One of the most challenging aspects of any business is accounting. It doesn’t matter if you have a small business or a large one, you still have to deal with the tedious process of entering bills and receipts.
Here are the best Accounting software for small business canada. These can be affordable accounting software or free accounting software for small business. I hope you find the best accounting software for your business below, best of luck!
OnPay
If you are looking out for options to ease your payroll management task, then there could be no other better software than the Onpay accounting software. From small-scale business to medium size business, all can use this software to ease up their payroll solutions. Apart from managing your payrolls, it also helps you in payments and tax filing. The finance managers can keep an account of the streamlined payroll of the company and directly make the salary transfers to their respective account of the employees using the direct deposit option. OnPay offers improved payroll compliance and also provides health insurance benefits which you can acquire by seeking assistance of the insurance brokers.
Sage Intacct
Sage Intacct incorporates the cloud storage platform and makes accounting simple and easy for business. Cash management, accounting, billing, etc. are few of the functionalities that you can benefit while choosing Sage Intacct software. This software helps in minimizing the errors and can effectively manage the costs and control margins. It has robust accounting capability and provides a speedy way of processing payments through a secure channel.
Tipalti
Another Cloud-based accounting software is the Tipalti management software that can be of great help in managing your business accounts. This helps you by providing automated payment options through a streamlined payment process and makes your payments easier more than one can even think of.
This software is a complete package that helps you to stick with the deadlines and non-compliance with any sorts of errors and late payments.
FreshBooks
Ideal for service-based businesses. Well-rounded features; unlimited invoices; unlimited estimates; affordable prices.
With its cloud-based and intuitive accounting features, Freshbooks is the best accounting software for self-employed, small, and medium businesses (SMBs).
Freshbooks allows you to create invoices, track time, and receive payment. The website has updated the features of double-entry accounting forms and standard bookkeeping.
With the newly designed “Chart of Accounts” and “General Ledger Accounts,” you get a more detailed analysis of your business’s performance. For our beginners, a Chart of Accounts is a list that contains all your company’s accounts. However, a General Ledger includes information on your company’s accounts.
Freshbooks also provides other accounting features such as “Other Income” and “Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)” to understand the expenses you make when producing your products. With essential features like “Bank Reconciliation,” “Trial Balance,” and “Balance Sheet,” you have various options to classify and divide your finances for a better organization.
With high sales and orders, it might be a challenging task to keep track of your inventory. Fortunately, Freshbooks comes in handy with its all-in-one inventory tracker. The feature offers a manager user, automatic mileage tracking and checkout links. The inventory options cater to a range of industries, from contractors to managers.
FreshBooks has an effective dashboard enabling you to have a quick overview of your company’s financial status. With its five charts, the “Outstanding Revenue” shows clients who are behind payments and who have not paid at all. The “Total Profit,” also accessible from the dashboard, provides real-time information about your company’s performance.
Receiving customers’ payments is much easier using the payment tool, with a transaction fee of 2.9% + 30 cents. The software also has an “Add Tax” that helps you add sales taxes to your invoices and payments. To help you fill your taxes, FreshBooks has a Sales Tax Summary Report with detailed transactions.
The system also provides better project management compared to other accounting software. If you have a manager or admin account, you can add an external client to the software for collaboration and payments. The feature offers two billing options, namely hourly or a flat rate.
Now you can also access Freshbooks through its mobile app available for both Android and iOS wherever you are. However, not all features are available on the app compared to the main site. Only the basic charts such as Outstanding Revenue, Total Profit and Total Spending are offered.
Pricing
Freshbook offers a 60% discount for six months along with a 10% off on its yearly billing options. Moreover, you can also use the 30-day free trial to test their features but the renewal prices after the discounts are steep.
Available at $15/month, the Lite plan enables you to bill a maximum of 5 clients, while the Plus Plan at $25/month bills 50 clients.
The Premium tier at $50/month bills up to 500 clients for midsize businesses. Custom pricing is also provided for high-volume enterprises for more than 500 clients.
Customer Review
Pros
- Double-entry accounting
- User-friendly
- Inventory Tracking
- Payment and Tax features
- Detailed client records
Cons
- Minimal help when setting up
- Limited customization of invoices
- Mobile app lacks site features
Xero
Perfect for micro-businesses. Robust account reconciliation; advanced project tracking.
With its simplified standard accounting process, you can skillfully navigate Xero for account reconciliation, sales, and project tracking. Xero has updated its software to add various features, including a “Short-Term Cash Flow” and “Business Snapshot.”
Xero provides a video tutorial that breaks down the site’s different features and tools to set up your account. The guide is simpler to follow compared to other competitors. The software also makes importing records and transactions from previous accounting software easy with its direct-conversion feature.
Moreover, the dashboard displays account balances with links to all related actions and pages needed, such as graphs for outstanding invoices and an account watch list.
Through the contact feature, you can create records and invoices for your clients and suppliers. The tool records all extensive contact information needed, along with a credit limit and blocking tool.
