Selling on Amazon will surely be one of the milestones you’ll remember as an entrepreneur. Whether you began selling in a physical store, or you will jumpstart your business on the ecommerce giant, the experience is a highlight!
Yet, behind the joy and excitement is all the work you have to face to ensure that after the launch, your business will thrive and grow. Before you think about all these responsibilities, there is one area of your venture you should seamlessly put in place—your company’s finances (AKA bookkeeping and accounting).
There are plenty of choices available for bookkeeping and accounting software, but let us help you trim them down through this article. Check out the different bookkeeping and accounting features that the best accounting automation software should have. We’ve also listed the best accounting software programs you can choose from. Keep reading to learn more!
Capable of Both Cash-Basis and Accrual Accounting
As an Amazon seller, you probably dream of having high sales. But like many small businesses, you’ll most likely begin with very few sales. In this case, you can utilize your software’s cash-basis accounting feature, where you record money coming in and out of your bank accounts as it happens.
However, as you learn the ropes and optimize your store, your sales will hopefully scale. When this happens, accrual accounting will be the better choice to record transactions that happen with or without money coming in or out of your account. Thus, it’s better to have a software that lets you switch from cash-basis accounting to accrual seamlessly.
Accepts Different Payment Gateways
When you sell on Amazon, you open your business to customers worldwide. Hence, your business should be able to accept online payments and even online credit card payments from global gateways. It would help if you had bookkeeping and accounting software that allows the use and integration of different payment gateways. These are the payments Amazon accepts, so check if the software accepts these methods:
- Visa
- Amazon Store Card/Secured Card
- MasterCard/EuroCard
- Discover Network
- American Express
- Diner’s Club
- JCB
- NYCE
- STAR
- Chinese UnionPay
- Visa/MasterCard/American Express prepaid credit or gift cards
Keeps You Updated With Bank Transactions
The money you receive from the various payment channels on Amazon goes into your bank accounts. You probably have different income sources for your business too. Aside from this, you must pay costs that will be deducted from your bank accounts (think about your credit card statements).
Find software that allows you to do bank reconciliations, so you will always be updated with any bank transactions. With this feature, you or your team of dedicated bookkeepers and accountants can check the accuracy of the transactions, and find any fraud or irregularities as soon as possible.
Tracks Projects and Time
To ensure the different areas of your business function well, it is best to delegate the tasks to experts. When you hire different teams or individuals for a project, you can do time and project tracking with the help of a software.
For example, you need an advertising, marketing, or a project management team to handle your ads. Search engine optimization (SEO) experts are the people to call on to optimize your store for the Amazon algorithm. You can also hire bookkeeping and accounting solutions and delegate complex tasks to online accounting services.
With the help of time and project tracking features of a software, data on hours worked can automatically be collated. Then, this data can be used in processing your staff's salary and creating invoices too.
Allows Integrations
Accounting software applications work like a fortification. When you integrate a small business accounting application into your accounting system, you increase the data and information you can see. When you have all details about your business in one place, you can view your business's financial health in its totality—optimizing the accounting process.
Optimize it further by integrating all small business accounting applications in one accounting software. This makes your tasks of reviewing Amazon ecommerce analytics, different ecommerce platform data, and data from marketing, payroll, tax, human resources, payments, inventory tracking, project management, and document storing easier.
Capable of Generating Reports for Financial Reporting
Note that Amazon already has these data about your business:
- Sales
- Conversion rates
- Listing, page impressions, and clicks
- Efficiency of parent item/child item product categories
- Search terms used by customers
- Customer purchase behaviors
- Customer demographics
- Ads and marketing data
- Seller performance data
Amazon also generates reports, financial statements, and even credit card statements.
These details can make sense even more when you can see their impact on your business finances by integrating the data from Amazon to your accounting software. Financial reports will have a monetary value included. In this way, your decisions will come from reports that fully view your Amazon business, not just a part of it.
