When looking for the right bookkeeping software for your business, you can see how many options there are. Some are best for freelancers, while others are best for accounting departments.
How do you know which one is best for you or your organization? In this post, we’ll answer some of the most common questions about bookkeeping software and list 25 of the most popular ones, along with who they’re best for.
Here is what we talk about:
- How is a bookkeeper different from bookkeeping software?
- What’s the difference between software for keeping records and software for keeping track of money?
- Should I use paid or free software to keep track of my books?
- How do you choose the best accounting software for your company?
- The 25+ Best Business Accounting Software Tools
Read the whole thing to learn more about the subject, or jump to the parts that interest you the most.
Note: We have a team of professional bookkeepers at Countick (with software superpowers). Let us take care of your bookkeeping for you: Try Countick Now.
how is a bookkeeper different from bookkeeping software?
Keeping books is keeping track of and managing your business’s finances. Software for bookkeeping helps a business owner or bookkeeper keep track of all this information. Here’s a more detailed description:
A bookkeeper does this job. What they do can vary from client to client, but here are four general things they can do:
- Make sure that all transactions from PayPal, credit cards, payment processors, etc., are recorded in the company’s books.
- Make important financial reports like profit and loss statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements.
- Compare your bank statements with your records of transactions.
- Take care of a business’s money coming in and going out.
A good bookkeeper knows what they are doing and wants to help your business grow. They should be able to break down hard-to-understand financial terms and ideas into easy-to-understand language. Most importantly, your bookkeeper should give you accurate financial information that you can use to make intelligent business decisions and grow and expand your company.
You or your bookkeeper can use bookkeeping software to handle a wide range of bookkeeping tasks, such as making reports, keeping records, and balancing the books, to name a few.
For example, many tools for keeping books can connect to your bank account and import transactions and other financial information. This saves time compared to entering transactions by hand and reduces the chance of making mistakes when entering data by hand.
what’s the difference between software for keeping books and software for keeping track of money?
There are a few differences between bookkeeping software and accounting software, if any. Most of the time, they can be used for bookkeeping and accounting tasks. The main difference is how accountants and bookkeepers use the software. To understand that, you need to know how different their jobs are.
Bookkeepers are responsible for many tasks, such as keeping track of money, keeping accurate records, and balancing a business’s books. They can also make strong financial statements and help business owners understand them so they can use the information to make intelligent business decisions.
Someone who keeps track of a business’s money is called a bookkeeper. They don’t have the right skills to give financial advice or plan strategically. Anyone can become one because they don’t need a license.
On the other hand, an accountant has been trained to do accounting-related tasks, such as making plans for the future, preparing taxes, and making financial reports. Accountants must have at least a Bachelor’s degree in business or a similar field. Then, to get their Certified Public Accountant (CPA) license, they must pass a comprehensive test.
In short, bookkeepers keep track of and write down a business’s financial information, while accountants can make sense of it, give good advice, and prepare taxes.
Bookkeeping software lets both bookkeepers and accountants do things like:
- Accounts payable
- Accounts receivable
- Categorizing transactions
- Financial close management
- General ledger
- Making vital financial statements
- Purchase orders and stock/inventory
- Reconciling bank accounts.
should I use paid or free software to keep track of my books?
In general, paid software usually has more features than free software. But that doesn’t mean some businesses can’t use free bookkeeping software.
For instance, companies like Wave offer free accounting, billing, and scanning software. But these free software tools are only helpful for small businesses and one-person bands. Most businesses would do better with software with more features and tools, which can grow with the business.
how do you decide on the best accounting software for your business?
You can select the right bookkeeping software by first thinking about the problems your business needs to solve.
For example, a freelancer might find it more beneficial to use an accounting tool that only does a few basic things, like invoicing and processing credit cards. A large company would benefit from accounting software that has a lot of powerful tools and can be used by many people. Most of the time, startups do better with software that can keep up with them as they grow quickly.
