The best accounting software for most small businesses is QuickBooks<\/a>. Every accountant knows how it works and it\u2019ll scale with your business.<\/p>\n If you plan to stay small and do most of the bookkeeping yourself, I strongly prefer Xero.<\/p>\n Read on for in-depth reviews including the pricing, pros, and cons of each tool on my list. Use this as a guide for comparing your options.<\/p>\n QuickBooks<\/a> is an incredibly popular accounting solution \u2014 for good reason.<\/p>\n Look, I don\u2019t know anyone that LOVES Quickbooks. No one looks forward to logging into it.<\/p>\n But that doesn\u2019t really matter. QuickBooks gets the job done and gets it done right. It\u2019s not designed for a small business owner that\u2019s personally doing the bookkeeping. It\u2019s designed for businesses that need to have their bookkeeping done correctly.<\/p>\n We\u2019re a perfect example at our company. The accounting and bookkeeping for our business is way more complicated than a typical business of our size. We run multiple websites and have revenue share agreements with multiple entities. We also need to keep track of our bookings and chase down payments. QuickBooks keeps up with all our stuff, no issues.<\/p>\n Also, every accountant on earth has used it. No matter who you hire or which CPA you work with, they\u2019ll instantly know their way around. It\u2019s the industry standard.<\/p>\n Do I personally like other accounting software more than QuickBooks? Yes. If I started a new business today and was serious about it, would I use QuickBooks? Also yes.<\/p>\n Quickbooks might not be my favorite but I can completely depend on it. It\u2019s the default choice.<\/strong><\/p>\n QuickBooks does offer a bundle of stuff like POS, time tracking, and payroll. To be honest, if you\u2019re large enough to use QuickBooks, you\u2019re large enough to have dedicated tools for that other stuff.<\/p>\n Like most accounting services, you can easily sync QuickBooks with your bank. The software will automatically import and categorize transactions accordingly.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s an overview of plans and pricing for QuickBooks Online:<\/p>\n The basic plan will get you everything that you need to manage the bookkeeping and accounting for your business. But these things will force you to upgrade:<\/p>\n You can try QuickBooks free for 30 days or get 50% off your first three months<\/a>. Since there are no long-term contracts or commitments, you can cancel or switch plans at any time.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, you can\u2019t try the software for free and get the discount off of your first three months. You\u2019re forced to choose between the two options.<\/p>\n Xero<\/a> does a great job of simplifying the accounting process for small business owners.<\/p>\n For about a decade, I ran a growth consulting business on the side while working a full-time job. During some years, I even generated six figures. I had a bunch of expenses to manage and needed to track everything in order to handle my taxes.<\/p>\n Xero saved me a ton of time and I kept using them until I shut that business down.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how my workflow worked with Xero:<\/p>\n All in, I spent 5 hours per year managing my books. No bookkeeper either. It was that easy.<\/p>\n Xero has just three plans for you to choose from:<\/p>\n Early \u2014 $15 per month<\/strong><\/p>\n Growing \u2014 $42 per month<\/strong><\/p>\n Established \u2014 $78 per month<\/strong><\/p>\n Watch out for their discount pricing, most of the accounting tools are doing tricky discounts these days. For example, Xero lists the Early plan at $1.50\/month but that\u2019s only for the first 3 months. Then you\u2019ll be paying $15\/month after that.<\/p>\n There a few things that have bothered me about Xero:<\/p>\n Even though I really like Xero overall, I\u2019d probably try out the other options on this list to see if any of their bank integrations work flawlessly for me. But if all of your banks integrate with Xero, I\u2019d definitely go with them.<\/p>\n FreshBooks<\/a> really shines in two areas:<\/p>\n If I was building an agency, I\u2019d jump on FreshBooks without a second thought.<\/p>\n Also, every client-facing part of their app looks great. For any reporting or invoice that you send a client, the design is top-tier. You\u2019ll look professional, even if it\u2019s just you running the entire business.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a quick overview of FreshBooks pricing:<\/p>\n When you visit their pricing page, the initial prices you see will have a discount for the first 4 months. The prices above are the real pricing that you\u2019ll pay once the discount period has ended.<\/p>\n The Lite, Plus, and Premium plans come with 5, 50, and 500 billable clients, respectively. So you can choose your plan based on the size of your client list. It\u2019s an extra $10 per month for each team member that has access to the software.