Lexware Office vs Xero

Lexware Office

The captured help pages show a real double-entry base: SKR03 or SKR04 selectable with existing bookings auto-migrated when the chart is switched, calendar-month booking periods tied to document dates, and a monthly hardening that freezes everything booked through the second-to-last month. We found no public information on manual free postings, opening balances, cost centres, accruals or multi-year comparatives, so the ledger beyond the basics stays dark.

Xero

The evidence markets 'Invoicing, payroll, and reporting' plus bank reconciliation and real-time reports, but there is no evidence of double-entry, a chart of accounts, journals or a period close — let alone SKR03/SKR04. Anchors treat absence as information: screens exist, but no German ledger is evidenced underneath them.

Lexware Office

Immutability is engineered rather than just claimed: an automatic monthly Festschreibung described as GoBD-conform, a manual lock to a freely chosen date, a protocol of every lock with timestamp, and bookings frozen as soon as a VAT pre-registration is transmitted. We found no public information on a supplied Verfahrensdokumentation, a stated statutory retention period, or a GoBD-compliant data export for the auditor, which is what separates a working lock from full audit readiness.

Xero

No GoBD claim, no retention statement, no audit trail and no Verfahrensdokumentation anywhere in the registry; the sole control evidence is a SOC 2 report available on request, which is a US framework and says nothing about German immutability or retention. That is rubric level 0 exactly.

Lexware Office

The VAT pre-registration loop is fully wired: transactions auto-fill the correct positions, one-click transmission with ELSTER feedback, payment by SEPA direct debit or bank transfer from the generated voucher, and the period locks on submission, with Ist/Soll timing including Mindest-Ist, §13b reverse charge, intra-community supplies and Dauerfristverlängerung all documented. Destination-country taxation is explicitly routed to OSS or a separate registration rather than the product, and we found no public information on EÜR, a balance sheet, Zusammenfassende Meldung or small-business §19 handling, with retroactive filings capped at the second-to-last year.

Xero

Not one word on VAT logic, UStVA, ELSTER, EÜR or reverse charge; the closest fact is multi-currency on the Premium tier. A rate field isn't even evidenced, so this sits at the bottom anchor.

Lexware Office

Bank transactions are fetched and automatically receive matching suggestions on each refresh — by exact document number in the remittance text, contact name or customer number — checked in both directions with receipts linked to their postings, and connected bank accounts are demonstrably part of the account. We found no public information on OCR for captured receipts, user-definable matching rules with learning, or inbound ZUGFeRD/XRechnung handling, so the evidence chain stays at suggested matches.

Xero

'Reconcile bank transactions', 'Auto-reconcile', 'Bulk reconcile' and 'Smart Document Capture' evidence semi-automatic matching and receipt capture, which is better than manual-only. But no German bank feeds, no OCR detail, no ZUGFeRD/XRechnung in either direction and no ersetzendes Scannen are evidenced — between rubric level 3 and 5.

Lexware Office

The DATEV handoff is the best-documented part of the product: scenario-based exports for Buchungsmandant versus Selbstbucher, automatic background transfer via DATEVconnect online to the Buchungsdatenservice, receipt images and booking data coordinated so the booking links to the receipt image after import in DATEV Kanzlei Rechnungswesen, plus Rechnungsdatenservice and ADDISON OneClick, and the adviser seat is explicitly free. Access is all-or-nothing — the captured help page states granular restriction is not possible and the adviser sees everything including bank accounts — and we found no public information on corrections flowing back from the Kanzlei.

Xero

The only adviser signal is 'over 250,000 accountants and bookkeepers using Xero' — a network count, not a handoff capability, and I read marketing numbers the way I read a Zapier logo. No export format is named, DATEV is entirely absent, and no adviser login is described, so the German Steuerberater gets nothing documented.

Lexware Office

The imprint names a Freiburg company and separate privacy statements exist for the cloud product, but the captured pages give no statement of hosting location, no subprocessor list and no certification, so I cannot place the books on named European infrastructure from public information. The one durable fact is the manual export of vouchers and booking data that still works after cancellation — a partial answer to whether retention survives leaving the vendor.

Xero

The contracting entity is the 'Xero group of companies' headquartered in New Zealand, hosting is unstated beyond 'Global (USD)', and the subprocessor list is absent — while German books carry a ten-year retention obligation attached to data held abroad. rubric level 0 on every attribute the pipeline could compute.

Lexware Office

The only priced fact I found is that the tax adviser access is 'komplett kostenlos' for client and Kanzlei alike. Beyond that we found no public information on tier prices, booking or document limits, billing period or VAT treatment, so a business cannot compute a real annual invoice from the captured pages.

Xero

Tier prices with promo periods, invoice/bill limits per tier, forecast windows, two priced add-ons (expense claims from $4, projects from $7) and one-month cancellation are public — genuinely above rubric level 5. But user counts, bank-account limits, adviser-seat pricing and VAT treatment are all unstated, so the real annual invoice for a German setup isn't computable from these pages.