We’ve put together a list of 25+ popular bookkeeping software tools that can help businesses of all sizes:
QuickBooks Online (Our Top Choice)
Price: A 30-day free trial is available. Prices begin at $20 per month (after the promo period ends). Plus, it costs $70 per month (after the promo period ends).
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a score of 4.0/5.
Who it’s for: Small, medium, large, and early-stage enterprise businesses can use it. QuickBooks is great for new businesses because it can grow with them.
QuickBooks Online is one of the most-used accounting programs out there. Millions of organizations, bookkeepers, and accountants use it to manage the finances of businesses of all sizes.
Some of the best things about QuickBooks Online are that it can be used in many ways and do a wide range of essential tasks. It makes it easy to keep track of sales, expenses, and taxes.
It grows with your business and is the best choice if you need software that can handle situations that get more complicated and handle more transactions. (With many other tools on the market, you might run into a transactional limit.)
All this information can be seen on a dashboard that can be changed or in one of many accounting or bookkeeping reports. At the end of the year, it’s easy for freelancers and businesses without an accounting department to invite their CPAs to connect and download their tax information.
Best of all, QuickBooks Online works well with many platforms and apps, such as PayPal, Square, and American Express.
Note: All of our clients’ bookkeeping is done in QuickBooks Online because it is flexible and easy to use. Try Countick Now if you want to let someone else take care of your books and free up your time.
XERO
Price: The first plan for XERO costs $20 per month. The monthly fee is $40.
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a score of 4.2/5.
Who it’s for: It’s for small businesses that need online accounting software that does everything.
Xero is accounting software for small businesses that run in the cloud. In addition to the features you’d expect from an all-in-one online accounting solution, it has a potent tool for managing and collecting payments and can do double-entry accounting.
It also lets businesses add online payment options to invoices so that they can accept payments through PayPal, Apple Pay, or Stripe. The system then keeps track of these transactions.
WAVE
Price: Accounting, invoicing, and scanning receipts are all free features. Check the site for details on accepting payments and setting up payroll services for each plan.
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a score of 4.4/5.
Who it’s for: Small businesses need free accounting software for basic tasks like tracking expenses, invoicing, and making receipts. It can also accept credit cards and handle payroll.
Wave offers free accounting, invoicing, and receipt software that helps freelancers and small business owners run their businesses more efficiently. It also has paid features that let you process credit cards and do payroll. There’s even a mobile app that lets you take payments while you’re out and about.
Businesses can also link their PayPal and bank accounts to the software to make tax records, balance sheets, and accounts receivable and payable reports. Wave is an excellent way for small businesses to handle their accounting and bookkeeping without getting bogged down by complicated features they might not need.
We were still trying to determine if Xero or Wave was the right choice for your business.
FRESH BOOKS
Price: Free trial for 30 days. Plans for up to 5 clients start at $15 per month. Contact for pricing for businesses.
Ratings: G2Crowd gives it a score of 4.6/5.
Who it’s for: Small businesses, solopreneurs, and people who work for themselves.
FreshBooks lets you keep track of your time and expenses and send clients invoices that look professional. Many freelancers and small businesses love it because it makes accounts receivable, which can take a lot of time, more manageable.
Your clients can also pay their invoices with a credit or debit card with FreshBooks. Processing fees are the same as those charged by other online payment gateways. It’s an excellent choice for businesses that don’t need an entire accounting program or software for sending out invoices.
NETSUITE
Price: Get in touch with prices.
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a score of 3.9/5.
Who it’s for: Enterprise-level companies are the ones who need it.
NetSuite is a cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that helps businesses’ accounting departments work more smoothly. It does this by giving you a wide range of features and functions that can help you spend less time on tedious tasks (such as inventory tracking and management).
From accounts payable to accounts receivable, it gives you a platform that can easily change to fit how you do business.
Suite success team is another thing that NetSuite offers. This team of experts helps new and long-time users with customer service, technical advice on fixing setup problems, and “best practices” tips.
This service will be valuable to many businesses because it can save time and help new users get up to speed quickly.