If the inventory is the foundation of your business, Xero provides an Inventory Asset Account that tracks your items in the background. The tool enables you to add an opening inventory balance or enter the information manually.
You also get multiple templates for every transaction, including repeated invoices, quotes, and bills. You can easily customize the templates by hiding or renaming specific fields. Xero has also updated the invoice form to auto-save your data every few seconds.
A new expense-tracking feature was created for more accurate tracking and recording of your expenses with detailed descriptions. However, the expense forms lack a payment method or account and sales tax section.
When you use the advanced Sales Tax feature, the sales rates are automatically added depending on the customer’s location. Using rates from Avalara, an integrated app in Xero, you can be sure that your tax data are accurate.
Also, you can easily track your projects with the simple project management tool specially designed for small businesses. Each project can be assigned to your contacts with added deadlines and estimated budgets. Time entries, document expenses, and timed invoices can be configured for easier management.
Communication with your clients is crucial. Therefore, Xero has an innovative online sales transaction that enables you to have real-time communication with your clients.
Additionally, to respond to the financial crisis caused by the pandemic, Xero created a Short-Term cash flow feature that estimates your future bills and invoices.
If accounting features are daunting for you, fear not. You can access step-by-step guides and tutorials that explain how the tools and features provided function. However, Xero customer support is only available through email.
With its mobile app available for Android and iOS, you can easily navigate your dashboard and add invoices on your phone. A second app called Xero Expenses is offered for businesses to submit reimbursable expenses. If your company has various fees, you can take a picture of the receipts using your phone and Xero automatically adds them to the expense forms.
Pricing
Xero offers a 30-day trial on all of its three plans to test out their features.
At $11/month, the Early plan offers 20 invoices and quotes, five bills, and unlimited bank transactions.
Available at $32/month, the Growing plan offers unlimited invoices, bills, and quotes. However, at $62/month, the Established plan is the only plan that provides multiple currency features.
Customer Review
Pros
- User-friendly dashboard
- Easy setup process
- Interaction with customers in real-time
- Project tracking
- Inventory feature
Cons
- No phone or live chat support
- Mobile apps features are limited
- No reorder option in inventory
- Invoice forms need labeled icons
Wave Accounting
Perfect for emerging businesses with small budgets; user-friendly dashboard; excellent management tools.
The free accounting software beats all competitors with its price. While Wave Accounting has a limited range of features, the free invoice and unlimited expense tracking make it ideal for freelancers and small businesses on a budget.
Wave Accounting offers only one monthly plan that includes all features the software provides. The unlimited credit card and bank account connections, along with expense tracking, are a perfect way to highlight your monthly revenue and are all for free.
With its valuable prompts and intuitive interface, you will have no problem setting up your account. Besides, Wave Accounting has a clean and efficient dashboard that enables you to perform double-entry accounts. If you do not have a background in accounting and finances, the user-friendly interface will guide you to different tools and functions.
Various integrations are offered on your Wave account, like Google Sheets and Etsy. More than 1,500+ apps can be integrated through Zapier support, a software that syncs all your apps.
However, Wave Accounting provides a less detailed template than some competitors. The product and service records are also basic as you can only enter the name, description, and sales tax data.
Wace accounting makes up for its limited templates with an advanced transaction tool. A transaction table classifies and lists all your transactions according to the date, description, amount, and category. There is also a checkmark tool where you can verify if the transactions are correct or complete.
If you have a scalable small business, Wave Accounting is not for you. There are neither inventory management nor dedicated time-tracking features like FreshBooks. While the integrated payroll feature automatically calculates your taxes, you will have to file and pay them manually.
However, the software makes creating invoices easy by adding new customers or items to the list, but no discounts can be added for now. Yet, you can modify the time zones for your customers to ensure that invoices are sent at the right time. Estimates can also be converted into invoices later after the expiry date.
Despite providing basic reports such as Balance sheets and Cash Flow, Wave Accounting contains a limited category of reports compared to its competitors.
Additionally, Wave Accounting has a mobile app that contains simple features such as creating invoices and accepting payments. You can also download a second app called Receipts by Wave that includes OCR technology to transcribe your receipts in your account’s expenses section. However, Receipts by Wave is only available on iOS.
Pricing
Wave Accounting provides a free monthly plan for its accounting features but charges a small transaction fee of 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction. If you are interested in the payroll feature, it is available at $35/month with tax features or $20/month without any tax tools.
While Wave is perfect for micro-businesses and freelancers, growing small businesses may feel restricted with the lack of advanced features.
Customer Review
Customer Review
Pros:
- Customizable Workflow
- Highly flexible software
- Automated features
- Industry-specific tools
- Global Business management
- Solid customer support
- Real-time data
Cons:
- Expensive subscription
- Additional payment for advanced modules
- Advanced software for beginners
- Complex and sophisticated interface
Conclusion
As a small business owner or an accounting student, choosing the right accounting software can be really overwhelming. There are numerous accounting software packages available in the market. And if you’re still not sure which one is the best accounting software for small business it could become even more frustrating.