Every new business owner hears the same advice: get Xero or MYOB. They are genuinely good products. But at roughly $30 to $70 a month, that is several hundred dollars a year, and for a lot of small operators it is far more software than the job needs. So before you commit to a subscription forever, it is worth asking what you actually require.
What you are really paying for with Xero or MYOB
The monthly fee buys you live bank feeds, payroll, automated invoicing and reminders, multi-user access, and a lot of automation. If you process a high volume of transactions, employ staff, or need several people in the books at once, that automation earns its keep. The question is whether your business is at that point yet.
When a spreadsheet is genuinely enough
- You are a sole trader or a small operator.
- You process roughly fewer than 50 transactions a month.
- You have no employees, or a very simple payroll.
- You want to actually understand your numbers, not just outsource them to a black box.
- You would rather pay once than pay every month for the rest of the business's life.
When you should pay for the software
- High transaction volume where manual entry becomes a chore.
- Employees and real payroll obligations.
- A genuine need for live bank feeds and automatic reconciliation.
- Several people needing access to the same live data.
What a good bookkeeping spreadsheet must do
Not all spreadsheets are equal. Many free templates are American, get GST wrong, or skip the parts that matter. A spreadsheet you can actually trust at BAS and tax time should:
- Calculate GST the Australian way, dividing by eleven, not multiplying by ten percent.
- Produce a BAS summary with the right labels.
- Include bank reconciliation, so your books match your bank.
- Show cash flow as well as profit, because you can be profitable and still short of cash.
- Use ATO-aligned categories, and contain no macros to enable or worry about.
Both LedgerLine workbooks are built to exactly that standard: Australian-first, ATO-aligned, GST and BAS ready, no macros, and a one-off purchase with no subscription.
The honest answer is that there is no single right choice. Plenty of businesses outgrow a spreadsheet and move to full software, and that is fine. But if you are early, lean, and want to keep both your costs and your understanding under control, a well-built spreadsheet is a smart place to start.
Written by the team at LedgerLine Australia. Honest Excel bookkeeping tools for Australian business.