Futureproof vs Xero
Skip the Xero and become a hero.
Xero is accounting software for small businesses, and it reconciles and reports well. What the plan comparison table never names is revenue earned across a term, recurring revenue, runway, a cap table or a diligence room. Futureproof keeps the ledger and runs all of that on it, with six agents and a monthly review call with a human financial specialist.
Reconciled, reported, and still short.Three gaps do the damage.
Three places companies run into the edge of small business accounting software, taken from what Xero publishes about its own plans.
Deferred revenue rides on journals
There is no recognition feature in the plans, so revenue earned across a term is carried by manual and repeating journals. Xero's own help article on journals suggests asking your accountant before writing them.
Segmentation hits a ceiling
Tracking categories are the tool for departments, cost centres and locations, and a company can hold four in total with only two active at a time. Past that, the analysis moves back into a spreadsheet.
The forward view stops at 180 days
Cash flow forecasting runs 30, 60 or 180 days depending on the plan, and recurring revenue, runway and cohort metrics are not named anywhere in the plan comparison. Those answers get rebuilt somewhere else each month.
Both keep a ledger.One of them keeps the rest.
What each side names in its own product. Statements about Xero are their published plan and help-centre wording.
| Futureproof | Xero | |
|---|---|---|
| AI agents that do the work | Six agents, each owning a lane | JAX, their AI finance partner |
| Monthly human specialist review | Included in the plan, every month | Onboarding coach for the first 90 days |
| Profit and loss, balance sheet | Built from the ledger, open to the entry | Reports included on every plan |
| Bank reconciliation | Reconciled nightly, exceptions flagged | Auto-reconcile bank transactions |
| Bookkeeping done by AI | Vic codes and closes every night | Auto-reconcile and document capture |
| Revenue earned across a term | A schedule per contract, run monthly | Manual and repeating journals |
| Burn rate and runway | Rebuilt nightly from posted entries | Cash flow forecast, 30 to 180 days |
| Recurring revenue metrics | Hugo computes them from the ledger | KPIs and ratios on Established |
| Cap table and dilution | Modeled beside the cash it changes | No cap table feature in the plans |
| Investor data room | Nia keeps the room current | No data room feature in the plans |
| Board reporting | Nia drafts the deck from closed months | Reports published to PDF |
| Segment and department analysis | Segments computed off posted entries | Four tracking categories, two active |
Xero statements checked 2026-09-20 on xero.com and their help centre, including their pricing page.
Export once.Never rebuild it again.
Three steps, none of them a month-end project. The old system stays readable while the new one catches up.
Connect the accounts
Bank accounts and cards connect read-only through Plaid, with billing and sales channels alongside them. One sitting, and from then on the agents pull what they need rather than waiting on an export.
Export, then import
Your history comes out of Xero as a file export and imports into your own ledger, so prior periods stay readable and the comparison to last year survives the move.
Run the first close
The agents work the backlog overnight. The morning after, the accounts are reconciled, the recognition schedules are running, and what is left is the set of decisions that needed you.
The ledger moves.Nothing else has to.
Leaving an accounting system is the decision most teams postpone. Four things stay exactly as they are.
- Your accountant
- Invite them in as a member and they work in the same books the agents write to, with every figure opening to the entry behind it. Futureproof does not file taxes and does not replace the person who does.
- Your bank
- Accounts and cards stay where they are, and the connections that bring data in are read-only. Nothing here can move money or change anything on the bank side.
- Your history
- The file export carries prior periods into the new ledger, so closed months stay closed and comparable instead of starting from a blank set of books.
- Your approvals
- Agents draft, propose and schedule. Anything that would move money or change the books waits for you, and every action traces back to the entry it created.
What teams askbefore they export the file.
There is less of it to manage. Xero automates a good deal of the bookkeeping, and what it does not carry is the work around the ledger: revenue earned across a term rides on manual journals, and recurring revenue, runway, equity and diligence are not named in the plans. Futureproof's agents do that work. Vic does the bookkeeping and hands you exceptions, Remi and Theo run AR and AP, Margo forecasts cash. You review and approve instead of doing.
Pricing starts at $1,000 a month and covers all six AI agents: Vic (bookkeeping), Remi (AR), Theo (AP), Margo (FP&A), Hugo (revenue metrics) and Nia (investor reporting). The same six roles hired as humans cost $384K to $605K a year in salaries. Xero is general accounting software, one slice of that stack. Futureproof replaces the stack.
The month-end routine. No more journal entries for deferred revenue, no more spreadsheets tracking recurring revenue by cohort, and no more exporting data to assemble an investor update. Those run on the ledger itself, and what reaches you is the short list of decisions that needed a person.
Futureproof replaces Xero. It handles bookkeeping, bank reconciliation and financial reporting, plus the work the Xero plans do not name: revenue earned across a term, cap table modeling, and operating metrics read straight off the ledger. One system, and one set of numbers underneath it.
Invite them into the workspace as a member. They work in the same ledger the agents write to, with every figure opening to the entry behind it, an audit trail beside it, and recognition schedules that do not depend on anyone writing a journal. Futureproof does not file taxes, so tax work stays with them.
Futureproof connects to Stripe and recognizes subscription revenue across monthly plans, annual contracts and multi-month billing cycles: anything earned over time gets a schedule and moves into income as the service is delivered. More complex arrangements are worth walking through on a demo before you sign up.
History comes out of Xero as a file export and imports into your own ledger, and bank accounts and cards connect read-only through Plaid at the same time. Prior periods stay readable after the move, so closed months and year-over-year comparisons survive it.
Recurring revenue, annual run rate, churn, LTV to CAC, gross margin by segment, burn multiple and runway, all computed from posted entries rather than a second source. The Xero plans name KPIs and ratios on their top tier and do not name any of those metrics.
Nothing prevents it. The trial runs 14 days with all six agents, and your Xero subscription stays under your control throughout, so the existing books can stay open while the first close runs in Futureproof. Comparing the recognition schedules against the journals you would otherwise have written by hand is the usual way to check the work.
It covers the common shapes: monthly subscriptions, annual contracts and multi-month billing cycles. Where revenue is earned over time, the schedule runs on the ledger, and the deferred balance is a report that opens contract by contract rather than a workbook somebody keeps alive.
Your numbers. Your answers. Smarter moves.
Retire the monthly routine.Keep the books.
Connect the accounts, import the history, and let the agents run the first close overnight. The recurring journal entries stop being somebody's Thursday.
Starting at $1,000/month for all six agents. No per-seat fees and no modules.