Bill.com (Recommended)
Price: Plan prices start at $29 per month. Contact for pricing for businesses.
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a score of 4.2/5.
Who it’s for: Any business that needs automated accounts payable and receivable that works with other platforms like QuickBooks, Sage, Xero, and Oracle.
Bill.com helps automate tedious tasks like paying bills and getting paid. It works with Sage Intacct, Oracle NetSuite, Xero, and QuickBooks without problems. With the Android or iOS app, you can stay in touch even when you’re not at work.
Many businesses find it helpful that Bills.com can automatically send paper checks to contractors and vendors in the mail. It gives you complete control over your AR and AP. and eliminates the need for tedious data entry by hand.
The Sage 50cloud
Price: Plans start at $46.83 per month for a single user. Contact for pricing for businesses.
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a score of 3.6/5.
Who it’s for: Small, medium, large, and enterprise-level businesses can use it.
Sage 50cloud is an online accounting platform for small and medium-sized businesses that does everything in one place. It has features like budgeting, tracking cash flow, sending out invoices, and keeping track of taxes.
It will also connect to your bank accounts so you can do regular accounting tasks like keeping track of receivables, making deposits, and transferring money. Sage 50cloud also has many features, like payroll and processing credit cards.
Expensify (Recommended)
Prices: free trial for 6 weeks. Plans for one person start at $4.99 per month. Plans for groups start at $5 per person per month.
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a score of 4.3/5.
Who it’s for: It’s for small and medium-sized businesses that need a quick and easy way to keep track of expenses and receipts.
Manual data entry is one of the more time-consuming parts of keeping your books. Expensify pulls information about expenses from invoices or receipts. Then, in just a few seconds, it prepares the information and sends it to your accounting software.
You can take a picture of your receipts or bills with your phone, upload them from your computer, or send them to a specific email address for Receipt Stash. You can make your own rules, and the system will automatically put things in the proper categories and add essential details like tax rates or nominal codes.
Tipalti
Prices: Get in touch for prices.
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a score of 4.4/5.
Who it’s for: Large to enterprise-level businesses that need B2B payment software, accounts payable, or global mass card payments.
Tipalti helps to automate large-scale payments all over the world. It’s made for businesses that accept many online payments daily. Tipalti is also made to save time by taking care of your accounts receivable and payments to suppliers.
It also has a robust fraud detection system that alerts companies to fraudulent transactions and helps them find them before the payment is processed. Tipalti will help finance teams spend less time on payment management in the long run by automating a lot of the busy work.
Goby
Price: Get in touch for prices.
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a score of 4.6/5.
Who it’s for: Large companies that want to automate their accounts payable.
Goby automates the accounts payable process by making approvals and invoice capture faster and easier. It also helps eliminate mistakes people make (which can contribute to excessive late fees).
It uses improved validation algorithms to find trends and reveal insights. This lets budget and business decisions be made with more information. By automating some of the accounts’ payable processes, Goby saves time and money.
Zoho Books
Price: The basic plan costs $9 per month. The monthly cost for a professional is $29.
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a score of 4.6/5.
Who it’s for: Online accounting software for small, medium, or large businesses.
Zoho Books is an online accounting tool that helps businesses track income and expenses. It gives you an easy-to-use, end-to-end accounting system that helps you save time with a smartly set dashboard.
Zoho Books has many features that help you meet tax requirements, such as automatic calculations, payments, sales tax, and 1099 reporting. It can also work with many apps, like payment gateways and point-of-sale apps.
Accounting Seed
Prices: Get in touch for prices.
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a score of 4.3/5.
Who it’s for: Large businesses need online accounting software to help them keep track of their money.
Accounting Seed is a platform for ERP and mainly accounting made for large companies. It also has a real-time dashboard that shows the company’s current financial state.
Accounting Seed works well with Salesforce and is flexible enough to handle the accounting needs of large companies in any niche or industry. It lets users make processes that are very flexible and fit the way the company does business best.
SBS
Price: Plans start at $46.83 per month for a single user. Contact for pricing for businesses.
