Created: 2017.06.15
As a remote worker, I spend in NZD, but most of my jobs are charged and paid in USD.
That's a problem, because:
- My native currency is NZD
- I have subscriptions which are in NZD and USD
- I buy second hand equipment in NZD
- My account earns interest and pays fees in NZD
- I bill local clients in NZD
For these reasons, I need multi-currency supporting in my accounting package.
Currently I use Xero. When I reconcile my account, I can match NZD charges on my bank statement with my USD repeating subscription bills.
But my Xero subscription is damned expensive.
I'm a freelancer and I've been in business for less than 2 years. If it didn't need multi-currency support, I could be paying NZD 27.50/month. Instead, I'm paying a whopping NZD 70/month. Thankfully this is discounted to NZD 48.30/month through my accountant, but of course an accountant comes with their own fees.
MYOB is the other major player in the cloud accounting space.
Unfortunately the news is not much better there.
> The multi currency function is available in AccountRight Premier or Enterprise v19, however, not in the live versions. - Multi Currency
AccountRight Premier costs an outrageous AUD 121/month (NZD 127.50/month).
We live in a modern age, where more and more people are working online and remote, and companies are regularly trading internationally.
Why does a basic requirement like Multi-currency support push me into the top pricing tier?
And what exactly am I paying for anyway?
- Sending NZ invoices
- Seeing what bills are coming up
- Submitting GST returns directly to IRD without involving an accountant
- No integration with the invoicing systems in the remote job portals where I earn money (e.g. Upwork)
- No integration with the IRD's tax notification system
- Manual management of invoice terms etc when the information is already in Xero
- Clunky UI
- Generic support through customer forums
- Accountants still require 5-10 hours to put together a return from Xero data
- Offline things that Accountants do in spreadsheets to show that I couldn't just handle my own tax returns using Xero
The longer I am in business, the wiser I become.
The uptake of all things cloud based seems to be an ignorant hope that paying a regular sum of money for some pretty software will somehow save more money down the line.
Currently I don't see it that way. I see the software itself as a liability. I still have to spend precious hours managing the data in Xero, and my accountant bills haven't decreased proportionally.
In their defence, Xero and MYOB are simply following global trends to do everything in a web browser.
Web browsers are great, but 90% of online software doesn't need to be web based.
- Many sites don't provide sufficient mobile functionality to really leverage the cloud storage and browser-based UI
- Many sites don't provide APIs for integration with other sites, limiting how you use your data
- Many sites won't integrate with the APIs of the sites you actually use
- Data is less secure in the cloud than on an offline laptop
- Subscriptions-in-perpetuity quickly surpass the historically high costs of licensed offline software
- Online systems regularly go down
- Online support is often crowd-sourced rather than personal
- Remote team collaboration features are unnecessary when working alone, or when everyone is in the same office, or when people need their private time away from work
As of mid 2021:
- I now invoice directly from Stripe in USD
- I create a duplicate draft invoice in Xero in NZD, with dummy amounts
- The Stripe invoice payment takes 3-4 days to reach my bank account
- I update the Xero invoice with the NZD amount received
- Stripe costs a percentage of the transaction/invoice fee. In practice this seems to be less than the quoted rates.