User-Friendly
Your Amazon account should be the first and last thing you’ll see in a working day. To make this task easy, pick software that allows computer and mobile phone access. When you can access data on a mobile phone, you can check your business's financial health wherever you are as long as there is an internet connection.
Secures Financial Data
Despite the software’s accessibility, you should find a tool that keeps your data secure. Most software today is cloud-based, meaning that data is stored in the cloud, not on computers. This makes file corruption and theft more improbable.
For another layer of security, pick software that has role-based access. This way, you can control the people who can access confidential financial information.
Allows a Free Trial
It isn’t enough to see all the bookkeeping and accounting features the software offers. It would be best to test it out before signing up for any plan or agreement. It is difficult to find the best free accounting software, but you can look for software that has a free trial.
Some bookkeeping and accounting tools allow up to a few months use for free, while others limit their trials to just a few days. Although most free trials do not allow the use of all the bookkeeping and accounting features, utilizing the free trial allows you to decide whether the software is for you or not before investing.
Investment-Worthy
Finally, pick a software that is investment-worthy. How will you know? The software should have features that are fair with the pricing. Make sure to compare and contrast the offers and prices of the different tools you shortlist. Even though they have similar offers, these are some features you should look out for:
- More advanced inventory features
- Expense tracking and expense management
- Allowable small business accounting applications
- Ways to manage projects, with limited and unlimited users
- Customer relationship management
- Enterprise resource planning
- Invoicing software
- Recurring invoices
- Multiple currencies
- Inventory tracking and inventory management
- Custom pricing
- Third-party apps
- Sales tax monitoring and tracking
3 Best Accounting Software Business Owners Should Know
So, you already know what makes up the best accounting software. However, with so many choices, which among them can tick off these characteristics? If you are a small business owner, know that QuickBooks Online, Xero, and Sage50 Cloud are three of the most trusted accounting software programs, for good reason.
QuickBooks Online Small Business Accounting Software
Integrate all Amazon analytics data seamlessly into the QuickBooks Online accounting software. As a result, you can have a single tool to manage your business’s financial information.
Quickbooks Online is one of the most trusted tools out there. It is a simple accounting software that is user-friendly. It makes sure that you and your team of dedicated bookkeepers and accountants will immediately be well-versed in its use. Through QuickBooks Plus, you and your team can access a training program for the use of the tool.
Xero, a Small Business Owner’s Accounting Tool
Xero is a feature-rich accounting platform with advanced features. Once you integrate your Amazon data into the system, the Xero Analytics feature goes hand-in-hand with it to provide you with a holistic report and view of your financial status.
While there are customized reports available on both Amazon and Xero, you can always customize what you want to see by creating custom templates featuring your company's key performance indicators. Want to see the report in multiple currencies? You can do this too!
Sage Business Cloud Accounting
Peachtree will always ring a bell in accounting and bookkeeping circles, even if it’s now known as Sage50 Cloud. You’ll see that it is also a top choice for your company's bookkeeping and accounting tool.
The software is complete with bookkeeping and accounting features. Its developers have gone the extra mile by adding Sage HR, Sage CRM, and Sage CRS features that other brands do not offer. These apps, together with the help of an online accounting service, can help you manage your workforce once you've grown your Amazon business.
Bookkeeping Assistance by Unloop
As an Amazon seller, you know that bookkeeping is one of the most important aspects of your business. Tracking sales and expenses are tasks you should do, on top of making sure your books are ready for tax time. Luckily, several great options can help streamline this process for you, like QuickBooks Online, Xero, and Sage50 Cloud.
We hope that this list of bookkeeping and accounting software helps you decide on the best overall accounting software for you.And, if you need any help, delegate your accounting to us at Unloop. We are well-versed in handling QuickBooks Online, Xero, and many other apps for bookkeeping and accounting. Our team, plus great accounting software, ensures we deliver quality assistance always. Contact us now so that we can discuss our offers with you!