<\/p>\n You can sign up for a free trial<\/a> to see if the UI is a good fit for you.<\/p>\n Wave is a free accounting solution. That\u2019s right\u2014free. There are no setup fees, hidden costs, or monthly charges.<\/p>\n But the plan is pretty limited.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what you WON\u2019T get on the free plan:<\/p>\n There\u2019s a few other limitations but those are the big ones.<\/p>\n If you run a freelancing business, love the UI of Wave, send a few invoices per month, and have basically no bookkeeping for your business, then the free plan could be a good fit.<\/p>\n Their Pro plan does start at $16\/month which is very standard for the industry. At that point, you get all the same stuff as everyone else: bank integrations, invoicing, accepting payments, etc. So if you ever need to upgrade when your business gets some momentum, that\u2019s easy to do.<\/p>\n If you check out their pricing, you\u2019ll also see a differencing in their payment processing fees:<\/p>\n So the Pro plan saves you up to $6\/month on payment processing fees. That\u2019s pretty minimal savings, definitely not worth upgrading or going with Wave just because of this.<\/p>\n If your business keeps growing, you will reach a point that QuickBooks buckles from the complexity.<\/p>\n I haven\u2019t been through this personally but our Director of Finance has. On multiple occasions in his career, he had to navigate a complete overhaul of the accounting system and migrate off QuickBooks.<\/p>\n The good news is that by the time you reach this point, you\u2019ll have an entire team that can research all the options and help navigate you through the transition.<\/p>\n There are a bunch of enterprise accounting tools but the main one is NetSuite. Most accounting tool bake-offs will have them in the running. They\u2019re a massive company that was bought by Oracle. They also have very built-out CRM, field service, analytics, and other business operations software. They serve major enterprises that are trying to centralize everything.<\/p>\n If NetSuite is right for you, you\u2019ll already know it. For everyone else, I\u2019d stick to our other recommendations.<\/p>\n When you\u2019re looking for accounting software, I recommend paying attention to these key factors.<\/p>\n Your company type will basically force you into 3 options:<\/p>\n Even though there\u2019s tons of options, the choices are pretty straightforward if you use these rules.<\/p>\n By this point, I\u2019d expect every accounting tool to have a flawless bank integration with every single US bank. And major international banks.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not the case in my experience. Accounting tools have most banks, but not quite all of them.<\/p>\n And for me, if a tool doesn\u2019t have an integration, that\u2019s a dealbreaker for me. This is the reason why I\u2019d probably check out other tools even though I\u2019ve been really happy with Xero. They don\u2019t have an integration with one of my banks which means more manual work for me. And the whole point of an accounting tool is to automate all that stuff.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re new to bookkeeping, every bank transaction needs to be reconciled. That just means to properly categorize the transaction so it shows up in the right place in your accounting reports, like your profit and loss statement.<\/p>\n Manually reviewing EVERY transaction and selecting expense categories by hand takes a ton of time. Especially since a bunch of transactions are just repeat transactions from the previous month or year.<\/p>\n When I first started using an automated reconciliation system, it was a game changer. Instead of spending a few hours per month on bookkeeping, it only took me a few hours per year. My accounting tool looks at every transaction and then suggests a reconciliation based on previous reconciliations that I\u2019ve done. If it looks good, I click and approve. If not, I make a quick edit and finalize it.<\/p>\n This is the main feature that I would be evaluating on any new accounting software. Especially as a busy entrepreneur with a ton of stuff going on.<\/p>\n Things to watch out for:<\/p>\n If your system does all the above, you\u2019ll be able to skip hiring a bookkeeper for a long time. That\u2019ll save your business a ton of money.<\/p>\n The smaller you are, the more important this is.<\/p>\n When I started my consulting over a decade ago, you\u2019d have to sign up for 3-4 tools to manage your business:<\/p>\n And then hope you could stitch them altogether.<\/p>\n These days, every great accounting tool has them all bundled. And most of them are pretty good. QuickBooks, for instance, didn\u2019t have a good invoicing feature when I started. Now it\u2019s top-tier.