6 Best Accounting Software for Writers & Authors (2024)

Your financial data begins to become more complex as your business grows and writing business isn’t an exception. You can no longer handle business account via spreadsheets that gradually become perplexing, sluggish, and prone to errors. Your growing writing business creates a demand for an accounting solution that isn’t only perfect for your needs but also scalable and user-friendly. Writers are persons of words and not of numbers but that point is, writing is also a business and business revolves around numbers. Thus, a perfect, scalable, and easy-to-use accounting software is necessary for writers to deal with complex financial data.

However, finding the best accounting software for writers isn’t as easy as it seems. There is various accounting software available for authors and you have to choose a solution that can serve you in the best possible way. The best accounting software for writers must offer easy income/expense entry as well as categorization. Bank reconciliation is another aspect you must consider. If you are keeping a separate account for your writing business, bank reconciliation is mandatory. 

If you are an author or a freelance writer and looking for the best accounting software for writers, then don’t worry. We are going to share with you the best accounting software designed just for you. You will be able to keep records of your writing business quite easily with anyone of the following best accounting software for writers. 

Top 6 Accounting Software for Writers

1. FreshBooks
2. Zoho Books
3. Sage
4. QuickBooks
5. ZipBooks
6. Wave

1. FreshBooks

FreshBooks has all the strengths to make its place in the list of the best accounting software for writers. It is among the most user-friendly accounting tools available in the market and that also makes it the best option for authors who have negligible knowledge of accountancy as well as computer systems. Moreover, FreshBooks offers unique invoicing features such as customizable invoice formats, recurring invoices, etc. 

FreshBooks lets you do accounting activities ranging from simple to complicated activities. Besides invoicing and income/expense bookkeeping, you can reconcile your bank account, create numerous reports, manage projects, manage and track time, avail automatic payment and fess reminder, and various other remarkable features. You can also get your payment process more efficient and effective through FreshBooks’s option to pay bills through invoices.

Key features

• Enables you to generate professional invoices and also makes invoicing very easy that takes only a second.
• Organizes your income and expenses effortlessly and help you remain always ready for tax time.
• Presents insightful time tracking and generate invoices for exactly what you deserve. 
• Also empowers you to manage projects as it keeps your conversations, files, and other relevant data in one place. You can also synchronize your team and projects on schedule.
• Brings automatic depositors and eliminates the chase of clients for checks.
• Ensures to make reports as simple as possible to be more understandable for you while quite powerful for accountants for professional use.
• Its iOS and Android apps empower you to remain in contact with your clients from anywhere, anytime. 
• Integrates with other 100+ apps and enables you to streamline your business, connect with your customers, and run your business in a better way.

Pricing

FreshBooks offers four pricing plans to help writers manage their business’s financial aspects.

• The Lite plan starts at $13.50 per month
• The Plus plan starts at $22.50 per month 
• The Premium plan starts at $45 per month
• The Custom pricing plan is also available for writers with more advanced businesses. 

All four plans come with different features. You can start with the Lite plan at the very outset of your writing business and scale up to other plans with more advanced features when your business requires it. Overall, FreshBooks is among the best accounting software for writers because of its remarkable features and flexible pricing plans.

2. Zoho Books

Zoho Books is another option for writers, authors, and freelance writers that speeds ups your accounting activities. It organizes various different activities into a single timesheet workflow to make your work quick, easy, efficient, and effective. Zoho Books is also very easy to handle and user-friendly. You just have to add a customer and mention the projects you will work on for him/her in order to simply track time and expenses, create and send invoices, and manage other activities in a single place. The plus point of Zoho Books is that it is a part of the most comprehensive Zoho tools. You can choose other Zoho tools such as email hosting, CRM, project management tool, etc.

Key features

• Tracks your expenses seamlessly. You can upload receipts to the tool, organize your expenses, and easily track where your money is being spent.
• Helps you generate customizable invoices and receive your payments faster.
• Also generates bills to track payments you owe to your service providers such as publishers.
• Offers the easiest bank account reconciliation, fetches bank transactions, and manages them effortlessly. 
• Also helps you manage your projects more effectively with timesheets to track every minute.
• Zoho Books’ client portal enables your customers to view their transactions in one place.

Pricing

Zoho Books offer three pricing plans that allow you to choose the best options for you according to your writing business’s needs and requirements. 

• The Standard plan starts at $15
• The Professional plan starts at $40
• The Premium plan starts at $60

Zoho Books is slightly expensive as compared to its competitors but all three packages come with exceptional features. You can start with the Standard plan during the initial stages of your writing business and then upgrade to more advanced plans with advanced features to meet the needs of a growing business. 

3. Sage

Using Sage accounting software, writers and authors can handle invoices, maintain inventory, and track revenue and spending across several currencies. For writers and authors looking for a platform to manage their finances, this accounting software is appropriate. This software includes all the functions needed by your company, including automated bank reconciliation, uploading receipts, tracking what your clients owe you, and producing and sending invoices.

Key features

• Sage allows you to make invoices, present them to clients, and monitor payments.
• To keep your financial flow orderly, the automatic A/R software generates and distributes invoices and records payments.
• Multicurrency support
• To provide you a real-time snapshot of your stock levels, Sage features an inventory tracking option.
• Business reporting to expand your company by making smarter business decisions with the knowledge of previous and present patterns in your company’s performance.

