A Xero alternative for books kept on your own computer

If your accountant works in Xero and expects to find your books there, or you rely on bank feeds, sending the VAT return from the software, payroll or apps that connect to it, stay with Xero: Books has none of those. If you do your own bookkeeping, are content to import a statement file each month, and want the books on your computer rather than in someone else’s cloud, Books does the double entry, the invoices and bills, the nine VAT boxes and the year end, as part of OBSCURA Pro.

What Xero is

Xero is online accounting software for small businesses, sold in the UK as a monthly subscription in several plans, which differ in how many invoices and bills they allow and whether payroll and more than one currency are included. Xero describes its software as sending the VAT return to HMRC from inside it under Making Tax Digital, and as ready for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax. Banks connect to it by feed, and its app store adds payroll and other software that connects to the books.

Its other strength is people. Xero keeps a directory of UK accountants and bookkeepers who work with it, and a business on Xero can give its accountant access to the same books. For a business that wants its accountant to do the bookkeeping, that is hard to match.

Side by side

Xero as it describes itself on its UK pages, checked on 6 October 2026, and Books as it is. Xero’s plans and prices change, and the first months are often discounted, so none are given here; its pricing page is the place to check.

What Books does

• The bank, explained line by line. Each line is put to an account with its VAT, matched to invoices or bills, marked as a transfer between your own accounts, or split. Rules explain the regular lines as they arrive, duplicates are left out, and the account is reconciled against the statement.
• Invoices that carry what HMRC asks a VAT invoice to. A unique number, the tax point, your VAT number, each line’s rate, the net at each rate and the VAT, on an A4 PDF with your bank details. Quotes become invoices, and credit notes are set against the invoice they correct.
• Bills with their receipts. The supplier’s PDF or a picture of the receipt is kept beside the bill in the browser, and a bill’s VAT can be typed as the supplier worked it out where it differs by a penny.
• The VAT return, box by box. Standard, reduced, zero rated and exempt; the reverse charge; the flat rate scheme with the first-year point off; cash accounting, counting each part payment’s share. Posting a return moves it to the VAT owed and locks the quarter.
• The year end. Close the year, lock the books, and print the accountant’s pack: a page of checks, the trial balance, profit and loss and balance sheet against the year before, cash flow, aged debtors and creditors and the VAT returns of the year.
• The books as one file. A whole company saves as a .obooks file, each part checked by SHA-256 when it is opened, to back up or hand to whoever needs it.

What Xero has that Books does not

• Making Tax Digital submission. Books works out the VAT return and gives it to you; it does not send it. HMRC’s interface needs a sign-in step run on a server, and Books has none. The same holds for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax: a sole trader or landlord who has to send quarterly updates needs software that sends them, and Books does not.
• Bank feeds. Books reads the statement files your bank lets you download. It never connects to a bank, because that needs a regulated company in between that would see the transactions.
• Several people in the same books. Books keeps them in one browser, for one person at a time. There is no syncing between devices; the file is the way to move them.
• Payroll and stock. Neither is in Books. Wages go in as the payroll software’s figures.
• An accountant who already knows it. An accountant reads Books’ PDFs and CSVs without it, but to open the .obooks file itself they need Books too.

Who each suits

Xero suits a business that wants its accountant in the books, takes on staff, or wants each part of the work done by a connected app. Books suits a sole trader, a landlord or a small company whose owner keeps the books and sends the figures on: someone who would rather import a statement than give a third party standing access to the account, and who will submit the VAT return as a separate step.

If you move, start on the first day of a financial year or a VAT quarter. Run a trial balance in Xero at the day before, enter it in Books as the opening balances under Journals, enter the invoices and bills still unpaid, and import each bank account’s statement from the start date. Keep the old books for as long as the records have to be kept.

What it costs

Books on its own is US$2 a month or US$19 a year; all of OBSCURA Pro is US$5 a month or US$48 a year. Each comes with 7 days free first. There are no tiers by number of invoices, bills or businesses. Pro also covers every other OBSCURA application. For several people, each person needs a plan of their own. There is no free version of Books with features held back: without Pro, its page shows what it does and asks for a plan.

See it before you pay. Books’ page shows it at work on its demo company and lists what it does not do.