Rating:G2Crowd gives it a score of 3.6/5.
Who it’s for: It’s for businesses that need software for core financials, payroll, purchasing, and HR.
SBS, which stands for Software Business Systems, is a set of software services that work together. It includes payroll, core financials, and even software for managing HR. It’s also a great way to keep track of costs and time for projects.
SBS works well with QuickBooks, which makes it easy to export data. This easy integration helps avoid costly problems when data is entered by hand.
Patriot Accounting
Price: Free trial for 30 days. Online accounting costs $15 per month, and simple online payroll costs $10 per month.
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a score of 4.8/5.
Who it’s for: Payroll and accounting software for small, medium, and large businesses.
Patriot has software for payroll and accounting that can help small, medium, and large businesses.
The dashboard is powerful and easy to use. It helps with a wide range of general accounting tasks, such as paying vendors, sending out invoices, and keeping track of finances.
The payroll function is also easy to use, and you can choose between basic and full-service payroll. Users can add HR and Time & Attendance software with the full-service option.
Multiview
Price: Get in touch with prices.
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a score of 4.5/5.
Who it’s for ERP and general accounting software for small, medium, large, and enterprise-level businesses.
Multiview is a cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) accounting system that can grow with your business. In addition to the usual ERP features, it has a powerful dashboard and reporting system that lets you see how the company’s finances are doing at a glance.
Multiview has a budgeting and forecasting feature that lets users set up approval workflows for their budgets and then compare them to what happened.
Divvy
Price: The price is free
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a 3.6/5 rating.
Who it’s for: Businesses that need to keep track of expenses automatically and get reminders to pay online.
Some companies need online payments and automated expense reports. Divvy is excellent for both of these things. Once everything is set up, the process is completely automated. This helps companies keep track of their online subscriptions and stop wasting money.
Users can make expense reports to see what and where people spend their money. This can decrease the chances of someone spending more than they have on their expense account before the end of the month.
Canopy
Price: The website has different price points depending on your chosen features.
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a score of 3.5/5.
Who it’s for: Tax firms that need software to do their taxes.
Canopy is made chiefly for tax firms. It helps automate tedious and time-consuming tasks so CPAs can work on more important things during the tax season. It also has many features that help clients feel more connected and in the know.
Canopy has a full-featured client portal that lets people pay online, send documents securely, and talk to each other. When tax season comes around, it can help cut down on time-wasting and unnecessary client phone calls.
Plus & Minus
Price: The price is $1,000 for each user.
Who it’s for: Businesses that need accounting/ERP software with all the features they need.
Plus & Minus is a full-service accounting and ERP platform for businesses of all sizes. It has six main features: accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, inventory management, cash management, and a general ledger.
Other features are job cost, foreign and multi-currency, and email management.
OneUp
Prices: Free trial for 30 days. Plans for one user start at $9 per month. A plan with no limits costs $169 a month.
Rating: G2Crowd gave it a score of 4.3/5.
Who it’s for: Small businesses that want to automate their accounting and bookkeeping.
The mechanical parts of OneUp will be helpful to small businesses. It links directly to bank accounts and takes care of many accounting tasks. You need to add your bank feeds and label your expenses. After a few days, OneUp will learn your spending habits and start to label automatically.
Your accountant can log into the software at the end of the year and promptly export the data to an accounting system.
Anytime Collect
Price:Plans start at $46.83 per month for a single user. Contact for pricing for businesses.
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a score of 3.6/5.
Who it’s for: It’s for small, medium, and large businesses that need AR management software that does a lot.
Anytime Collect receivable credit and collections are done automatically by Collect. It is mainly made for businesses that sell to customers on credit.
It can automate cash forecasting, invoice presentation, dispute management, and online bill payment.
Anytime collect can help reduce bad debt by automating a lot of the busy work that the accounts receivable (AR) department has to do.
Accurants
Price: One user is free. The cheapest paid plan costs $25/month. Call for business prices.
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a score of 3.9/5.
