Lexware Office vs Xero

Lexware Office

SKR03 and SKR04 with automatic migration of existing postings, calendar-month booking periods, and a monthly locking run with a timestamped protocol is a real ledger underneath the screens — the Buchungsmandant scenarios even contemplate the Kanzlei preparing the Jahresabschluss on these books. We found no public information on manual journal postings, opening balances, cost centres or accruals, and the fiscal year is fixed to the calendar year, so a mid-grade ledger is what the pages support.

Xero

The modules are invoicing, payroll and reporting, with bill entry and bank reconciliation on the feature list — a real business's paperwork, but no evidence of a chart of accounts, a journal, free postings, opening balances or any period close. For my clients that is a cash ledger with pretty dashboards, not books I could close a year from.

Lexware Office

The locking mechanics are described in earnest — automatic monthly locking, an initial lock on activation, manual locking to a chosen date, a protocol of every execution with its timestamp, and bookings of a reporting period fixed once the USt-VA is submitted. We found no public information on a supplied Verfahrensdokumentation, a statement of the statutory retention period, or a GoBD-compliant export for the Betriebsprüfer, which keeps it short of the documented-audit grade.

Xero

Not one word about GoBD, immutability, a change log, or retention anywhere in the evidence; the privacy notice identifies only a New Zealand 'Xero group of companies' and says nothing about keeping records for the statutory period. A Betriebsprüfung against these books would start with the question of whether a posting can be deleted — and the vendor never answers it.

Lexware Office

The USt-VA is filled automatically from business transactions, submitted to the Finanzamt with one click, confirmed by ELSTER, then booked and paid by SEPA debit or transfer — with Ist/Soll timing including Mindest-Ist, §13b and intra-community supplies, Dauerfristverlängerung and Nullmeldung handled. OSS appears only as guidance that destination-country taxation must be reported via OSS or separate registration, retroactive filings stop at the second-to-last year, and we found no public information on Zusammenfassende Meldung, §19 handling or EÜR/Bilanz generation.

Xero

No VAT logic of any kind is evidenced — not even a rate field — and nothing on UStVA, ELSTER, EÜR, Bilanz or reverse-charge. The evidence's own provenance says it was included to be judged against German filing requirements it does not target, and the features bear that out.

Lexware Office

Bank transactions are fetched and receive matching suggestions on every refresh, with two suggestion types, checks in both directions, sensible criteria (matching amounts, exact document number in the remittance info, identical contact or customer number) and receipts linked to their postings — though nothing is booked until the user accepts and at most 1000 assignments run per operation. We found no public information on OCR receipt capture, PSD2 breadth across institutions, ZUGFeRD/XRechnung handling or ersetzendes Scannen being documented.

Xero

Bank reconciliation, auto-reconcile, bulk reconcile and Smart Document Capture are on the pricing page, so receipts and statements can at least enter the system and matching is not purely manual. But there is no evidence of German bank feeds, OCR, ZUGFeRD/XRechnung, or ersetzendes Scannen — so the digital receipt's legal standing and the paper's fate are both unanswered.

Lexware Office

This is the part they understand: four documented DATEV handover scenarios, DATEVconnect online background transfer with the Rechnungsdatenservice and Buchungsdatenservice, and a Steuerberaterzugang export that produces two coordinated ZIP files where booking and receipt image link automatically after import into DATEV Kanzlei Rechnungswesen — plus a free adviser login and a manual export that survives cancellation. But the adviser login cannot be restricted in scope and sees every connected bank account, and we found no public information on an audit of what the adviser changed or corrections coming back through DATEV.

Xero

The homepage boasts 'over 250,000 accountants and bookkeepers using Xero', which tells me an adviser ecosystem exists somewhere — but there is no export of any named format, no DATEV anything, and no described adviser access to a client's books. My year-end would be screenshots and hope.

Lexware Office

We found no public information on where the Lexware Office books are hosted, on the contracting entity's jurisdiction being confirmed on the vendor's own captured pages, or on any subprocessor list; the captured material shows only separate privacy statements for the cloud and desktop products. The provenance names a German company in Freiburg, so this is not the non-EU worst case, and a manual export of vouchers and booking data remains available after cancellation — but we found no public information on retention-compliant archiving or a documented archive export for the full statutory period.

Xero

Contracting entity is a New Zealand group, hosting is stated only as 'Global (USD)', data residency, ownership and every subprocessor are unknown, and no export is described that would satisfy German retention if the contract ends. The books of a German client would sit under a non-EU authority for ten years with nothing in this sheet to govern that.

Lexware Office

We found no public information on tier prices, billing periods, booking or document limits, user costs, or at which tier the DATEV export and bank connections begin. The only pricing fact published in the captures is that the tax adviser login is completely free; no annual invoice is computable from these pages.

Xero

Credit where due: three tiers priced with promo terms and limits ($29/$50/$75 after promo, 20 invoices and 5 bills on Starter), add-ons priced from $4–$7, one month's cancellation notice, 30-day trial. But VAT treatment, adviser seats and any year-end extras are unstated, so the real invoice is close to computable, not fully computable.