Best Accounting Software for Small Business in South Africa

Have you ever wondered what are best accounting software for small business in south africa? Ever thought of free accounting software for small business in south africa? Let’s see what are top free accounting software for small business in south africa and the best paid package.

You are a small business owner in south africa and want to know more about Accounting? This is a best resource for learning best accounting software for small business in south africa. Top accounting software in south africa will help you keep your small business finances on track and make sure you comply with the tax requirements.

Zoho Books

Zoho Books is a great accounting software option for businesses in South Africa. They offer their software for free to businesses with revenue of less than a million rand per annum. The software allows businesses to create a thousand invoices a year and also helps manage clients. Payments can easily be made online and offline. All transactions are secure through SSL encryption and two-factor authentication method.

ZipBooks

ZipBooks has a slight advantage over Zoho books; it can send out unlimited invoices. It also allows businesses to manage vendors and customers. This accounting software accepts digital payments, which is a major advantage. Lastly, you can connect your bank account to the software and also view basic reports.

GnuCash Free Accounting Software

GnuCash is a great option for small businesses that require balanced books and accurate reports. Their software is always free to use as it is licensed under the GNU GPL. The software helps track bank accounts, income, expenses and stock. Businesses can effortlessly check financial calculations with a click of a mouse. It allows for double-entry accounting.

FNB Instant Accounting

FNB offers their accounting software for free to all their business banking clients. This software was designed to simplify bookkeeping for those with little to no accounting knowledge. FNB Instant accounting automatically generates income statements, balance sheets and VAT.

The key features of FNB Instant Accounting include the following:

  • Run and download reports onto excel
  • Revise budgets
  • Generates debtors aging analysis reports
  • Allows users to manually assign transactions
  • Creates rules for all assignments
  • Imports data from bank statements to the general ledger
  • Basic ability to generate customer and supplier invoices

A massive pro to using this software is that all data is automated. This means that all finances will be accurate at any given moment. The downside to FNB Instant accounting is that it does have a few limitations. The accounting software does not manage sales items and stock management. It also has a very basic invoicing feature, which might not be ideal.

To register for FNB Instant accounting, log on to www.fnb.co.za. Under the “accounts” tab click on the left side of the screen and select “instant accounting”. Click on the tab “Log off and Access Instant Accounting”. Next, complete the registration and get started.

Sage Accounting

The Sage Accounting bookkeeping software is one of the most reputable on the market. Unfortunately, they do not have any free trials. The cheapest ‘Start’ pricing starts from R1887 per year and the Full Bundle pricing starts at R3510 per year.

Sage Cloud Accounting allows users to run their businesses wherever they are at any time. The software also runs on the mobile app, which is a huge advantage.

Some of the features of business accounting include:

  • Payroll/Payments Integration
  • Cloud Document Storage
  • Sage Capture and Invoicing
  • Direct Bank Feeds
  • Business reporting- use the standard report templates or create your own
  • Accept payments using reliable payment solutions
  • Includes a general ledger
  • Send out quotations
  • Invoice clients
  • Purchase orders

For more information visit the website on Sage Accounting Online

Xero accounting software

Xero accounting software offers businesses a 30-day free trial to try out all their features. Thereafter, users have the option to choose from three packages; Starter, Standard and Premium. The Starter package is around R3500 per annum, Standard is R5300 and the Premium package costs R7100.

This accounting software interface is based online, with everything in one place. Users can sync bank information on the software for easy access to financials. Daily transactions flow directly in Xero so that funds reflect the same day. Xero also offers project tracking functionality with an open API and project management software integrations. 

Xero offers a wide range of features that is essential for every small business. Here are the key features it offers:

  • The software can send invoices from mobiles and desktops
  • Keep track of all orders and deliveries through the purchase order software
  • Create and send quotes instantly
  • Inventory tracking software allows users to keep track of all items that are bought and sold
  • Accept online payments through a number of payment gateways
  • Reporting
  • Calculate VAT returns in requirement with SARS

Wave accounting South Africa

Wave is a fully web-based free service that allows businesses to do everyday accounting online. It also offers users the option to download the mobile invoicing app.  Another great feature that Wave offers is running multiple businesses in one account.

