Many entrepreneurs today are struggling with the issue of choosing a right program for business accounting. They want to get an awesome application that will not only create reports and invoices, but also streamline business processes. However, they have no idea how to choose one of them.
Picking the right accounting software can be challenging. Because there are many accounting software packages, all with slightly different features. This means it can take time before you find the right one for your business. In this article, I’ll cover the most important features to watch out for when comparing accounting software programs.
Intuit QuickBooks Online
Intuit’s QuickBooks Online is our choice for the best accounting software for small businesses due to its feature-rich cloud software, wide variety of integrations, affordable pricing, and reputation. QuickBooks has served small businesses for more than 20 years, and for good reason. When you choose this accounting software, you get all the tools you need to support your operations now and in the future.
What led to QuickBooks Online being selected as our best pick for small businesses is that even its basic plan has lots of features other vendors charge extra for, including professional invoicing and the ability to accept payments, track expenses, and manage your business’s cash flow. QuickBooks’ higher-priced plans include batch invoices; business analytics; a dedicated support team; on-demand online training; and integrations with Bill.com, Salesforce, and HubSpot. With all of QuickBooks’ plans, you can snap photos of receipts and link expenses from your mobile device, integrate with several apps, and access customer support.
Another aspect of QuickBooks that makes it ideal for small businesses is the ability to connect with a live accountant. Cloud accounting software automates a lot of the tasks, but sometimes, you need the insight of an accounting professional. With QuickBooks’s Live Bookkeeping service, you get access to a bookkeeper who sets up the software for you, categorizes transactions, reconciles accounts, closes books monthly and runs detailed reports. Another helpful feature with the service is Cleanup, which QuickBooks rolled out earlier this year. Customers can use the feature on a pay-per-use basis to reconcile historical accounts and categorize historical transactions. Pricing for the live bookkeeping service depends on your needs and requires an initial consultation (which is free) with a QuickBooks representative.
For small business owners who already have a trusted accountant, QuickBooks makes it easy (and free) for them to collaborate with you. The software enables you to invite an accountant who can work on your books for free. All the accountant needs to do is accept the invitation. You can remove access anytime.
QuickBooks offers small businesses of all sizes a full suite of features and functionality at affordable price points, but that’s not the only reason we selected it as the best accounting software for small businesses. We also like its reputation and adoption rate. If you work with an accountant or accounting consultant, chances are, they are familiar with QuickBooks. The same can’t always be said of other accounting software programs.
August 2021: QuickBooks recently launched QuickBooks Card Reader, a payment device designed for small business owners that integrates with QuickBooks Payments. QuickBooks said it launched the handheld, contactless card reader in response to a change in the way businesses have been processing payments since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Intuit recently inked a deal to acquire Mailchimp, the popular marketing platform for small and medium-sized businesses. The $12 billion deal is part of Intuit’s mission to support small business growth. Once the deal closes, Intuit plans to integrate Mailchimp with QuickBooks. That means customers will be able to combine customer data with QuickBook’s purchase data, giving them powerful insights into their customers’ preferences.
April 2021: Intuit has partnered with DocuSign to enable business owners to sign estimates digitally without leaving the QuickBooks Online platform. Through QuickBooks’ new DocuSign eSignature Connector, small businesses can improve their turnaround times for estimates, automate the estimate process, and track progress of a potential contract. QuickBooks said customers can save $36 on average per contract with the service.
May 2021: Intuit recently announced QuickBooks Online’s integration with Docyt, an AI-powered tool that works in conjunction with the accounting software. Through Docyt, business owners can pay bills, manage expenses and financial documents, capture receipts, and run different reports from one central location. With this integration, the company aims to reduce the number of apps accountants and business owners have to manage.
Wave
Starting at $0.00/mo.
If getting free software is your top priority, you quite literally can’t do better than Wave. Wave’s comprehensive software simplifies your financial tracking with automatic journal entries, bank reconciliation, and expense and income tracking.
Even if Wave weren’t completely free, we’d still be blown away by how much it offers. It’s one of our top accounting software picks for small-business owners, and for good reason. With Wave, you get perks like these:
- Automatic bank account and credit card syncing for accurate, up-to-date financial records
- Unlimited bank account and credit card connections
- Easy, customizable income and expense tracking
- Crucial accounting reports and general ledger
- Invoicing and billing reminders
- Automatically generated journal entries
- Customer support (email only)
Wave’s easy-to-read dashboard shows you your most important financial info at a glance. Its billing, invoicing, and expense tracking features make it perfect for freelancers, but the software can work for larger businesses too, especially since Wave doesn’t limit the amount of users you can add (unlike, say, QuickBooks Online). You and the rest of your financial team can jump on your account to check numbers and enter information, free of charge.
