Accounting Tools for Startups is a long tail keyword because it’s not that searched yet. There are just a few people that have started to look into this by now. In the future, the concept of Accounting tool will be much searched, but right now it’s just a small community.
Proper accounting is super important for the survival of every company, and investing in the right software and tools early on can be a game-changer for startups.
Accounting software helps businesses create invoices, record incoming and outgoing payments, identify and follow up on past-due receivables, and run reports to analyze the financial health of your company.
Looking at the accounting software landscape it can be quite tough to figure out where to start and what tools to choose. To help you find the SaaS solution that works best for your startup, we’ve compiled a list of 10 great accounting and finance tools to make your life a bit easier.
Melio
Melio is helping small businesses to better manage their supplier payments, minimizing time and cost while maximizing cash flow. It offers payment workflow empowering businesses to focus on their customers, not their back office. Melio bill payment solution for accountants helps manage all of their clients’ payments in one place, saving time and money.
Melio offers a simple way to pay vendors and contractors. Customers can pay any invoice with a bank transfer for free, or use their credit card to defer payment, and vendors receive a check or a bank deposit.
Customers can also invite users and easily set up their roles and permissions, controlling approval of each transaction and stay on top of cash flow. Melio also allows customers to save time on scheduling each bill individually, selecting multiple bills, and paying them all at once. Try Melio now!
Plans and Pricing:
Melio offers two types of memberships: for businesses and accountants. The monthly subscription is free, the only fee is 2.9% for credit card payments. Both memberships include:
- Sending checks
- Bank Transfer (ACH) & bank deposit
- Receiving credit card payments
- Unlimited companies/clients AP/AR management
- Unlimited users per account
Plooto
Plooto is an all-in-one account payable (AP) and receivable (AR) platform. Plooto’s vision is to provide a robust financial operations platform to automate and simplify complex workflows, by unifying payments, processes, control, reconciliation, and reporting.
Plooto gives small and medium businesses greater financial control for better cash flow, saving time to focus on coming up with strategies and financial forecasting.
Plooto enables international payments to 30+ countries for a flat fee with a competitive exchange rate, pre-authorized debit agreements, and integration with QuickBooks (QB) and Xero. Try Plooto now!
Plans and Pricing:
Plooto offers two types of memberships: For businesses and for accountants. Both plans include unlimited users per business, unlimited approvers, unlimited customers and suppliers, unlimited bank connections, free accountant/bookkeeper collaboration, free live support. Pricing starts at $25/month plus applicable transactional fees.
QuickBooks
Quickbooks is a cloud-based financial management software designed to save time spent managing business finances.
Businesses can create estimates and invoices, track sales and cash flow, manage customers and suppliers, monitor tax and make tax returns, keep up with performance and budgeting.
Teams can create and send professional-looking invoices in seconds with custom templates and automated reminders. Quickbooks keeps a record of every receipt so businesses are always organised for tax time. Try Quickbooks now!
Plans and Pricing:
- Simple start – Track sales, expenses, and profits, create and send unlimited invoices, track and manage your sales tax, for one user, plus your accountant. Pricing is €7.5/month.
- Essentials – All Simple start features plus manage and pay bills, transact in multiple currencies, generate sales quotes, for three users, plus your accountant. Pricing is €11.5/month.
- Plus – All Essentials features plus inventory tracking, create purchase orders, track project or job profitability, for five users, plus your accountant. Pricing is €15.5/month.
Bill.com
Bill.com is a leading provider of cloud-based software that simplifies, digitizes, and automates complex, back-office financial operations for small and midsize businesses.
The Bill.com AI-enabled, financial software platform creates connections between businesses and their suppliers and clients. It helps manage cash inflows and outflows. Customers can manage end-to-end financial workflows and process payments.
Bill.com streamlines the accounts payable process and making electronic payments, and improves the accounts receivable process to accept business payments in local currency, virtual card, or check. Bill.com offers integrations with QuickBooks, NetSuite, Xero, and Intacct, meaning any changes made in one system will automatically update in the other. Try Bill.com now!
Plans and Pricing:
- Essentials – Including centralized inbox, invoice data capture, 360-degree vendor info, unlimited document storage, check, and international wire transfer, six standard user roles. Pricing starts at $39/month.
- Team – Everything in the Essentials plan plus integrations with QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Pro/Premier, and Xero. Pricing starts at $49/month.
- Corporate – Plus customized invoice templates, single or recurring invoices, payment status tracking, automated email reminders, ACH and credit card payments, auto-charge and auto-pay. Pricing starts at $69/month.
- Enterprise – Plus single sign-on, dual control, multi-entity, multi-location accounting file capabilities, and API access for custom integrations for a custom price.
4. Wave Accounting – Free, with à la carte extras
Why you should buy this:
You don’t have to buy Wave Accounting as it’s a free accounting and invoicing software platform. However, you’ll likely want to buy the à la carte extras, including Wave’s payroll processing ($35 per month) and Wave’s payments (2.9%-3.4% plus $0.30 credit card processing; 1% ACH fees).
If you operate a small service company, Wave Accounting will probably work for your business needs.
Who is it for:
Wave Accounting is best suited for small service businesses, more like home cleaning businesses, window washing, etc. It is great for small business owners needing very few features.
Why we picked it:
We like Wave Accounting because it’s free while letting you track your income and expenses and lets you do other very basic finance functions.
Obviously, being a truly free, 100% cloud-based product has its limitations. Still, for those who don’t need a large variety of advanced features, there’s no sense in paying for functions you won’t use.
Features:
- Unlimited income and expense tracking
- Sales tax tracking
- Ability to add unlimited partners, collaborators, or accountants
- Double-entry system
- Reports for overdue invoices and bills, profit and loss, and cash flow
- Unlimited bank account and credit card connections
- Tax categories for income and expenses
- Ability to run multiple businesses on a single account
- Dashboard performance features
- Unlimited invoices
- Recurring billing with automated reminders
- Credit card and ACH payments (additional processing fees)
- Payroll services (additional monthly fee)
Pros and Cons:
Pros:
- Free software for small businesses
- Send unlimited free invoices
- Great for a small service business for income and expense tracking
Cons:
- Unlikely to scale with your business
- Very basic features
- Extras are more costly than other options
Customer Service:
Wave Accounting does not offer phone support, which is understandable since the software is free. Even so, the website chat feature uses a bot. No real person there either!
If you want a real answer, you have to email the company and wait for someone to research your query and then get back to you. We sent a test email and never got a response back.
TrustRadius rates Wave Accounting 7.3 out of 10, which is roughly 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Visit WaveRead Review
5. Sage – $10/month to $842/year
Why you should buy this:
Sage is a world-leading business applications and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software development company. The applications are designed to meet all your business accounting needs. Some of Sage’s comprehensive features consist of balanced scorecards, manufacturing modules, front-line control, project accounting, and lots more.
Sage also offers small business solutions, which consist of accounting, invoicing, and payment processing through various integration partners offers a variety of other endless possibilities for helping you manage and track your business’s financials with complete accuracy.
Who is it for:
Sage is suitable for any size and any type of business. For small businesses, though, Sage offers two cloud-based programs, namely, the basic Sage Accounting software and the more robust cloud-based desktop hybrid accounting Sage 50cloud software.
The advanced accounting tools in Sage provide financial and accounting information and insights to management and executives. Besides businesses, Sage’s software solutions are used widely by financial service firms and global manufacturing companies.
Why we picked it:
Sage made our small business accounting list mainly because it offers several great accounting solutions for small businesses. The pricing for these solutions starts low and runs higher depending on the solution you choose.
Sage Accounting Price Breakdown:
Sage Accounting is really good for startups, small businesses, solopreneurs, retail service spaces, where you aren’t really doing a lot of in-depth inventory management.
Sage Accounting Start ($10 per month)
- Invoice creation and delivery
- Finance tracking
- Automatic bank reconciliation
Sage Accounting ($25 per month)
- All features in the Start package
- Unlimited user support
- Estimate creation and delivery
- Cash flow forecasts
- Purchase invoice management
- Three-month trial of AutoEntry
Sage Pros and Cons:
Pros:
- Completely cloud-based to easily manage income and expenses
- Real-time banking integration
- Accountant friendly reports
Cons:
- Not so great for nonprofits, doesn’t handle grant management
- Doesn’t currently have a payroll integration (not even an integration partner)
- Only for a single company, so no consolidated reporting
- Does not have a true budgeting module
- Doesn’t do well for job costing or project management
Sage 50cloud Price Breakdown:
Sage 50cloud is desktop-based with a cloud-based hybrid functionality. Sage 50cloud used to be called Peach Tree. It is truly a desktop application, but you use the cloud to back it up to store and save your data.
Sage 50cloud is more robust than Sage Accounting, meaning it has more features.
Pro ($340 per year)
- Expense and revenue management
- Instant bill pay
- Simple customer invoicing
- Automatic bank reconciliation
- Inventory tracking and management
- Integration with Microsoft 365
- Sage Security Shield protection
- Basic job costing management
- Automatic updates
- Unlimited phone and online chat support
Premium ($510 per year)
- All features in the Pro package
- Detailed job costing management
- Audit trails
- Advanced budgeting tools
- Role-based security
Quantum ($842 per year)
- All features in the Pro and Premium packages
- Ability to manage multiple companies at once
Sage 50cloud Pros and Cons:
Pros:
- More robust and feature-rich than Sage Accounting
- Run loads of insightful reports
Cons:
- Expensive compared to other better solutions
- No automatic or real-time updates are possible when linking a business bank account
Customer Service:
Trustpilot gives Sage 4.6 stars out of 5. And 85% of customer reviews are rated excellent!
Visit SageRead Review
Conclusions
Accounting industry has maintained its traditional top-down hierarchy by the big firms i.e. big business was done by accountancy firms, who in turn were advised by tax experts. These days, it is the other way round; people are doing their own taxes and accounting work at home with the help of accounting tools for startups.