A familiar cloud ledger whose practice workflows often require separate products and add-ons.
Before the feature detail, the choice is architectural: keep Xero at the centre and add the missing pieces around it, or run the firm and its clients on one rebuilt record.
A cloud ledger at the centre, a separate practice manager, AI tools reading a copy of the data, and paid connectors holding the parts together. Every join is another sync to watch, another subscription, and another place the same number can disagree.
COUNT rebuilt the ledger and the practice engine together. Practice Manager and COUNT Workspace are two experiences on one system, with the intelligence reading live data — a single source of financial truth for the firm and its clients.
Xero is a strong, mature general ledger with the deepest app ecosystem in the market, and it is moving quickly on AI with JAX and an official MCP server. If you want a ledger and are happy to assemble the rest, it is hard to fault. COUNT is built the other way around: one data model where practice management, COUNT Workspace, documents and AI agents are the same product, so the firm and the client are never reconciling two systems. Choose Xero for marketplace breadth; choose COUNT if you would rather retire three subscriptions and have automation that learns each client's book.
Firms and clients ready to stop assembling a stack. COUNT is one consolidated, modern platform where practice management, Workspace, documents and intelligence share a single live system, so nothing is ever synced or reconciled twice.
Businesses and firms that want a proven ledger plus a large add-on marketplace, and have the appetite to integrate it.
How the two products differ on the things firms and businesses tell us matter most.
| Capability | COUNT | Xero |
|---|---|---|
| Practice management included | Included; clients on COUNT are free | Xero HQ with partner status; XPM and Workpapers separate |
| Transaction coding | Cruise Control: five matching passes before AI is asked | Bank rules and suggested matches |
| Volume caps on the entry plan | None | 20 invoices and 5 bills a month on Ignite |
| Multi-entity consolidation | Free on all tiers, with intercompany eliminations | Third-party app |
| Single system of record | Yes | Multiple products |
Expand any area for a line-by-line view of how COUNT and Xero differ.
Both products cover the ledger fundamentals. The difference shows up in how much is gated by tier.
| Capability | COUNT | Xero |
|---|---|---|
| Double-entry general ledger | Every plan | Every plan |
| Invoice volume on entry planXero's entry tier is volume-capped; exceeding it means moving up a plan. | Unlimited | 20 invoices per month on Ignite |
| Bill volume on entry plan | Unlimited | 5 bills per month on Ignite |
| Bank feeds and reconciliation | Plaid, Akahu and direct BNZ, Mercury, Rho and Brex connections, plus AI PDF statement import | Bank feeds with rules-based reconciliation |
| GST returns | Generated from the ledger and filed to IRD over a direct OAuth connection, with late claims tracked at source-document level | Prepared and filed to Inland Revenue from Xero |
| Multi-currency | Native, with realised and unrealised gains posted automatically | Comprehensive and Ultimate only |
| Fixed assets | Register with disposals, reconciliation report and NZ Investment Boost | Fixed asset management, tier dependent |
| Multi-entity consolidation | Free on all tiers | Third-party app |
| Capability | COUNT | Xero |
|---|---|---|
| Transaction coding | Integration match, your rules, historic similarity, AR/AP match and transfer detection run before AI | Bank rules plus suggested matches |
| AI agents | Saved skills run per client or across up to fifty workspaces, on a schedule, with Watch, Ask or Trust autonomy | JAX, in beta, positioned as an AI agent across Xero |
| Document capture | Bank and loan statement extraction, emailed bill capture, receipts | Bill and receipt capture, tier dependent |
| Anomaly and error detection | Vendor duplicate detection, recurring price-rise alerts, accuracy rules on review | Not native; add-on tools |
| AI chat over your books | Full workspace chat with tables, charts and confirmed write actions | JAX chat, in beta |
| MCP server | OAuth 2.1 MCP server exposing ledger and firm-wide practice tools | Official MCP server for ledger data |
This is the main structural difference: in Xero, practice tooling is a separate stack.
| Capability | COUNT | Xero |
|---|---|---|
| Jobs, deadlines and workflow | Tasks, recurring tasks and projects, included | Xero Practice Manager, licensed separately |
| Workpapers and close | Period close with thirteen modules, preparer to reviewer pipeline | Xero Workpapers, licensed separately |
| Client list and portfolio view | Same record as the ledger | Xero HQ, synced across products |
| Time and billing | Timers, timesheets and billable analytics, included | XPM |
| Client intelligence | Evidence-backed client synopsis, health signals and firm inbox triage | Client health widgets in Xero HQ |
| Number of products to run a practice | One | Typically three to five |
| Capability | COUNT | Xero |
|---|---|---|
| Client workspace | Included with every client entity | Client uses their own subscription |
| Advisor access | Free on every plan | Included, but every client needs its own paid subscription |
| Client portal | Magic-link portal with firm branding | Not native |
| Document requests and chase-ups | Questionnaires with upload and bank-statement import built in | Add-on or email |
| Sign-off | Tokenised sign-off page with an AI-drafted letter | Third-party e-signature |
| Capability | COUNT | Xero |
|---|---|---|
| Practice management licence | No per-user fees; clients on COUNT free | Partner-status access to HQ; XPM and Workpapers priced separately |
| Typical stack for a small firm | One subscription | Ledger + XPM + workpapers + document capture |
| Price movement | Published NZ and US pricing | NZ plan prices increase from 1 October 2026 |
| Migration support | Guided onboarding, importers and conversion balances | Self-serve or paid partner |
Xero details sourced from public information as at August 2026: Xero NZ pricing plans, Xero NZ pricing update, Xero US pricing plans, Xero AI toolkit and MCP server, Xero HQ. Pricing and features change; check the vendor for current details.
Import your chart of accounts, contacts and history, with opening balances that reconcile cleanly.
Cruise Control learns from how the client was historically coded, so coding starts trained.
Run both in parallel for one cycle before you switch off Xero.
We'll import a copy so you can compare like for like.
