People have different definitions of order, but for many accountants and bookkeepers, it is a well-organized and perfectly formulated excel sheet. This view is even better now with small business accounting software that automates all calculations, making no room for errors with customizable templates for the different documents you need.
This article will list the ten best accounting software for small businesses, along with their features, pros, and cons, to help you decide which software to use for your company. Let’s begin!
Quickbooks Small Business Software
The first step to accounting is tracking your accounts payable and receivable, which Quickbooks software for business offers. Invoices are easy to generate and can even be set to recur, especially for consistent transactions.
If you have projects or employees, you can utilize the software's projects and time tracking features and create invoices from the data you get.
Since the software allows integrations, you can include other data from your tools, eCommerce sites, customer relationship management (CRM), and inventory to the data inputted on Quickbooks. You can also integrate your Paypal Account for payments.
Pros
- Offers a 30-day free trial
- Affordable monthly charges for paid use
- Uses cloud accounting for security
- Accessible on mobile
Cons
- Role-based access is allowed, but you need to upgrade your payment plan to enjoy this service.
- To enjoy full features, you need to get the PLUS Plan at $17/month.
Freshbooks
With Freshbooks, balance sheets and ledgers are now stored in a safer and easy-to-access software. You can now track your income and expenses for automated invoices and reports.
The different integrations will allow you to track and create your payroll, have visibility on your eCommerce store, know the tax you need to pay, store important documents, and receive and give payment with ease. Project and time tracking are also available on Freshbooks if you have employees.
Pros
- Cloud-based accounting for security
- Bank reconciliation for easy tracking of the money coming in and out of your account
- Free trial available
Cons
- The functions available on desktop are not all available on mobile.
- Invoice customization is not as flexible as its counterparts.
Wave
Wave promises assistance to the accounting needs of small businesses, and that is precisely what you will get with the software’s accounting and invoicing features.
Track your business income and expenses, so you can easily create detailed invoices, which you can pay or be paid conveniently through bank integrations. These invoices are highly customizable. You can even schedule and send out reminders for recurring transactions.
Pros
- Provides basic accounting and invoicing for your business
- Tracks payments
- Simple and easy to use
- Allows payroll deposits
- Available on mobile devices
- You can enjoy the services for free, but you have to pay to use the payroll and payments services.
Cons
- It does not generate reports automatically.
- No time and project tracking
Zoho Books
Zoho Books is another one-stop-shop if you want to monitor income, expenses, inventory, timesheets, projects, sales, purchases, and reports. Your dashboard in this software will provide you with insights about your business right away, and you can even set scheduled reports. Whatever will come out of the reports is highly customizable.
You can collaborate with your clients by sending them estimates, payment reminders, and invoices they can easily access on their Client Portal dashboards. In the same way, your vendors can also access statements, invoices, and reminders about your transactions through the Vendor Portal.
Pros
- Even your suppliers and clients can use the software for easy transactions.
- You can track expenses, income, and inventory.
- Generates reports quickly
- Available on mobile
- It has a 14-day free trial.
Cons
- Limited transactions and payroll coverage
Sage 50cloud Accounting
Everything you’ll need for accounting and bookkeeping is just a few clicks away on your computer through Sage 50cloud Accounting. As the name suggests, the software uses cloud accounting, which means that your data is safely stored.
What data are these? Through the software, you can track your accounts payable and receivables, invoices, inventory, and payroll. Even confidential information about the money coming in and out of your bank is managed by this software.
These data can all turn into easy-to-understand and visually pleasing year-to-date reports on sales taxes, expenses, and profits.
Pros
- Covers all basic accounting needs of small businesses
- Easily generated reports
- Tracked bank reconciliation and payments
Cons
- Does not have mobile integration
- Does not allow time tracking
- More expensive than other accounting software
Xero
Xero offers cash flow management, inventory supervision, bank reconciliation and payment integrations, tax calculation, projects, time tracking, and invoicing. On top of that, you will be allowed to use multiple currencies accounting if you need to transact with customers and suppliers abroad using a different currency. Whether abroad or domestically, you accept and send payments, capture and store data, and generate reports through this software.
You can access all your data on mobile, and despite the easy visibility, your business numbers are secured because it is cloud-based.
Pros
- Covers all your accounting needs
- Accepts multiple currencies
- You can access it on mobile
- Protected data
Cons
- Reports are not as detailed compared with other counterparts.
- Does not have phone or chat support if you have inquiries about the software
GoDaddy
Etsy, eBay, Amazon, and other eCommerce sellers will find GoDaddy helpful for their business accounting as you can integrate these sites into the software. The same goes for banks and credit cards like PayPal, Stripe, Bank of America, or American Express.
You can customize the categories you want to include in your expenses, income, and invoice, which can help you see the areas of your business important to you when reports are generated. You can easily calculate your annual taxes using GoDaddy.
Pros
- Customizable categories for income, expenses, and invoice
- You can track basic details about your business.
- Generates profit and loss, income, payment, and invoice reports
Cons
- Reports are generated in numbers, not in graphs, so you’ll have to extract them to make your templates and presentations.
- Does not have inventory management, projects tracking, and bank reconciliation
ZarMoney
If you are a business owner who delegates tasks to a bookkeeper or an accountant for your company finances, you’ll need software that allows you to collaborate with your team. Zarmoney’s payment depends on how many people can access the data in the software— you can share it with up to 30 people.
Aside from this feature, you can also track your accounts payable and accounts receivable, have bank reconciliation, create invoices, check sales tax, manage your inventory, and pay quickly. You can have a view of your business's financial health through customized or readily available report templates.
Pros
- Has a free trial version
- Allows team collaboration
- Able to assist you with your basic accounting needs
Cons
- Multiple currencies not available
- You cannot track projects and time.
- Not available on mobile
Sunrise By Lendio
Bookkeeping and accounting are often used interchangeably, but that’s a misconception. In a nutshell, the bookkeeper tracks everything, while the accountant can analyze the numbers to come up with business decision suggestions.
Sunrise by Lendio aids in bookkeeping because of its income and expenses monitoring, receipts tracking, and bank reconciliation; yet, it is also a perfect accounting tool because it can compute tax, generate invoices, manage payroll, and generate reports.
Pros
- Has free trial
- Gives essential accounting services needed by a startup business
- Has consultation services from bookkeepers
- The dashboard shows an overview of the company’s health right away.
Cons
- Does not allow project and timesheet tracking
- Lacking inventory management
- Does not allow multiple currencies
Kashoo
Last but not least, Kashoo has the same features as its competitors of provisioning tracking for income and expenses, bank reconciliation, payment gateways to thousands of banks in America, invoice creation, accessible storage, and input of receipts detail and storage, tax computation, and reports generation. You can access all this data on desktop and mobile.
If you are transacting abroad from countries with different currencies, Kashoo is multi currency-able, so you can still track data and send invoices. You can skip the worry in inventory management as Kashoo tracks this as well.
Pros
- You can try invoice creation for a free trial.
Cons
- Multiple currencies, team collaboration, projects, and other features are available using the more expensive plan.
- Features vary depending on your plan of choice.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, these software have almost the same features, but the minimal disparity can spell out what makes the best accounting software for small business owners.
You can book a call with us here at Unloop, so we can present the advantages of using Quickbooks, A2x, and Hubdoc as business tools. These are the software we specifically use for our bookkeeping service. We’d be happy to assist you with your bookkeeping and accounting needs.