Honest Review:

Xero Projects

• Fuss-free setup with a low learning curve
• Ease of use
• An uncomplicated and well-designed interface
• In-depth and highly actionable reports
• Excellent customer support
• Automated accounting processes save time and effort

If you’re already using Xero, Xero Projects is an add-on that costs $7 for one user per month, plus $5 per additional active user per month. 

If you don’t use Xero yet, you’ll have to subscribe to one of the three plans first to be able to buy and use the Xero Projects add-on; the Starter Plan costs $25 per month, the Standard Plan is priced at $40 monthly, and the Premium Plan is at $54 every month.

1. Straightforward Time Tracking

Xero Projects simplifies time tracking with its very straightforward start-and-stop timer on desktops or mobiles. It cuts out all the frills and thrills and focuses on the functionality of the feature with a clean and uncluttered interface with a highly visible and responsive start/stop button.

If location is crucial to the job, Xero projects can be set up to auto-track time by location on mobile, which allows the mobile app to automatically track time when an employee enters or exits the 100-meter radius of a pre-defined job site. Xero Projects creates a suggested time entry that users can review and then save or discard. All it needs is the on-ground user’s permission to access their location, which can be revoked at any time if necessary. Xero projects can support up to twenty locations at a time for auto-tracking, which can be managed by editing details, enabling and disabling auto-tracking for chosen locations, and deleting locations from the list to make room for new ones. 

Time can also be manually logged by clicking the menu icon on any particular project and adding the duration of hours worked, or start and end periods. For the second option, Xero projects will automatically calculate worked hours and eliminate the potential for human error through manual calculation.

The data captured by the manual timer, location-based auto-tracker, and manual log are automatically organized into timesheets that reflect worked hours and rates that can be compared against time estimates and expenses to ensure that projects are progressing as they should, helping businesses deliver on time by meeting estimated timelines and budgets. 

2. Easy and Accurate Expense Tracking

Xero Projects allow users to track expenses easily and accurately from the get-go. With its expense tracking tools, Xero Projects enables businesses to see how much a project will cost by creating estimated expenses during the planning stages of a project, before creating a project quote. Later on, actual expenses are tracked against the estimate to ensure that the project is running on budget.

The beauty of the Xero Projects expense tracking system lies in its simplicity. Users can see everything they need to know about the project in one dashboard — estimate, invoiced amount, time and expenses, deadline, tasks, and itemized expenses that automatically show if it is untracked. Plus, the project bar on each item is a great visual indicator that shows users if they’re still operating within estimates or if they’ve already gone over them at a glance. Drop-down sections on each expense item dive into expense details and show exactly where users may have exceeded estimates, providing insight into their next moves so that they can realign and ensure that the project remains profitable.

As projects move forward, expenses can be easily added and tracked against estimates by adding them directly to the project using the Add button near the top right of the project dashboard. To keep things organized, Xero Projects will prompt users to enter details such as the name of the expense, its quantity, unit price, and markup percentage. From these, Xero Projects automatically calculates the total cost to the user and tracks the total expense amount against estimates. Employee expenses and mileage claims can also be assigned to projects, enabling businesses to recover every cent spent on the job.

The Xero Projects expense tracking system is a great way to ensure that projects don’t go over expense thresholds, provide clear documentation of what goes into completing a project, and remain profitable. 

3. Flexible Invoicing

Invoicing is made easier, faster, and more precise with Xero Projects. The data captured by the time and expenses trackers are automatically calculated and organized in error-free invoices that cut down on the time traditionally required for invoices to accurately reflect costing and markup using spreadsheets or paper-based systems.

Xero Projects can generate four types of invoices, namely the deposit invoice, tasks and expenses invoice, project amount invoice, and the accepted quote invoice. Once a quote has been sent to and accepted by the client, they need to be sent an accepted quote invoice that details the agreed-upon price of the project. After that, businesses may send them a deposit invoice to request a deposit to make the project run, which can be applied to future invoices. Tasks and expense invoices itemize chargeable tasks and expenses that haven’t been covered by other invoices yet. A lump sum may also be requested from clients using the project amount invoice, which is very useful for projects that don’t need to show chargeable tasks and other details or for projects that need to be paid all in one go.

The line items associated with any particular project are automatically listed when an invoice is made from the project, and additional line items can be added at any time. Similarly, details can be edited or removed according to need. All changes are automatically reflected on the Invoiced total which appears near the top of Xero Projects’ Quotes and Invoices tab, allowing users to monitor numbers and progress with ease. To further enhance the streamlining of payments, users can add a Pay Now button that allows clients to send their payments online in just a matter of clicks. Now that’s intuitive!