Businesses have the option to either separate bookkeeping and banking tools or integrate them. This free accounting service has no hidden costs and is relatively simple to set up. To start up all that’s required is a quick signup.

Wave accounting has a wide range of features that is extremely useful. It’s user-friendly and easy to navigate, which saves lots of time. You can do the following things on this free accounting software:

  • Add additional users from your team to the system
  • Track unlimited income and expenses
  • Generate annual financial statements
  • Create tax categories for income and expenses
  • Unlimited bank and credit card connections
  • Run reports on overdue invoices, bills, cash flow, profit and losses
  • Track performance on the dashboard
  • Payroll management

Payroll software South Africa

Getting payroll done correctly is essential to running a successful business. One of the best free payroll services software’s in South Africa has got to be FreeRoll.

FreeRoll is built for South Africans and is fully in compliance with SARS. It allows businesses to add unlimited employees and users. The software calculates UIF and has all the current SARS tax tables, making it rather simple to use.

This software enables employees to log on and gain access to all their information. Furthermore, employees can also ask questions and make suggestions online.

Free Accounting Software Trials

Most of the cloud accounting software providers above offer a free trial where users can first test out the service to see if it meets their small business requirements. This is a great way to preview the accounting platforms functionality before having to spend any money on the software.

xTuple PostBooks

PostBooks is a free accounting software developed by xTuple. This software is best suited for manufacturing companies so if you are a manufacturer than PostBooks is for you.

With PostBooks you will not only be able to manage your accounting entries but you will also be able to manage your inventory and debtors with are the most key factors to your business success. You will also be able to manage your purchases and work in progress inventory so that you can run your manufacturing process efficiently.

XTuple PostBooks has value-added features that are offered at a price such as a customer relationship management and sales management.

Akaunting

Talking about free, Akaunting is all free accounting software with no subscriptions involved. Akaunting will help your company to track.

  • Cashflow- you will be able to track your company cashflow and how liquid your business is at any given point.
  • Invoices- you will be able to track paid and unpaid invoices so that you can make follow-ups if necessary.
  • Expenditure – all your expenses will be tracked and you will be able to know where you spend most of your money and if there are any cuts that need to be made.
  • Clients – you will be able to track each client and know how much they owe you. This will help your business in making future decisions to borrow certain debtors.

Akaunting is a powerful software and can be used by many businesses. You can’t link business bank accounts on Akaunting.

Money Manager EX

Money Manager EX is an open source accounting software that is delivered for free. The software is very easy to use especially for your everyday use.

The software helps you keep track of your cash flow and budget. You can import a CSV document to the software from your bank to get started.

TurboCASH

With TurboCash it’s all about quality financial reporting. This accounting software is good for both small and medium enterprises. Using this software you will be able to handle multiple companies and reconcile every account whenever you want to for a group of companies.

You can deal with multiple VAT, creditors, debtors, bank, inventory, sales, and other relevant accounts using one software.

SlickPie

SlickPie has its user experience on a different level with revenue charts, spending graphs and bank account activity all visible on the home page. This accounting software is not entirely free, it is, however, very easy to use and come with value-added services that one can subscribe for at a fee.

If your business is online then you can use SlickPie’s payment processing system to allow payments on checkout. SlickPie has many services and the services are beyond accounting, many of these services are charged so if you really need additional services from SlickPie then you just have to pay for the service.

Palladium Accounting

Palladium offers multicurrency accounting software that uses current accounting processing technology. The software is easy to use and to navigate so learning how to use the software won’t take as much time.

There are no mandatory fees attached to the software application and you can store your data on the cloud. It is a good option for a start-up business with inadequate resources.

Conclusion:

Small businesses in South Africa have many options when it comes to accounting software. This can be a bit overwhelming, especially if you are not well-versed in software and bookkeeping. Even having an idea of what to look for, or how to set up your bookkeeping spreadsheets can be difficult. There’s just so much software to choose from!

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