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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: 1 of 4 dimensions proven

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Xero Limited · www.xero.com

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Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Tax Adviser

Weighted verdict

Closes the year for forty clients and needs the books to arrive in a form DATEV accepts, receipts attached. Reads "export to CSV for your Steuerberater" as an admission that nobody asked one. Wants scoped access and a clean period handover.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Tax Adviser

Bookkeeping core

How this is scored

Double-entry, the chart of accounts (SKR03/SKR04), postings, journals, opening balances and period closing — the ledger underneath the pretty screens.

0 — Income-and-expense lists only; no double-entry, no chart of accounts, no journal.

3 — Simplified bookkeeping suitable for EÜR with a fixed account list; no free posting, no period close.

5 — Double-entry with SKR03/SKR04, manual postings, journals, opening balances and a month-end close.

8 — Full ledger with cost centres, recurring and reversing entries, accruals, multi-year comparatives, and a documented close checklist with locking.

10 — An accountant's ledger: configurable charts including customised accounts, period locking with audit, foreign currency with documented valuation, group or multi-entity handling, and reporting that reconciles to the trial balance.

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The Tax Adviser

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. 1 2

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GoBD, immutability & audit

How this is scored

Whether the record survives a tax audit: unalterable postings, complete change history, retention across the statutory period, and a Verfahrensdokumentation the vendor actually supplies.

0 — Postings can be edited or deleted without trace; no retention statement, no GoBD claim, no documentation.

3 — GoBD asserted on the marketing page with nothing behind it — no described audit trail, no documentation offered, no statement on retention.

5 — Postings become unalterable after close with corrections booked as reversals, a change log exists, and the statutory retention period is stated.

8 — Documented GoBD conformity with a supplied Verfahrensdokumentation template, complete and exportable audit trail, receipts linked to postings, and a GoBD-compliant data export (GDPdU/Z3) for the auditor.

10 — Audit-ready as a product feature: an independent GoBD certification or attestation published, Verfahrensdokumentation maintained per release, tamper-evident journals, retention executed across the full statutory period, and an export the Betriebsprüfer accepts without argument.

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The Tax Adviser

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. 1 2 3

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Tax handling & filings

How this is scored

VAT logic and the filings that follow: UStVA, ELSTER submission, EÜR or Bilanz, OSS for cross-border sales, and reverse-charge handling.

0 — No VAT logic beyond a rate field; no filings, no ELSTER.

3 — VAT rates and a UStVA figure to copy out by hand; no electronic submission, no special cases.

5 — UStVA prepared and submitted electronically via ELSTER, EÜR or a simple balance sheet produced, and reverse-charge and intra-community supply handled.

8 — The above plus OSS handling for cross-border B2C, Zusammenfassende Meldung, small-business (§19) and Ist/Soll taxation, permanent extension (Dauerfristverlängerung), and E-Bilanz where relevant.

10 — The filing year is handled end to end: every routine German filing generated and submitted electronically with validation before sending, cross-border VAT determined from the transaction rather than by hand, and correction filings supported.

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The Tax Adviser

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. 1 2

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Receipts, banking & matching

How this is scored

How evidence and money get into the ledger: bank feeds, receipt capture, OCR, matching rules, and whether the digital receipt is legally sufficient on its own.

0 — Manual entry only; no bank connection, no receipt storage.

3 — Bank statement import by file and receipt upload as plain attachments; matching is entirely manual.

5 — Automatic bank feeds for the major German banks, receipt upload with OCR, suggested matches, and receipts linked to their postings.

8 — PSD2 feeds across many institutions, rule-based automatic matching with learning, e-invoice handling (ZUGFeRD/XRechnung) both directions, and replacement scanning (ersetzendes Scannen) documented so paper can be destroyed.

10 — The evidence chain is closed: every posting reaches its receipt in one click, e-invoicing inbound and outbound as standard, documented compliant archiving of the digital original, and matching accurate enough that exceptions rather than transactions are the work.

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The Tax Adviser

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. 2

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Tax adviser handoff

How this is scored

How the books reach the Steuerberater — DATEV above all — and whether the adviser can work in the system rather than around it.

0 — No adviser access and no accounting export; the year-end is a pile of PDFs.

3 — Generic CSV or Excel export described as "suitable for your tax adviser", with no named format.

5 — A documented DATEV export (postings and, ideally, receipts) plus a read-only login for the adviser.

8 — DATEV export including receipt images with correct linking, or a maintained DATEV interface; the adviser gets their own scoped access with an audit of what they changed.

10 — The adviser is a first-class user: bidirectional DATEV exchange including corrections coming back, or a certified interface; period handover with locking, and a workflow where adviser queries are resolved inside the system.

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The Tax Adviser

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. 1

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where the books live and who could be compelled to produce them — plus, uniquely here, whether statutory retention survives leaving the vendor. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated or non-EU, subprocessors unnamed — with a ten-year retention obligation attached to data held abroad.

3 — EU hosting offered while the contracting entity is non-EU, or the subprocessor list is absent.

5 — EU hosting as standard and an EU contracting entity, but parts of the chain — OCR, AI categorisation, support tooling — are non-EU without an explained safeguard.

8 — EU or German hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, full subprocessor list published, and a stated export that satisfies retention if the contract ends.

10 — Sovereign and durable: German or EU hosting throughout, every subprocessor European, certification published, and a documented archive export that keeps the customer compliant for the full retention period after they leave.

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The Tax Adviser

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. 1 3

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether a business can compute the real annual invoice — including the bookings, users, bank accounts and adviser access they actually need — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A headline monthly price exists, but booking or document limits, extra users or the tier where DATEV export begins are unstated.

5 — Tier prices public with billing period stated and the main limits given, but at least one commonly needed piece (DATEV export, extra bank accounts, adviser seat) sits in an unpriced tier.

8 — Every tier and add-on priced publicly with limits, overage, minimum term and VAT treatment stated; adviser access priced or explicitly free.

10 — Complete price computability: annual invoice derivable for a given transaction volume, user count and feature set, including overage and the year-end extras.

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The Tax Adviser

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. 2

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European sovereignty — proven facts

1 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined — uncited Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (13)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor homepage www.xero.com Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing www.xero.com Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy policy www.xero.com Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Terms of service www.xero.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Legal notice — found from the homepage www.xero.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Bookkeeping core — found from sitemap www.xero.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Bookkeeping core — found from sitemap www.xero.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Tax handling & filings — found from sitemap www.xero.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Tax handling & filings — found from sitemap www.xero.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Receipts, banking & matching — found from sitemap www.xero.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Receipts, banking & matching — found from sitemap www.xero.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Tax adviser handoff — found from sitemap www.xero.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  13. 13 Tax adviser handoff — found from sitemap developer.xero.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →