Small Business Accounting Software Free has an excellent, clean design and reliable features to suit your needs. It’s built for start-ups of all kinds, offering robust functionality that will help attract, track, and create accurate records.”
If an online business is to run successfully, you really need to have some kind of accounting software. It doesn’t have to be the best digital bookkeeping software available, but it needs to have features that won’t cost you thousands of dollars. This free Reddit list is designed to give small business owners the options of the top online small business accounting software that are really useful for small businesses.
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.
Zoho Books: Best automation
3.9
- Starting at $15.00/mo.*
Middle-of-the-road starting price
Additional users for $2.50/user/mo.
Automatic recurring invoicing
Data as of 11/5/21. Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change.
*When billed annually.
Zoho Books automates the most common (and, let’s face it, boring) bookkeeping tasks—which means you can dedicate more time to your business and customers and less time to the tedious task of data entry. Most notably, it lets you set automatic customer payment reminders, create recurring expense profiles, and manage 1099 contractors.
Plus, Zoho Books is just one piece of software in the larger suite of Zoho products. Each Zoho product integrates easily with the rest, which means that along with accounting, you can use Zoho for project management, inventory management, and customer relationship management (CRM)—just for a start.
Plus, if you make under $50K a year, you can take advantage of Zoho Books’ free plan. Otherwise, Zoho Books starts at $15 a month if you pay annually or $20 if you pay month to month. The cheapest plan includes three users, but you can also pay an extra $2.50 per month for each additional user. That’s a standout bargain, especially compared to FreshBooks’ extra $10 per user per month.
Unfortunately, even though it’s a solid accounting tool, Zoho Books has one huge flaw: Zoho doesn’t offer a payroll plan integration unless you live in California, Texas, or India. And it doesn’t integrate with third-party payroll providers either. Instead, you have to manually update the payroll-related aspects of your books—which detracts from Zoho’s primary perk of automation in a big way.
Similarly, Zoho Books’s cheapest plan doesn’t include automatic journal entry creation. Instead, whenever you debit or credit an account, you’ll have to manually create an entry. If you log more than a few transactions a month, the lack of automation adds major time and hassle—you’ll want the $40 a month (or $50, billed monthly) Professional plan instead.
ZipBooks
Pricing: Free; More Robust Features Starting at $15/month
With ZipBooks, you get invoicing and billing features such as auto-billing and payment reminders to decrease your admin work. You can also utilize their competitive intelligence to make data-driven decisions about your finances.
Best for an Exceptional UX
One of ZipBooks’ biggest draws is its best-in-class user experience. Its straightforward, color-coded interface offers accessibility without sacrificing powerful functionality. If your business is looking for a solution that gets the job done without being overly elaborate, check out ZipBooks.
DEAR Systems
Pricing: Starts at $249/Month
DEAR Systems offers a centralized platform that covers virtually every aspect of your business — from purchasing to warehouse management to job costing. That broad array of tools includes a robust suite of accounting features that can help any small business streamline processes like data entry and syncing invoices.
The platform’s accounting element also seamlessly integrates with other applications like Xero and Quickbooks — with additional resources that allow for real-time visibility into your financial data.
Best for Businesses Trying to Cover All Their Bases — Not Just Accounting
As I mentioned, the DEAR systems platform can touch several aspects of your company’s operations — making for a steeper price tag than most other solutions on this list.
If you’re solely in the market for a small business accounting software, this one might not be up your alley. But if you’re looking for a one-stop, comprehensive solution for virtually all your business needs — accounting included — this could be the platform for you.
QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks Online | Visit SiteRead our Review |
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QuickBooks Online is a fully-featured accounting software program that is generally easy to use. With over 600 integrations, strong mobile apps, and tax support, it’s no wonder this software is popular.
QuickBooks Online is best for small businesses looking for a full-featured accounting solution that is relatively easy to use. QBO is ideal for businesses with five users or fewer (though you can add up to 25 users for an additional cost).
Pros
- Scalable
- Advanced features
- Strong invoicing and mobile apps
- Expert help from accountants is available
- 650+ integrations
Cons
- Occasionally unintuitive
- Poor customer support
QuickBooks Online Pricing
QuickBooks Online offers four pricing plans ranging from $25/month to $180/month. The larger the plan, the more features you can access, and the more users you can have.
Payroll services cost an additional $45-$125/month (plus $4+/month per employee). Read our QuickBooks Online pricing post to learn more, and don’t forget to check if Intuit is running any sales promotions.
QuickBooks Online Features
While this cloud accounting software is not quite as easy to use as the other options on this list, the trade-off is more advanced features. Set up is a bit involved, and the organization is occasionally difficult to navigate. Compared to other big-name programs, though, such as Xero, Sage, and AccountEdge Pro, QuickBooks Online is a piece of cake.
QuickBooks offers double-entry bookkeeping and strong accounting features, such as bank reconciliation, accounts payable, accounts receivable, reports, and a chart of accounts. You’ll also find invoicing, expense tracking, time tracking, project management, and more. In terms of invoicing, QuickBooks Online offers the second-best templates and automations (with Zoho Books being the first).
Other features include:
- Class tracking
- Client portal
- Tax support
- Contact management
- Budgeting
- Inventory management
- Purchase orders
- Sales tax
With over 600 integrations, QuickBooks has more integrations than any other accounting program on this list. The available integrations include 25 payment processing options and great mobile apps.
As we mentioned earlier, QuickBooks has had a reputation for poor customer service in the past. Recently, QuickBooks Online has made great strides to improve its customer support. While the company still has a ways to go, phone response times have greatly improved, and a redesigned help center makes it easy to find assistance.
The downside? While QuickBooks is well-organized and relatively easy to learn, the software can be overwhelming at first and occasionally unintuitive, making it a less easy-to-use option than the other software choices on this list.
When To Use QuickBooks Online
While QuickBooks Online may not be quite as easy to use as the other options on this list, it might be a good fit for businesses looking to get the most bang for their buck in terms of features.
Conclusion
Small business accounting software is a critical tool for any small business owner. Without it, you’re likely to get in trouble with the IRS, payroll departments, or both. Finding affordable business accounting software can be tricky, too. If your small business is on its way out the door, this post will help you avoid some major pitfalls on the road to bankruptcy.