Ideal for | Small & medium-sized businesses | Freelancers | Freelancers | Creative entrepreneurs | Small businesses |
Notable highlight | Preferred by accountants | Best in class support | Extensive invoice customization | Streamlines your client’s experience | Caters to a complete range of business verticals |
Invoicing |  | | | | |
Payments | | | | | |
Expense Tracking | | | | | |
Mobile App | | | | | |
Double Entry | | | |||
Time Tracking | | | | | |
Payroll | | ||||
Inventory | | ||||
Tax Preparation | | ||||
Multi-Currency | | | | | |
We considered more than 30 accounting software solutions for freelancers and small business owners when deciding on our Top 5. What helped these five make the cut?
As a small business owner, you’re likely to do more of your billing and accounting activities yourself. So it’s important to find accounting software you can pick up easily and actually enjoy (yes, we said enjoy!) using.
If you’ve been in business a long time, getting set up on a new solution will take longer. But all the accounting software we picked has a simple onboarding process and you can be fully set up and billing, tracking and managing reports within a few hours.
Depending on the age and complexity of your business, you may need more advanced accounting features. These will become especially important if you plan to scale your business dramatically.
However, many small business owners (especially freelancers) prefer to make do with a simpler solution and let a bookkeeper or accountant manage the more advanced accounting tasks, like tax preparation etc.
Spend a few minutes getting crisp on your real needs and where you’re struggling today. We’ve selected solutions that span basic to advanced features.
Some accounting software also multi-tasks to be a more general business solution. Some of the tasks they offer include:
If there are opportunities to find efficiencies with your broader software stack, take them!
It’s important to choose something that serves your small business right now. You don’t need to overpay for features you won’t use today.
However, most small business owners have grand ambitions. So we wanted to make sure the products we picked could scale with your business.
These solutions all offer tiered plans and you can graduate to the next plan level as your business grows. This means you won’t be overpaying for more complexity right now. But, if and when you need it, there are more features and functionality, integrations and add-ons to unlock.
Our lives are increasingly mobile in every regard, so it made sense to focus on the accounting software with the best mobile apps.
In particular, billing and expense tracking are small tasks that can pile up if not handled promptly. So having a mobile app that allows you to handle these tasks on-the-go saves you time and helps your business stay healthy.
Support is easily overlooked when you’re choosing software. After all, most people would prefer to never need help from a Customer Support representative.
Still, if/when you need support, you want to know that you’ll get what you need. Tax and accounting are complex and important enough to know that you’ll want to ask questions.And should anything ever go wrong, it’s important to know your accounting software provider has your back.
Many small business owners make do with Word and Excel to manage their small business finances. In our opinion, this is a huge mistake. The problems that arise from this approach include:
It is our strong recommendation that every business owner, even solopreneurs and freelancers, invest in accounting software.
The good news is that the accounting software we’ve recommended starts with basic plans for as little as $8 / month. For financial peace of mind, that’s a worthwhile investment.
It’s great to have some expert support when it comes to managing your finances. A bookkeeper can help you stay up-to-date with all your tracking, data-entry and tax prep. And an accountant can help you with big vision tasks like budgeting, forecasting and long term planning.
In either case, you’ll get more value from your accountant or bookkeeper if you have robust accounting software that they can work with. You’ll find these expensive professionals can go deeper your basic day-to-day finances are in good working order. Plus you won’t spend as much money paying financial experts to do manual tasks like data-entry.
What’s more, as you manage your own finances day-to-day your own financial acumen will improve. This means you’ll have a better relationship with your bookkeeper or accountant, and will be able to get more value and insights from that relationship.
If you’re serious about staying afloat and growing your business over time, accounting software is not something that can be replaced by bookkeeper or accountant. It’s a tool they’ll use to help you reach that next level.
If you grew up in the days of installed software, you may be nervous about using accounting software that hosts all of your information on the cloud.
Although many people worry about security, it is actually one of the benefits of cloud accounting software. The cloud offers many benefits:
However, you’re right to be mindful of security. After all, this is your financial information. When you’re appraising online accounting software, good questions to ask include:
If you use cloud accounting software, your data won’t only be more secure, but you’ll realize a host of other benefits.
Small business owners come with a vast range of financial knowledge. Some have worked in large corporations before they set out on their own. So they expect enterprise level reporting and tracking.
Other small business owners have never touched finances and may even struggle with their own personal finances.
Depending on where you are today, there might be a bit of a learning curve. If, for example, you’ve never sent an invoice, you might wonder about things like:
The good news is that the accounting software we’ve recommended is built for every level of user.
There may be more complex features and reports that you don’t need to use (you can leave them to a bookkeeper or accountant). But the day-to-day features are built to be used by people without accountant credentials.
What’s more: You’ll find that accounting software companies have lots of pro-tips, explainer videos, online support and FAQs to help you learn as you go. You’ll be able to get up and running right away on the basics. And, over time, you can gradually learn more.
By using accounting software, you’ll inevitably pick up some accounting jargon and knowledge. But you absolutely won’t have to study in order to succeed using these tools.
