The 9 Best Small Business Accounting Software of 2023

If you are starting out or are on a tight budget, you might find the free what is a current asset Wave Accounting software sufficient. Most small business accounting software can import spreadsheets, which makes transitioning from one system to another more efficient. Founded in 2003 in Toronto, FreshBooks started as just an invoicing tool. Over time, more features have been added, and as of 2023, FreshBooks has over 30 million users.

Best for Part-Time Freelancers

It’s also ideal for brand-new businesses because FinancePal can help with entity formation. Once you have completed an invoice, for example, you have several options. You can save it as a draft or a final version and either print it or email it. If you do the latter and have established a relationship with a payment processor, then your invoice can contain a stub explaining how the customer can return payment via credit card or bank withdrawal.

It was founded in 1983 and is headquartered in Mountain View, California. You can also try ultimate profit tracker for your business QuickBooks’ “Expert Assisted” service for free for 30 days. This service connects users with experts who can provide setup and bookkeeping help. If you’re on a budget, you can reduce costs by opting for a less expensive plan, choosing à la carte options or only paying for the features you need. Each report offered a description and useful information to help me interpret the report when I hovered over the question mark in the top corner of each report. I could also access filters on reports by pushing the down arrow at the top right-hand corner of each report.

1. If you’re looking for industry-specific accounting software, Sage some standout solutions beyond Sage Business Cloud Accounting.
2. These experiences enriched her understanding of small business management and marketing strategies.
3. For example, when trying to find which menu option allowed me to manage my invoices, I assumed this feature would be found under the “accounting” top menu.
4. Unfortunately, FreshBooks isn’t a great fit for product-based businesses as it has no inventory and COGS tracking features.

Best for Multiple Users

Wave is a good choice for a service-based small business that sends simple invoices and doesn’t need to run payroll. At year-end, accountants can pull the necessary reports from Wave to prepare a business’s tax return. Consider what you need the accounting software to accomplish for you and your business, and seek out software that will help you accomplish these tasks with ease. For example, do you need invoicing and billing support, or do you also need tax compliance and robust reporting?

What Is the Easiest Accounting Program to Use?

Wave also didn’t meet our expectations in mobile accounting because the app doesn’t allow you to enter and pay bills, categorize bank transactions, and generate reports. Our top recommendation for mobile accounting is Zoho Books, which is the only provider to ace our evaluation of mobile accounting. Another weak point for Wave is customer service as it has no live customer support, like phone or live chat. However, users can easily forgive this since it’s part of the trade-off for Wave’s very low price tag.

For example, to add a new project, I clicked “time tracking” on the left-hand menu, then the “projects” submenu item. From there, I could click “+New Project” at the top of the resulting screen and fill out a simple form to add my new project. QuickBooks Online is one of the most popular bookkeeping software choices in the US. Its comprehensive reports are easy for first-time business reasons to use an outsourced bookkeeping owners to generate and understand, and it offers more thorough reporting than just about any other software out there.

I could filter for only receipts, mileage, bills, contacts, documents, invoices, statements or checks. Still, another button labeled “column” gave me the option to add or remove columns from the list of documents, such as document notes, categories, descriptions or date added. Neat offers several key features, including extensive document management features, its patented optical character recognition (OCR) software and its mobile application. The software can also automatically determine the right taxes and offer businesses the flexibility to manually adjust.

Unlike competitors, I had to also enter my credit or debit card information. This means that if I am not satisfied with the software, I have to manually cancel my subscription before the two-week free trial period or I will be charged the yearly rate of $200. Additionally, when I generated an invoice, the system alerted me if any necessary information was missing to save the invoice.