Who it’s for: A complete accounting system that incorporates CRM, bank reconciliation, invoicing, time and cost tracking, and tax preparation is required for small firms.
Accurants complete a small business management system helps businesses get paid faster and more efficiently. It’s well-planned and meets many of the day-to-day requirements of sole entrepreneurs and freelancers.
In contrast to the accounting module, it also has functions for invoicing, project management, CRM, time/expenses, and tax preparation, which can eliminate the need for much different software.
GoDaddy Bookkeeping
Price: Plans start at $4.99 per month for a single user. Premium costs $14.99 each month.
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a score of 4.0/5.
Who it’s for: Small businesses need software services like bookkeeping, invoicing, and importing online sales data.
GoDaddy Bookkeeping is an automated system for keeping your books that will save you both time and money. Even though it may not have as many features as other accounting software, it works very well for basic tasks.
This software is excellent for people who only need some of the bells and whistles of more expensive and complicated bookkeeping software. GoDaddy Bookkeeping will show you how to do everything and is great for people who need to learn more about money.
Kashoo
Price: The price is free for 14 days. Plan prices begin at $199/year.
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a score of 4.9/5.
Who it’s for: Small businesses that need accounting software that is easy to use.
Kashoo is another excellent tool for small business owners who don’t need accounting software with many complicated or hard-to-understand features. With just a few mouse clicks, users can instantly send invoices, accept online and offline payments, and make useful financial management reports.
Kashoo is helpful to people who need to learn more about accounting. The dashboard is easy to use and has a lot of helpful tips and hints so that users feel safe (as they might with other accounting software).
AccountEdge
Price: Free trial for 30 days. $149 gets you essential software. $399 gets you Pro software.
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a score of 4.0/5.
Who it’s for: Accounting software for small businesses that includes cloud accounting and ERP solutions.
AccountEdge is different from other full-featured accounting software platforms in a few ways. It is a desktop program that runs on your computer, not in the cloud.
This adds an extra layer of security because everything is done locally, and you’re not sending personal information over the internet like you would with a cloud solution.
There is a one-time cost of either $149 or $399, and there are no monthly fees. In addition to accounting, users can accept credit cards, the bill for time, track inventory, and run payroll.
MineralTree
Price: Get in touch for prices.
Rating: G2Crowd gives it a score of 4.3/5.
Who it’s for: Companies that make many monthly payments and want to automate their accounts payable.
MineralTree is made for automating payments and accounts payable. It’s made for businesses that send out 500 to 10,000 or more payments every month.
There are a lot of safety features to protect against overpayments, bad behavior, and the time it takes to find out what’s going on.
MineralTree also makes payments easier by combining multiple payments into one electronic file. This can save time and effort by reducing the number of batches AP needs.
TimeSheets.com
Price:The price for non-profits is $3.60 per user per month. With photos, the entire plan starts at $4.50 per month and goes up to $5.50 per month.
Rating: G2Crowd gave it a score of 4.1/5.
Who it’s for: Small to large businesses that want time tracking, payroll, and billing all in one place.
Timesheets.com keeps track of how much time employees work and has a dashboard for managing billing and payroll. They have a solution for everyone, from small businesses to people who work independently.
Employees will like how easy Timesheets.com is to use. They need their username and password to log in to the employee portal, where they can see their pay stubs and other important payroll information.
conclusion
Choosing the best bookkeeping software for your business can be challenging if you need to learn more about it. We hope the list above helps you narrow down your options and make the best choice.
But if you still need help to find the right tool, don’t have the time, or would rather have someone else do it all for you, we can help.
At Countick, our professional bookkeepers have a lot of experience and use advanced software tools to automate the parts of your bookkeeping that are most likely to be wrong when done by hand. In practice, we let computers do the tedious work so that our bookkeepers can give our clients the best customer service possible.
We do all of our bookkeeping in QuickBooks Online because it gives our customers the best experience and is the most scalable. Try Countick Now if you like letting tech-savvy bookkeepers take care of your books.
