Xero and Intuit both reached milestones in the last week in the number of subscribers to their online accounting programs. Xero said during its Xerocon conference in Denver that it has reached 500,000 subscribers. The next day its rival, Intuit, said that there are now more than 1 million subscribers for QuickBooks Online.One major difference is that Xero's customers are largely outside the United States; Intuit's are overwhelmingly in this country. Xero did not give a geographical breakdown of the numbers. However, when its fiscal year ended on March 31, 35,000 out of 475,000 of its subscribers—7.5 percent were in the North America. The company does not disclosed results for the U.S.
Intuit generally does not publish tallies of QB Online subscribers and did not do so with its recent announcement. However, for its third quarter ended April 30, the company said less than 6 percent of its revenue came from other countries.