Lexware Office vs Xero

Lexware Office

SKR03 and SKR04 are supported and a switch migrates every booking to the new chart, and the monthly automatic Festschreibung with its protocol gives a real lock on the month. The fiscal year is hard-wired to the calendar year, and I found no public information on manual free postings, journals, opening balances, cost centres, recurring entries or accruals.

Xero

The evidence names modules 'invoicing, payroll, and reporting' and features like reconcile, dashboards and forecasts — but not one word on double-entry, a chart of accounts, journals, opening balances or a period close. A ledger that isn't evidenced doesn't exist; this sits at the anchor-0 floor.

Lexware Office

The automatic monthly Festschreibung is described in substance — GoBD-conformant locking with a cutoff rule back to the second-to-last month and a protocol of every execution — which is more than a marketing claim. But I found no public information on a Verfahrensdokumentation, a change history for corrections booked as reversals, the statutory retention period, or a GDPdU export for the auditor.

Xero

No GoBD claim, no immutability or change history, no retention statement, no Verfahrensdokumentation anywhere in the registry; the only compliance artefact is a SOC 2 report available on request. Nothing would survive a Betriebsprüfung on this evidence.

Lexware Office

The USt-VA is filled automatically from the transactions and goes out with one click, ELSTER confirmation, SEPA or transfer payment, and locking of the submitted period; Ist/Soll timing, Mindest-Ist-Besteuerung, §13b reverse charge and Dauerfristverlängerung are all documented. OSS appears only as guidance that destination-country taxation must be reported elsewhere, retroactive filing stops at the second-to-last year, and I found no public information on Zusammenfassende Meldung, §19 small business, EÜR or E-Bilanz.

Xero

No VAT logic, no UStVA, no ELSTER, no EÜR, no OSS — the feature lists and module lists are entirely silent on German filings. That is rubric level 0 with nothing to interpolate from.

Lexware Office

Fetched bank transactions automatically receive matching suggestions checked in both directions, with documented criteria and improvements such as the document number in the remittance info, and receipts link to their postings — but every suggestion waits for a manual "Alle Annehmen" before a booking exists. I found no public information on OCR capture, e-invoice handling or replacement scanning, and no statement on which banks are fed.

Xero

'Auto-reconcile bank transactions', 'Bulk reconcile transactions', 'Automate bill entry' and 'Smart Document Capture' lift it above manual file import and plain attachments, but no German banks, no ZUGFeRD/XRechnung, no ersetzendes Scannen and no evidenced receipt-to-posting link keep it under the 5 anchor.

Lexware Office

Four documented DATEV handover scenarios, DATEVconnect online with the Buchungsdatenservice, and a Steuerberaterzugang export whose two coordinated ZIPs auto-link booking to receipt image in DATEV Kanzlei Rechnungswesen — receipts and bookings both travel correctly. The adviser login is free and last login is visible, but the captured help states the Kanzlei's access cannot be restricted to individual areas and sees everything including bank accounts, and I found no public information on corrections coming back or an audit of what the adviser changed.

Xero

'Over 250,000 accountants and bookkeepers using Xero' evidences an adviser ecosystem in-product, which is better than nothing. But there is no export format on the evidence at all — no DATEV, not even a generic CSV claim — so the German handoff is entirely unevidenced.

Lexware Office

The vendor is German (Haufe-Lexware, Freiburg) and a manual export of vouchers and booking data still works after cancellation, but that is all the captured pages hold. I found no public information on hosting location, ownership, or any subprocessor list — where the books live and who could be compelled to produce them is unevidenced, and retention across the full statutory period after leaving is not addressed.

Xero

The contracting side is the 'Xero group of companies… headquartered in New Zealand'; 'Region Global (USD)' is a pricing region, not a hosting statement; residency, subprocessors and ownership are all unknown. Non-EU entity with hosting unstated and subprocessors unnamed, while German retention obligations would hang on it — rubric level 0.

Lexware Office

The only pricing fact captured is that the tax adviser access is "komplett kostenlos". No tier prices, booking or document limits, minimum term or VAT treatment appear anywhere on the captured pages, so a business cannot compute a real annual invoice from public information.

Xero

Tiers, promo terms, per-tier invoice/bill limits, priced add-ons (from $4, $7) and one-month cancellation are public, which is genuinely computable for the base case. But VAT treatment, an adviser seat and annual billing are unstated, leaving the commonly-needed-piece gap that rubric level 5 describes and short of rubric level 8.