SpidNums vs Xero Practice Manager: an honest comparison
A fair comparison for Canadian practices — what Xero Practice Manager does well first, then where the two differ.
Xero Practice Manager is Xero's practice tools for accounting and bookkeeping partners, tied to the Xero ledger ecosystem. SpidNums is the better fit when a Canadian firm wants flat USD $1,200-per-firm-per-year pricing, white-label branding on every plan, deadlines generated from Canadian rules rather than from generic recurring tasks, and client data hosted in Canada. Here is the honest breakdown.
What Xero Practice Manager does well
This section comes first deliberately. Xero Practice Manager is a serious product with real customers, and a comparison that pretends otherwise is not worth reading.
- Tight integration with the Xero ledger, which is a genuine advantage for firms whose client base is predominantly on Xero.
- Available through the Xero partner programme, which makes the commercial arrangement simple for existing partners.
- Xero's Canadian presence has deepened through its ownership of TaxCycle, connecting the ledger to Canadian tax preparation.
Where the fit differs
These are differences in model rather than claims about missing features. Where a capability is not listed for Xero Practice Manager, that means we did not verify it — not that it is absent.
- Ledger-tied versus ledger-agnostic: SpidNums manages every client regardless of which ledger they use — or whether they use one at all, which matters for tax-only and advisory clients.
- White-label: SpidNums presents the firm's brand to clients rather than the platform vendor's.
- Engagement letters: SpidNums builds priced letters from a services catalogue and collects e-signatures on a no-login branded page.
- Deadline logic: SpidNums generates dates from Canadian filing rules and each client's fiscal year-end and reporting cadence.
Pricing
Xero Practice Manager does not publish pricing we could verify, so this page does not state a number for it — ask the vendor for a current quote. SpidNums is a flat USD $1,200 per firm per year with every feature included, including white-label branding.
Side by side
| Compared on | SpidNums | Xero Practice Manager |
|---|---|---|
| Ledger dependency | Ledger-agnostic — manages every client | Built around the Xero ecosystem |
| Pricing | Flat USD $1,200 per firm per year, all features included | See vendor / partner programme |
| White-label branding | Full white-label on every plan — app, emails and letterhead | Platform-branded to clients |
| Canadian deadline logic | CRA-native: T2 six-month clock and earlier balance-due date, GST/HST by client cadence, fiscal-year-end reminders | See vendor |
| Data residency | Hosted in Canada (ca-central-1) | See vendor |
What SpidNums is, plainly
SpidNums is practice management for Canadian accounting firms: the client list, the services each client buys, the deadlines those services generate, the person who owns each one, and the engagement letter that defined the scope. It is not a general ledger, it does not prepare or transmit returns, and it does not calculate payroll — those stay in the tools your firm already files with.
The list below is the complete set of claims this site makes about the product. If a capability is not on it, we do not claim it.
- Multi-tenant white-label branding per firm — name, logo, colours, emails and letterhead
- Colour-coded SLA deadline dashboard ranked by proximity
- Aggregated reminders across tasks, service cadences and fiscal year-ends
- E-signed engagement letters with a public, no-login client portal
- Per-tenant Google Workspace integration
- Client portal
- Staff roles with confidential-client gating
- Canadian-hosted data (Supabase ca-central-1)
- Flat USD $1,200 per firm per year, all inclusive
- CSV/XLSX client import and export
Questions worth asking both vendors
Comparison grids converge because feature names converge. These six questions separate products that look identical on paper, and they are worth asking of Xero Practice Manager and of SpidNums alike.
- How is a deadline generated — from a rule tied to the client's fiscal year-end and reporting period, or from a recurring task somebody configured by hand?
- When a client's filing cadence changes, is that one field or a rewrite of every future date?
- Whose brand does the client see on emails, on the portal and on a signed engagement letter — and on which plan does that become true?
- Where is client data hosted, and is tenant isolation enforced in the database or only in the application? Get the answer in writing.
- What is the total annual cost at three seats and at ten? Ask for the total, not the per-user figure.
- What comes across on migration, and what does not? Clients usually move; documents, notes and completed work usually do not.
Who should choose Xero Practice Manager
A firm whose entire client base is on Xero, and whose work is predominantly bookkeeping and compliance inside that ledger, gets real value from staying in one ecosystem. Fewer systems is a legitimate strategy.
If that describes your firm, take the other product seriously. If it does not, the practice management overview covers what SpidNums does in full.
Switching
Client lists export from the practice tools and import to SpidNums by CSV or XLSX. Your clients' Xero ledgers are unaffected — SpidNums does not touch the books.
SpidNums imports and exports clients as CSV or XLSX. There is no direct migration connector, so historical documents, notes and completed work do not come across automatically — plan the cutover around a period boundary rather than mid-season.
Frequently asked questions
Is Xero Practice Manager available to Canadian firms?
Xero offers practice tools to its accounting and bookkeeping partners, and Xero's Canadian presence has deepened through its ownership of TaxCycle. Confirm the current product line-up and any transition plans directly with Xero before committing, as the practice-tools landscape has been changing.
What is the difference between practice management and my ledger?
The ledger holds your client's books. Practice management holds your firm's work: which clients you have, what recurring obligations each carries, when each is due and who owns it. A firm with clients on three different ledgers still has one set of deadlines.
Does SpidNums integrate with Xero?
SpidNums is ledger-agnostic and does not require or replace a ledger. It manages the firm's client records, services, tasks and deadlines regardless of which accounting software each client uses.
Can I import my clients from Xero Practice Manager into SpidNums?
Yes, through CSV or XLSX import. Export the client list and import it. Your clients' Xero ledger data is untouched, since SpidNums does not connect to or modify the books.