Accounting software

Xero, Sage or QuickBooks: Irish prices, bank feeds and VAT returns compared

All three are sold in Ireland, and all three work out the VAT on what you record. The return itself goes to Revenue through ROS. They differ in currency, in what the cheapest plan leaves out, and in how payroll is handled.

By Oscar CobbeCurrent as at 30 October 20266 minute read19 sources

Prices on the Irish pages, October 2026

As each vendor's Irish pages showed them on 29 and 30 October 2026, in its own currency and on its own billing basis. Introductory discounts are left out.

Xero's Irish pricing page says its prices are in US dollars, and Xero's Irish price update page lists higher prices for all three plans, with the date they start. Sage's Irish pricing pages did not open for this article, so no Sage price is given. QuickBooks' main Irish pricing page loads its prices live and they had not loaded when it was read, so the QuickBooks figures are from its Irish plan-comparison page.

Package	Plans and prices	Currency and billing
Xero	Starter $29, Standard $50, Premium $75 a month; its price update page lists $32, $54 and $82	US dollars, renewing monthly; the page has no VAT wording
Sage Accounting	Three plans, Start, Standard and Plus; no price given here	Euro, excluding VAT, per Sage's help centre; Start is billed per calendar month
QuickBooks Online	Simple Start €21, Essentials €31, Plus €45 a month; a fourth plan, Advanced, has no price on that page	Euro, monthly prices; the page has no VAT wording

Xero bills Irish customers in dollars

Xero's Irish page lists its region as Ireland (USD), so the euro cost of a Xero plan changes with the exchange rate. Sage and QuickBooks price their Irish plans in euro.

What each plan includes

The differences that matter to a small business with staff and suppliers, from each vendor's own pages:

	Xero	Sage Accounting	QuickBooks Online
Invoices and bills	Starter: 20 invoices and 5 bills; Xero points to Standard for more	Start: no purchase invoices; Standard and Plus have them	Every plan sends invoices; bill management from Essentials
Users	No limit given on the Irish pricing page	Start one, Standard three, Plus unlimited; accountants not counted	Simple Start one, Essentials three, Plus five, Advanced 25, each plus your accountant
Bank feeds and reconciliation	Every plan	Every plan	Every plan
Other currencies	Premium only	Plus only	Essentials and above
Payroll	Through a separate payroll app	A separate product, Sage Payroll	Not among the features on the Irish pricing page

Supplier bills decide the plan

Xero's Starter takes 5 bills, Sage's Start takes no purchase invoices, and QuickBooks lists bill management from Essentials. A business entering more than five supplier bills starts at the second plan in each: Standard, Standard or Essentials.

Irish bank feeds

A bank feed brings your transactions into the package automatically, ready to match against invoices and bills. What each vendor says about Irish banks:

1Xero: its Irish bank page does not list Irish banks. It says to start a trial and look under Accounting, Bank accounts, Add bank account, and where there is no feed, to upload statements in OFX, QIF, QBO, QFX or CSV. Its Irish pricing page also carries a notice, dating from Brexit, that its Irish bank feeds relied on passporting its UK authorisation and that Irish bank transactions would need to be imported by hand from 1 January 2021. Check your own bank during the trial.
2Sage: its Irish help centre says to check from Banking, then Actions, then Connect to bank, for your bank and account type. A foreign-currency account cannot have a feed, and you re-enter your online banking details every 90 days. For an unsupported bank, you can import CSV, QIF or OFX files, or enter transactions by hand.
3QuickBooks: its Irish bank-feeds page names Allied Irish Bank, Bank of Ireland, Fire, Revolut and Transferwise among the banks it connects to.

VAT returns go to Revenue through ROS

Revenue's rule is the same whichever package you use. The VAT 3 return is filed, and the VAT paid, by the 19th day of the month after each taxable period, through the Revenue Online Service (ROS), and ROS filers have until the 23rd to file. The taxable period is two months, starting on the first day of January, March, May, July, September and November. The Collector-General can authorise four-monthly returns where the annual VAT liability is between €3,001 and €14,400, and six-monthly returns where it is between €1 and €3,000. Once a year there is also a Return of Trading Details, which appears in your ROS inbox.

What the packages do is prepare the figures:

1Xero's Irish VAT page describes preparing the VAT 3 and the annual Return of Trading Details from the transactions already recorded, then exporting them for submission through ROS. It describes this as a feature for Xero partners to use for clients on Starter, Standard or Premium, through the Xero Compliance Ireland app.
2Sage's Irish guide to creating a VAT return, written for Accounting Start, has you create and check the return in Sage, choose Submit to Revenue by other means, and go to ROS to submit it.
3QuickBooks' Irish VAT page says it supports the standard and cash schemes and helps you track the VAT3 and Return of Trading Details filings.

Payroll is a separate decision

Xero's Irish payroll page says that to run payroll you connect a third-party payroll app, and names Parolla, SimplePay and Deel. Sage sells payroll as its own product, Sage Payroll, and its Irish help centre says the user limit applies across both, so a person with access to Accounting and Payroll counts once. QuickBooks' Irish pricing page lists no payroll feature on any plan.

Which suits which business

From what each one publishes:

1Xero: Starter, Standard and Premium, priced in US dollars and renewing monthly. Standard is the plan Xero points to for more than 20 invoices or 5 bills, and other currencies need Premium. The VAT 3 and Return of Trading Details are prepared for export to ROS, and payroll comes from an app.
2Sage Accounting: euro prices, excluding VAT. Users are capped at one on Start and three on Standard, and Plus is the only plan with other currencies and the only one without a user cap. Sage Payroll comes from the same company.
3QuickBooks Online: euro prices, with a fixed number of users on each plan. Other currencies start at Essentials, the second plan, and its bank-feeds page names Irish banks it connects to. Payroll is not on its Irish plan list.

Where automation fits

Each package connects to other software: Xero has its app store, QuickBooks lists integrations with hundreds of apps, and Sage's Irish help centre names AutoEntry for bringing transactions in. A direct connection like that, or a bank feed, is the first one to use. If you bank with Revolut Business, connecting Revolut Business to your accounts covers the route through Revolut's own API.

Where two systems have no direct connection, Zapier, Make, Power Automate and n8n can join them, and what to automate first is about choosing which job to start with.

Sources

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Who wrote this

Oscar Cobbe · Founder, FourWinds Digital

Writes and maintains the legal explainers on this site, and does the compliance work behind them. Every date and article number here is checked against the legislation itself before it is published, and each article shows the date it was last checked.

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