Small Business Software Accounting – Choosing an accounting platform for business accounting software is a lot more crucial than knowing the fundamentals of accounting. In this article, we help you to understand the basics of accounting and then present a list of questions you need to ask yourself before zeroing in on the accounting software.
Small business software for accounting is the tool that helps businesses to track expenses, income, sales revenue and inventory. It usually comes with double entry accounting module so that you can keep your books of accounts free from any error.
Xero
Xero is the best in our review for micro-businesses that are looking for very simple accounting software. This software has a clean interface and also fully integrates with a third-party payroll service. Businesses can collect payment online from customers through Xero’s integration with Stripe and GoCardless.Pros
- Cloud-based
- Mobile app
- Payroll integration with Gusto
- Third-party app marketplace
- Simple inventory management
Cons
- Limited reporting
- Fees charged for ACH payments
- Limited customer service
Xero was founded in 2006 in New Zealand and now has over 2.7 million users worldwide. This accounting software is popular in New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Xero has over 3,500 employees and is growing rapidly in the U.S., as well.1
Xero offers three monthly subscription options and a full-service payroll add-on: Early at $11 per month, Growing at $32 per month, and Established at $62 per month. The full-service payroll option is offered through Gusto and is an additional $39 per month, plus $6 per employee. The company offers a 30-day free trial and a promotion for 50% off for two months.
The Early plan limits usage and only allows entry for five invoices or quotes, five bills, and reconciliation of 20 bank transactions per month. This limited plan may be suitable for a micro-business with high-ticket transactions, but only a few per month, such as a consulting or small service provider. Both the Growing and Established plans offer unlimited invoices, bills, and transactions. The only difference between the two is that the Established plan has additional features like multi-currency, expense management, and project costing. All three plans offer Hubdoc, a bill and receipt capture solution.
FreshBooks: Best invoicing
4.1
- Starting at $15.00/mo.
Middle-of-the-road starting price
$10.00/mo./additional user
Expense and time tracking with each plan
Data as of 11/5/21. Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change.
FreshBooks’s combination of stellar features, customizable invoices, and well-reviewed mobile apps make it pretty much perfect—especially for freelancers. Unlike Xero, FreshBooks lets you send an unlimited number of invoices and estimates with every plan. Each plan also includes time tracking for easier, more accurate client billing. FreshBooks’s built-in small-business expense tracking helps you maintain a balanced budget. And, like QuickBooks Online, FreshBooks includes built-in mileage tracking—a must for freelancers who plan to claim mileage expenses on their year-end tax forms.
Price check: FreshBooks’ discounts
FreshBooks starts at $15 a month, but the company’s frequent discounts make its financial software even more affordable. As of November 2021, FreshBooks is offering new customers 60% off for six months—which knocks your starting price to $4.50 a month. Plus, paying annually takes 10% off your monthly price. (If you sign up for a new annual subscription during this current promo, you’ll lock in 70% off for the first six months.)
But while FreshBooks doesn’t limit your invoices, it does limit the number of customers you can bill each month. You can send your customers an unlimited amount of invoices, but the cheapest plan limits that client number to just five. Additionally, FreshBooks doesn’t include bank reconciliation with its cheapest plan. Since bank reconciliation is an absolutely foundational accounting task, we can only recommend FreshBooks’s cheapest plan to freelancers or brand-new startups with just a few transactions a month.
Intuit QuickBooks Online: Best for Small Businesses
Intuit QuickBooks OnlineQuickBooks Online has accounting features to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes, including the ability to craft invoices, send and accept payments, and manage and track expenses.QuickBooks’ Live Bookkeeper provides professional help.If you have the self-employed plan, you can’t upgrade to one of the small business plans.VISIT SITE
What can’t QuickBooks do? The extremely popular accounting software is used by small businesses across the country. Accountants are quick to praise the application for its affordability, ease of use and effectiveness. It’s hard to find many flaws with QuickBooks, especially considering the needs of small businesses today. QuickBooks Online offers small business owners a feature-rich accounting platform that integrates with tons of business applications and doesn’t break the bank. Many businesses find it helpful to connect their credit card processing provider to their accounting software to close the loop on their sales. We like that the software is cloud-based and updated regularly.
Editor’s score: 9.5/10
We chose QuickBooks Online as our best pick for small businesses for several reasons. With this accounting software, you can create professional invoices, accept payments, track expenses and keep a steady eye on your cash flow. And that’s just with the Basic plan; the higher-priced plans let you send batch invoices, engage in deep analytics and even access a dedicated accounting team. QuickBooks Online integrates with several popular business apps, including Bill.com, Salesforce and HubSpot.
With QuickBooks, you don’t have to create financial reports from scratch, thanks to the software’s built-in reports, which include the trial balance, general ledger and 1099 transaction detail reports you’ll need at tax time. You can mark the reports you use most as favorites so you can quickly find them at the top of the Reports page. You can also set up the software to automatically run and email reports to you, and schedule them for a specific time of day and frequency, such as daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly. QuickBooks offers some of the best reporting options of any accounting software we reviewed.
Another advantage of QuickBooks Online is its versatile support. Whether you are the DIY type or prefer more hands-on help, QuickBooks delivers. With its Live Bookkeeping service, you can get help from a bookkeeper who will set up your software, categorize transactions, reconcile your accounts and close your books monthly and yearly. Even better, you don’t get charged for services you don’t need; the pricing for Live Bookkeeping depends on your needs.
If you already have an accountant, it’s easy to collaborate with QuickBooks. The software lets you give your accountant access for free; all they need to do is accept the invitation. You can remove access anytime. QuickBooks offers all types of small businesses a ton of accounting features without breaking the bank, and its reputation and adoption rate stand out in the market.
August 2021: QuickBooks recently rolled out a new payment device that enables small businesses to accept card payments on the go. The small contactless card reader integrates with QuickBooks Payments. The company said the new device is in response to a shift in the way small businesses accept payments since the pandemic.
Intuit has announced it is acquiring Mailchimp, the marketing platform used by millions of small and medium businesses. The accounting software company plans to integrate data from Mailchimp with QuickBooks so customers have actionable information to grow their business. The acquisition furthers Intuit’s goal to offer small businesses the digital tools necessary to support their growth.
April 2021: Intuit has launched a new DocuSign feature for QuickBooks that lets small businesses sign estimates directly from its online platform. The DocuSign eSignature Connector speeds up the process of sending estimates and enables you to track your estimates’ progress.
May 2021: QuickBooks Online is making it easier for business owners and accountants to manage their finance apps with the integration of Docyt. Docyt is an AI-powered tool that enables business owners to pay bills, manage expenses, capture receipts, and run reports from one location. Docyt’s integration with QuickBooks reduces the number of apps a business owner has to deal with to manage their finances.
Conclusion
We all use small business software applications in order to maintain our financial records. As small business owners, we want to be responsible in keeping our financial records, vendor data and tax documents. And for this purpose, it is important that we choose the best accounting software according to our business needs. If you are running your business well then you will never be caught off guard by any audit or tax challenge. To help your business grow, there are some accounting tools that lessen your burden of trying to manage timely paperwork and reporting tasks.