hand over the part that takes your Sundays. Talk to a Sleek accountant who works across both platforms daily and can tell you in one conversation which one fits your business, and what the books will cost to run either way. Schedule a consultation call and bring your current setup to it.
450,000
businesses worldwide.
from 4,100+ reviews.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Sleek work with QuickBooks, or do you only use Xero?
Yes, Sleek works with QuickBooks, and it’s the software question that comes up most often on customer calls. The platform your books sit in is confirmed during onboarding rather than assumed beforehand. If you’re already running QuickBooks and it’s working, there’s no requirement to move before someone has actually looked at your file.
Is Xero or QuickBooks cheaper for a sole trader in Australia?
QuickBooks Online has generally positioned its entry plan below Xero’s in Australia, largely because Xero’s plans bundle payroll for a small number of employees from the entry tier up. Both vendors discount the first period and step the price up afterwards, so compare the ongoing rate rather than the sign-up rate. Confirm both on the vendors’ own Australian pricing pages before you decide, because these change more than once a year.
Can I switch from QuickBooks to Xero without losing my history?
Mostly, with known gaps. Contacts, the chart of accounts, and invoice and bill history generally transfer, but bank reconciliation history, attachments, payroll history and customisations usually don’t come across cleanly. The standard approach is to migrate opening balances plus a defined period of transactions and keep a full export of the old file as your archive. Time it for the start of a financial year or a BAS quarter, never the middle of one.
Which one is better if I sell on Shopify?
Both connect to Shopify, so the deciding factor is order volume and whether you need each sale recorded separately. High-volume sellers usually route Shopify through a summarising connector rather than syncing every individual order, because thousands of separate transactions slow reconciliation down on either platform. Ask whoever does your books which connector they support before you choose the ledger.
Can I run both Xero and QuickBooks at the same time?
You can, and some businesses end up doing it by accident, usually when a sole trader’s own subscription overlaps with one their new accountant set up. It works, but you’re paying twice and maintaining two versions of the truth, which is the expensive part. Pick one, migrate the history across, and cancel the other before the next BAS quarter starts.
How long do I have to keep my accounting records if I change platforms?
The ATO requires most business records to be kept for five years, and companies must keep records for seven years under ASIC’s rules. Changing platforms doesn’t reset either clock, so the records have to survive the migration intact. If your old subscription lapses and takes the data with it, the obligation still sits with you, not the vendor.
Does my accountant have to use the same software I do?
No, but it’s cheaper when they do. An accountant working in a platform their practice doesn’t use daily is slower at everything, and that time lands on your invoice or in how long you wait for an answer. Where a practice supports both, ask which one their team reconciles faster and use that one.