<\/p>\n But they\u2019re not all perfect. Depending on exactly how you run your business, different tools might not have the specific time tracking or invoicing tools you need.<\/p>\n So play around with each and make sure the core features are good enough for you. I don\u2019t like Xero\u2019s invoicing at all which is why I had a separate invoicing tool alongside it. If I wanted to combine tools, I\u2019d check out the other recommendations.<\/p>\n Oddly enough, this might be the most important item.<\/p>\n Thinking like an accountant can be really hard for the first time. Credits and debits, double entry accounting, accrual based accounting, the endless reports, it\u2019s a LOT.<\/p>\n The real value that the small business accounting tools provide is to simplify all that stuff with their UI so it makes sense to a normal person.<\/p>\n This is also why a lot of people hate QuickBooks. It\u2019s the purest of the accounting tools and does the least to simplify how accounting works. People\u2019s dislike of QuickBooks isn\u2019t really about QuickBooks, it\u2019s that accounting is a lot to get your head around. At least it was for me.<\/p>\n As I\u2019ve bounced between different accounting tools over the years. I\u2019ve stuck with the ones that made the most sense to me. I logged in, started doing some bookkeeping, and it all just worked. I highly recommend that you play around with a few of the popular tools, then pick the one that makes the most sense to you personally. That might be a different tool than the one I\u2019d pick. And that\u2019s okay! Different products will organize things in different ways, find the one that makes sense to you.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The best accounting software for most small businesses is QuickBooks. Every accountant knows how it works and it\u2019ll scale with your business. If you plan to stay small and do most of the bookkeeping yourself, I strongly prefer Xero. The 5 Best Accounting Software Solutions QuickBooks \u2013 Best overall business accounting software, the default choice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":156726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95],"tags":[12843,907,14780,64361,709,11345,64637],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-156725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet-business","tag-accounting","tag-business","tag-default","tag-featured-post","tag-small","tag-software","tag-trending-post"],"yoast_head":"\nThe 5 Best Accounting Software Solutions<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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QuickBooks<\/strong><\/a> \u2013 Best Overall Business Accounting Software<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"Intuit](\"https:\/\/www.quicksprout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/quickbooks-logo.jpg\"\/){kind=logo}
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Xero<\/strong><\/a> \u2013 Best for Solopreneurs and My Personal Favorite<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"Xero](\"https:\/\/www.quicksprout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/xero-logo.jpg\"\/){kind=logo}
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FreshBooks<\/strong><\/a> \u2013 Best for Agencies and Best Bundle<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"FreshBooks](\"https:\/\/www.quicksprout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/freshbooks-logo.jpg\"\/){kind=logo}
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Wave<\/strong><\/a> \u2013 Best Free Accounting Software<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"Wave](\"https:\/\/lh7-us.googleusercontent.com\/Dt-v2-oOZghkc2IIY9EZtBUBkbpB7xhzI-inKRA2UkI7LSRZ7o2unVOTV_p3kOaRyzTgehJhW7a7IA86lwKfekPgp1it05tylOJtvAoOyDRd-NklDosIj7bgeEZ-Po0H5epfxkaqEpuj3yF8OgGoUv0\")
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NetSuite Accounting<\/strong><\/a> \u2013 Best For Large Businesses<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"Oracle](\"https:\/\/www.quicksprout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/oracle-netsuite-logo.png\"\/){kind=logo}
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<\/a><\/figure>\nHow to Find The Best Accounting Software for Small Businesses<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Company Stage and Type<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Bank Integrations<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Automated Reconciliation<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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High Quality Bundled Features<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Interface that Makes Sense to You<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"Wave](\"https:\/\/lh7-us.googleusercontent.com\/Dt-v2-oOZghkc2IIY9EZtBUBkbpB7xhzI-inKRA2UkI7LSRZ7o2unVOTV_p3kOaRyzTgehJhW7a7IA86lwKfekPgp1it05tylOJtvAoOyDRd-NklDosIj7bgeEZ-Po0H5epfxkaqEpuj3yF8OgGoUv0\"\/)