4. In-Depth Reporting on Project Profitability

Xero Projects is laser-focused on ensuring that projects are profitable. This is evident in the way that its time and expense tracking functions are designed for real-time changes versus estimates through the progress bar. But beyond the visual cues offered by the progress bar, Xero Projects offers some serious data-crunching capabilities through its thorough and very insightful reporting functions. 

An overview of a project’s profitability can be seen in the dedicated Profitability dashboard, which may be accessed by admins on Xero Projects for web. It displays a variety of figures, charts, and tables that map out how profitable or financially healthy a project is. Key data such as comparisons of profit or loss calculated from the total invoiced amount minus the total project cost, total invoiced amount versus estimate, breakdown of costs and expenses incurred by the project, and more are displayed in simple but highly understandable visuals. 

If you need to go even deeper into the numbers, Xero Projects offers even more insights with highly specific reports such as Project Summary, Project Financials, Project Detailed Time, Project Staff Time Overview, And Project Details.

The Project Summary report shows a basic summary report of the financial aspects of the project within a date range, covering the three transaction stages: Cost, Charge, and Invoiced. Cost refers to the expense a task or material a project incurs, or how much something costs the business to do or acquire for a project. Charge is what the business can hypothetically charge for such an expense, which includes the markup. Invoiced is the amount that the business charged and invoiced the client for the expense. This report can be customized to either show the profitability of a project across a date range with filters for a granular look at the three distinct stages, or without any filters for a view of the bigger picture. 

On the other hand, the Project Financials report tracks expenses against budget. It helps businesses adjust work to address potential issues and ensure future projects are costed accurately by pulling from historical data. Like the Project Summary report, it also shows the distinct stages of an expense across a date range with customizable filters.

The Project Detailed Time Report allows businesses to see the time teams spend on specific projects and how much of that is chargeable, as well as find time entries that haven’t been invoiced yet. The Project Time Staff overview goes deeper into the data and enables employers to see where individual team members’ hours are spent, the completion status of their time entries, and if they’re meeting their targets for chargeable hours. Both reports can be customized to show the distinct stages and desired level of detail and date range like the previously discussed reports.

For a more comprehensive view of any project, the Project Details report offers an in-depth look at every estimate, expense, and invoiced amount, and how they contribute to the health of the project. Like the other reports, it can be customized to reflect the distinct stages, desired date range, and level of insight, as well as other details like Project Item Type, Charge Amount, and Supplier. 

These indicators are important in ensuring that businesses are treading the right path when running their projects — after all, the key difference between winning and losing is knowing the numbers. Xero Projects does quite a good job of doing all the calculating and heavy lifting for its users. With this level of depth in reporting, Xero Projects users are enabled to scrutinize all the nooks and crannies of a project’s profitability, arming them with highly valuable insight for use in present and future actions.

(As of December 2023)

• Xero App Store: 2.9/5 
• Google Play: 4.1/5
• App Store: 4.6/5 

Xero Projects is a nifty add-on to Xero that really helps boost productivity with its amazing capability to deliver in-depth insight into project health and profitability. Its robust reporting features with a variety of report types and customizable granularity are very helpful in helping businesses know exactly where they stand on projects, ensuring that every cost, expense, and invoice is recorded accurately and can be compared against estimates and budgets with relative ease. What I absolutely love is the little progress bar that shows how certain tasks or expenses track against estimates — it’s a very small but important visual detail that makes life easier for users because it informs them where they are doing well or going over thresholds with just a glance.

The uncomplicated and well-designed interface, ease of use, fuss-free setup, and straightforward learning curve also deserve praise. I admire the fact that Xero Projects revolves around the concept of simplicity, and in an era of “bigger is better”, this approach is a refreshing take on things.

However, its emphasis on simplicity might also be its downfall. Aesthetics aside, Xero Projects feels very stripped-down to the point of being basic. Case in point: document management capabilities are very rudimentary, and it lacks attendance, shift scheduling and planning capabilities, a centralized communication solution, and accountability features to protect employers from time theft shenanigans. While it does speed up some processes with automations, it is frustratingly counterintuitive where repetitive manual input and permissions are required. It is not a complete project management solution, and the features it offers for its price point may not be favorable for small businesses and startups on limited budgets — they can get better deals and more features from Xero Projects’ competitors, and comprehensive project management solutions that cover most important areas at that. Staff access is also very limited, and untrained individuals may cause accounting havoc when left to operate Xero Projects on their own.

To sum it all up, Xero Projects lives up to its name as a productivity booster. However, it lacks crucial elements to be considered a competitive project management software. You should only use Xero Projects if you have low complexity operations, already use Xero, fully understand its limitations, and can live with the lack of certain important features. Otherwise, you should be looking for a better option.