Pricing

Sage offers two pricing plans to help writers manage their business’s financial aspects.

• Accounting start plan starts at $10 per month.
• Accounting plan starts at $20 per month

4. QuickBooks

QuickBooks boasts about having 4.5 million customers from across the globe. You can take your writing business anywhere with the help of this remarkable tool as all QuickBooks plans include free iOS and Android applications that enable you to handle your financial data from the office, commute, or from the comfort of your home. QuickBooks’s astonishing apps let you do any bookkeeping task very easily such as online receipts, online payments, sending invoices, etc.

Moreover, it offers customer support that is among the very best in the business. When you contact them through the QuickBooks Online program, ask a question, and provide a cell phone number, you are contacted as soon as possible for a detailed answer to your question. 

Key features

• Offers free iOS and Android apps that make your financial record keeping exceptionally easy. You can also handle your writing business data from anywhere, anytime with the help of mobile applications that run smoothly. 
• Provides customer support that easily exceeds your expectations. Its customer support is every ready and waiting to assist you online as well as on the phone.
• Ensures secure cloud storage that is an important feature to store your data safely in the cloud. It eliminates your worries to keep your data secure by providing bank-level security. 
• Also allows you to let your accountant access the account if you want to share your books.
• Other remarkable feature is that how it presents customizable reports to observe how your business is going. 
• Also allows you to send unlimited invoices to ensure nothing stands between you and your money.

Pricing

QuickBooks offers a free 30-day trial to check its usability to its customers. Free trial is available on all three plans.

• The Simple Start plan starts at $8 per month 
• The Essentials plan starts at $12.50 per month
• The Plus plan starts at $17 per month

Simple Start is the best option for you if your business is just starting. You can scale up to other plans with the growing needs of your business. Finally, we are recommending this accounting software for authors because they can get features according to their own needs at very reasonable prices. 

5. ZipBooks

ZipBooks is another one of the best accounting software for writers that has all the potential to make your accounting efforts smart and seamlessly easy. It is powerful accounting software for authors with a simple and beautiful user interface to help you reach the next level. Writers usually aren’t good at accounting and that is why user-friendly accounting tools like ZipBooks are the best options for them for simple bookkeeping. 

ZipBooks offers a lot of simple and complex bookkeeping activities such as recording and editing income/expenses, bank accounts/credit card reconciliation, pulling transactions automatically, and sending invoices. You can also capture images of invoices, upload them, create, and send either one-off or recurring invoices. ZipBooks makes accounting and bookkeeping really easy for you by providing an expert to handle your accounting activities. That is why it is the best option for those who don’t have accounting knowledge or don’t want to do it on their own. 

Key features

• Sends professional invoices, receive payments through all major credit cards and PayPal, and various other remarkable features. It also enables you never to forget any due bills and payments through auto-billing and payment reminding tools.
• Makes bookkeeping and reporting easy and smarter by offering some astonishing features like remarkably simple reconciliations, reporting, categorization, color-coding, etc.
• Enables you to analyze your business’s performance and compare it to your competitors. It also helps you retain your most valuable customers through smart insights and reports.
• Also helps you grow your business by ensuring you get paid quickly besides smart and automated tracking of your income and expenses.

Pricing

ZipBooks offers four different plans that make it a unique tool to handle transactions ranging from simple to more advanced accounting operations. 

• A Free plan
• The Smarter plan starts at $15 per month 
• The Sophisticated plan starts at $35 per month 
• The Accountant plan offers custom pricing

ZipBooks’s free plan is the top option at the inception of writing business that lets writers send unlimited invoices, manage unlimited customers, view basic reports, connect one bank account, and accept digital payments from Square and PayPal. You can upgrade to paid plans whenever your business requires scaling up. Finally, we recommend ZipBooks because of its various features and flexible free and paid pricing plans.

6. Wave

Wave is another great option for writers to take good care of their accounting needs. It is an award-winning accounting software yet absolutely free. You can get almost all features you need for business accounting totally free. Wave allows you to do simple to more advanced accounting activities such as income/expense recording and tracking, sending invoices, etc. You can also avail yourself of superb features like payroll processing and scanning receipts through Wave mobile application. Wave also allows you to reconcile bank accounts and also allows you to record old expenses you failed to record in the past through uploading old bank statements.

Key features

• Offers exceptional features to handle your accounting requirements effortless, easy, more efficient, and effective. 
• Enables you to create and send professional invoices within seconds.
• Empowers you to scan receipts from anywhere, anytime through Wave mobile app.
• Allows you to track unlimited income/expenses and get paid easily.
• Also makes your accounting efforts smarts and highly professional through offering to add various collaborators, accountants, and partners.
• It has all the potential to generate professional reports that clearly display due bills and invoices, profit and loss reports, cash flow reports, etc.
• Also allows you to reconcile multiple bank accounts and credit cards.

Pricing

Wave is accounting software for authors that is absolutely free. It is among the best accounting software for writers not only it is free but also because of its remarkable features. It lets you scale up by presenting numerous collaborators if you want an expert to handle your accounts, manage payroll and payroll taxes, run more than one business from a single Wave account, and much more. Overall, Wave is the best option for writers and freelancers to handle their accounting requirements without spending a penny on software that charges a lot each month.

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