SlickPie
The free accounting software SlickPie is also worth looking into for your small business finances. The free version of this accounting software allows for unlimited automated receipt entries, 10 different companies on one account, and email support. It also allows you to create quotes and estimates that can easily become professional invoices. SlickPie also allows you to connect your PayPal and Stripe accounts for free. That means customers will be able to fulfill their invoices with card or PayPal payments online—and you’ll simply have to pay the standard transaction fees that PayPal and Stripe charge.
One feature that this free accounting software seems to be lacking is reports—the SlickPie website doesn’t highlight any built-in reporting capabilities. If you’re hoping to extract valuable, high-level insights from your accounting software, then you might want to consider options other than SlickPie.
Brightbook
Brightbook is a free online accounting system, designed to help time-strapped and cash-strapped small businesses with no accounting experience run their business easier. Businesses can send professional-looking invoices in any currency, track bills and find out who owes them money in an instant with the easy-to-use Brightbook system.
CloudBooks
While CloudBooks’ basic features are free, it doesn’t offer as much as the competition.
CloudBooks pros
CloudBooks is an online accounting software program that allows you to manage your online invoices, expenses, and projects. You can also view financial reports from any mobile device with their free app. Their platform allows for unlimited staff users, which means you can share access to your books as needed.
CloudBooks cons
CloudBooks is generally geared towards freelancers with few clients. Unless you are willing to shell out $10-$20 a month, you are limited to only five unbranded invoices per month. There is also no phone support or Paypal integration for the free version.
ZipBooks
ZipBooks provides powerful and simple-to-use accounting software designed to help small businesses move to the next level. ZipBooks’ free starter option includes unlimited invoicing, unlimited vendors and customers, unlimited bookkeeping, the ability to connect and manage one bank account, and a business health and invoice quality score.
GnuCash
GnuCash is an open-source accounting program that offers many features to help you manage your small business accounting. Volunteer developers update the software regularly, which means the program is always kept up-to-date.
GnuCash pros
GnuCash’s strength is that it contains advanced features such as customer and vendor tracking, job assignments, invoicing, bill pay, sales tax management, payroll management, and budget creation and management.
The checkbook-style register is an easy-to-use interface for entering all of your checking and credit card transactions. You can also enter income, stock, and currency transactions.
You can split transactions, mark transactions as canceled or reconciled, autofill entered transactions, and display multiple accounts in a single register window.
GnuCash cons
Since GnuCash is not cloud-based and only locally installed on a desktop computer, access to your financial data is limited to only one machine and one user. While GnuCash offers a mobile app, it is only for Android-based devices and requires you to manually import the data, which can be a pretty tedious process.
The interface of the program is also a bit dated and requires some time to get used to. Many users report problems with manually importing their transactions.
GnuCash’s customer support is through a public email-based discussion board, so it may take a while before you get a response to your question. Their chat support uses an obsolete IRC channel system, which can be tedious to set up.
NCH Software (Express Accounts)
Starting at $0.00/mo.
With 20 easy-to-generate financial statements, Express Accounts is a perfect fit for business owners who want to focus on keeping their books in order.
Express Accounts, owned and operated by NCH software, has a pretty dated website. While multiple users can log on to your account, the software requires an initial desktop download, which makes it a little less flexible than the cloud-based providers on our list. But if you don’t mind the dated look, Express Accounts can simplify your basic bookkeeping in a big way.
For starters, it offers 20 financial reports (much better than ZipBooks’ two) that help you get a clear picture of your fiscal health. Express Accounts also easily tracks accounts payable and accounts receivable. You can even print checks using the software to streamline bill payments.
Express Accounts’ customer service is much less robust than our other top five picks. You can reach out to technical support over email if you have an issue with your download, but that’s the extent of your support. On the other hand, most customers use Express Accounts solely to track their business’s figures—so you shouldn’t need the kind of support you would with more complex accounting or payroll software.
Conclusion:
We live in a digital age and as such, everything runs on software. Businesses are no different as they use accounting software for various accounting purposes like sales, purchase, paying taxes and many more. Not to mention free accounting software examples which make the work of the bookkeepers and accountants much easier. If you need to run a business without any issues and complications then you will need the best piece of software available for your needs. The last thing you want is to invest in something that will bankrupt your business because of high costs and other issues.