Xero and ServiceYak: which does what
Xero runs your books. ServiceYak runs the work that produces them. They're not alternatives — they connect — and this page is about which job belongs to which, so you're not trying to make one do the other's.
These two aren't competitors
This is the one page on this site that isn't a comparison in the usual sense. Xero is an accounting package and ServiceYak is job management software, and we sync with them. If you're weighing one against the other, the honest answer is that most trade businesses running properly end up with both.
The reason the question comes up at all is that the two overlap at exactly one point — the invoice — and it's the point everybody notices. Xero raises invoices. So do we. That single overlap makes them look like alternatives, and they're not: one is the ledger, and the other is everything that happens on the way to it.
So this page is about the division of labour: what belongs in Xero, what belongs in ServiceYak, and what happens at the join.
What Xero does, and does better than anyone
Xero is the accounting system. It owns everything from the invoice onwards, and there is no sense in which ServiceYak competes with any of it:
- Your chart of accounts and general ledger — the actual books, and the thing your accountant works in.
- Bank feeds and reconciliation — transactions in, matched off, coded.
- GST and BAS — the reporting your obligations actually run on.
- Payroll — pay runs, PAYG, super, STP reporting to the ATO.
- End-of-year — everything your accountant needs, in the form they want it.
ServiceYak does none of that and shouldn't. We have no chart of accounts, no bank feeds, no BAS and no payroll. If you're looking for software to do your books, the answer is Xero and this page ends here.
What ServiceYak does, before the invoice exists
Everything upstream of the ledger — the part of the week where the money is actually won or lost:
- Quoting on site from your saved rates, sent as a PDF before you leave, with open tracking so you know when it's been read.
- The job itself — the accepted quote becomes the job, with the same lines, client and address, nothing retyped.
- Scheduling and dispatch — who's where, when, with a push notification to their phone when a job is assigned.
- Photos, notes and checklists against the job, so there's evidence attached to the work two years later.
- Timesheets — clock on and off against a job, with per-person labour rates, so you know what the work cost, not just what it billed.
- Payments — card, PayTo and PayID, with reminders that chase the invoice by email and SMS on their own.
- Sixteen reports on jobs, sales, team and finances — job-level questions the general ledger can't answer.
The distinction that matters: Xero can tell you the business made money this quarter. ServiceYak can tell you which jobs made it, and which ones quietly didn't.
What happens at the join
You raise the invoice in ServiceYak, off the job, with the lines already on it. It syncs to Xero, where it lands in your books, hits your bank feed when it's paid, and is picked up by your BAS like anything else. Nobody retypes anything, and your bookkeeper works where they always have.
In practice that means the answer to "where do I invoice from?" is ServiceYak — because that's where the job, the lines and the variations already are — and the answer to "where are my books?" stays Xero. We also sync with QuickBooks if that's your ledger instead.
The two are separate subscriptions and always will be — Xero bill you for Xero, we bill you for ServiceYak. Their plans are published on their own site and we're not going to quote a figure here that could be out of date by the time you read it.
Can you just run on Xero?
Plenty of trade businesses do, and for some of them it's the right call. Xero raises quotes and invoices perfectly well, and if your work is a steady stream of similar jobs with little scheduling and no crew, adding a second system is overhead you don't need.
Where it stops working is when the job gets complicated before it becomes an invoice. Xero has no concept of a job in the sense you'd use the word: there's nothing to schedule, nothing to assign to an apprentice, nowhere for the site photos to live, no checklist to complete on site, no record of the variation agreed in a doorway, and no way to clock hours against the work. So all of that lives in a phone, a diary and somebody's memory — and the invoice gets built at the end from whatever survived.
If you're already doing job costing in Xero with tracking categories and it's working, our guide on Xero job costing for tradies covers how far that approach goes before it starts creaking.
Feature comparison
| Feature | ServiceYak | Xero | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chart of accounts and general ledger | ✗ | ✓ | These are your books. That's the accounting package's job, not ours. |
| Bank feeds and reconciliation | ✗ | ✓ | Transactions in, matched off, coded — entirely theirs. |
| GST and BAS | ✗ | ✓ | Your obligations run through Xero, not through us. |
| Payroll, PAYG, super and STP | ✗ — timesheets only | ✓ | We record hours against jobs. Paying people is Xero's job. |
| Quoting on site from saved rates | Five steps from the quote list to a sent PDF | Quotes from the office ledger | A quote built at the kitchen table beats one built back at the desk. |
| Jobs, scheduling and dispatch | ✓ — assign, schedule, push to the crew's phones | ✗ | There's no job to schedule in an accounting package. |
| Site photos, notes and checklists | ✓ — attached to the job | ✗ | Evidence belongs with the work it documents. |
| Timesheets against a job | Clock on/off with per-person labour rates | Timesheets for payroll | Two different questions: what to pay someone, and what the job cost. |
| Job-level reporting | 16 reports across jobs, sales, team and finances | Financial reporting on the ledger | Which jobs made money is a different question to whether the business did. |
| The two together | Invoice from the job | Receives it, reconciles it, reports on it | One sync, no retyping, and your bookkeeper stays where they are. |
Rows marked Xero wins are the ones where they beat us outright.
What the pair costs
Two subscriptions, billed separately. ServiceYak is $37 per user per month ex GST, or $370 per user per year — $30.83 a month — with every feature included, no caps on quotes, jobs or invoices, a 30-day trial that needs no card, and no lock-in.
Xero's plans are published on their own site and priced by them. We're deliberately not putting a figure here: it isn't ours to quote, it changes on their schedule rather than ours, and a stale number about somebody else's product is worse than no number at all.
If you're currently on Xero alone, the honest way to test whether the second subscription earns its keep is to run ServiceYak's 30-day trial alongside it, invoice a handful of real jobs through the sync, and see whether the admin actually comes down. Nothing is charged unless you enter billing details at the end.
Adding ServiceYak to Xero
There's nothing to switch — you're adding a layer in front of the books, not replacing them. The order below is the one that causes the least disruption.
- Connect the two first. Do it before you put any real work through, so the join is proven while the stakes are low.
- Check where invoices will land. Confirm the accounts and tax rates an invoice maps to, with your bookkeeper if you have one. Getting this right on day one saves a reconciliation mess later.
- Load your price list. Your rates and common line items as kits and templates. This is what makes quoting fast, and it's the single highest-value hour of setup.
- Run one real invoice all the way through. Quote it, run the job, invoice it from ServiceYak, and watch it appear in Xero on the right account before you move anything else across.
- Then move the quoting across. Once the sync is proven, stop quoting from the ledger. Quotes belong where the job is going to live, so the accepted quote can become the job without anyone retyping it.