7 Best Accounting Software for Retailers (2024)

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Whether you’re planning to set up a retail business or already in the ownership of one, you need accounting software to keep your business record to date. There are many reasons why you will want to have an accounting tool for your business including inventory management, invoicing, payroll, sales tax computation, and many more. Unfortunately, there are so many accounting solutions for retail business available, and choosing the right one for your business can be both time-consuming and tedious. From what features to look at and the pricing within your budget, there are just a lot to consider. Fortunately, this guide will take off your shoulder all the stress of sifting through the long lists of accounting software for the best tool for your retail business.

What Is a Retail Business?

A retail business is a business that deals in the sale of finished goods for consumers. Retail businesses also selling services to consumers via multiple distribution channels. Basically, a retail business is different from a wholesale business in that the former handle small quantities of goods whereas the latter deals with the sale of goods in large quantities. A retailer is the person who deals in the sale of finished goods in smaller quantities and s/he doesn’t manufacture the goods himself but rather buy them from either the manufacturers or wholesalers. Retailing on the other hand is the process by which retail or a retail business gets the goods they need and distribute the goods to the final consumers. The common types of retail businesses include independent retailers, franchise, and existing retailers. Others are network marketing and dealership.

Why Retail Accounting Software For Your Retail Business?

Retail accounting simply refers to the method used by retailers in estimating the cost of their inventory. You’re in business for profits and to make more profits you need inventory. You may not know I your retail business is doing well or not without proper retail accounting in place. These days you don’t need to be an accountant to do retail accounting of your business as there are many accounting tools out there to help you out. There are so many reasons why you need accounting software for your business including managing your inventory, staying up to date with your cash flow statements, profit and loss, and balance sheet statements. All these can be a lot of work for you if you’re not experienced in accounting.

Funds are necessary to run your business successfully just as you need inventory to make the profit, but without an accurate record of your fund and inventory movement, you may suddenly run out of cash and inventory. This is why you need accounting software to ensure the keeping of accurate financial data to plan for the strategic growth of your business. With so many challenging activities involved in running a business, it can be stressful if you were to be doing everything manually. From reconciliations of spreadsheets to workflow tasks and matching transactions, there is so much you can achieve with accounting software. Accounting tools don’t only automate the reconciliation process, they also standardize it.

When it comes to time-saving and staying up to date with keeping records of your sales, inventory, and setting prices for each of your products, accounting software comes in handy and helps save a lot of precious time.

Invoice generation is another key operation in any business including retail businesses. Accounting software is also needed in this part aspect of your business to make generating invoices effortless for you. Imagine if you have to generate thousands of invoices for different transactions and you are to do this manually. It really going to be cumbersome and time-consuming, I guess you say. With advanced accounting software, you can’t only generate invoices effortlessly, the tool will help you identify customers who have paid and then generate invoices for them using its advanced reporting system.

Additionally, you need accounting software to deal with complex bookkeeping that involves dealing with account reconciliation, multi-currency exchange, journal entries, cash flow management, and many more. With proficient accounting software, you can handle all of these complexities from one single platform.

All in all, the reason why you need retail accounting software for your retail business can’t be exhausted.

What Features Make The Best Retail Accounting Software ?

Before you jump into selecting accounting software for your retail business, you need to understand what features make the best accounting software for you. So as you’re set to select accounting software for your retail business, here are the most important features to look for:

• Inventory Management. As you must have heard inventory is vital to make sales and sales are important to make a profit. Accurate and real-time inventory monitoring is essential for determining your customer’s demands. So to get things right with your inventory management, look for a tool that will help you track your inventory.
• Barcode Scanning. Every time products move in and out of your inventory and you need barcode scanning for easy identification and tracking of your products’ processes and movement. Barcode scanning is essential for knowing when goods enter your inventory when they are sent out.
• Expiry Alerts and updates. Some tools come with expiry management system which notifies you of the products that are nearing an expiry date so you can send them to the producers and save yourself loss on such products.
• Helpful Dashboard With Metrics. Good accounting software should be able to provide you with helpful dashboards that will give quick metrics about key aspects of your business like expenses, sales, receivables, etc.

Best Accounting Software For Retail Business

1. QuickBooks Online Accounting

QuickBooks Online Accounting is designedto meet all kindsof budgets in that it’s very affordable for both startups and existing businesses. It is an accounting software that offers both desktop and web-based versions for businesses and with a feature-rich platform. The tool helps you run your business better by keeping track of your expenses, generating invoices, and manage your cash flow. One of the great things about QuickBooks Online Accounting is that you can access the app on the go and on any device so you don’t have to be in the office before running your business.

What We Like About The Product

• Easy to access anywhere and on any device. You can access using a PC, Mac, tablet, or phone
• It’s affordable for small and medium-sized businesses who are running their businesses on a shoestring budget
• Simplifies cash flow tracking process
• Offers insightful report so you have a clear view of how your business is doing and prepare for tax time
• It comes with ready-to-use templates for creating and sending invoice so you get paid on time and easily

Pricing

QuickBooks has three pricing plans with a free 30-day trial. Depending on your budget and size of your business, you can start with the Simple Start plan which starts at $12.50/month, or choose the Essentials plan which goes for $20/month or the Plus plan that costs $35/month. Each of these plans comes with different levels of access to their features. If you’re not sure whether the tool is for you, you can try it out with the free 30-day trial. With the free trial, you can track your sales, revenue, and expenses. You’ll also be able to access other features like generating and sending invoices, tracking, and managing sales tax, but this is only limited to two users – yourself and your accountant.

2. Xero

Xero is an exciting accounting software for retail business that lets you automate your bank reconciliation and trim down the time wasted on data entry. With this retail accounting solution, you can easily keep a record of your business’s accounts payable, estimates, and manage your inventory more effectively. One of the good things about the tool is that it is less expensive and hands-down user-friendly. If you’re running your business on a shoestring budget or don’t want to expose your accounting software to your accountant or tax professional, consider this tool all you need.

What Will Like About Xero

• It is relatively less expensive and easier to use than QuickBooks
• It is flexible for people looking for the right tools to scale up their businesses
• It offers real-time and accurate business cash flow and finances
• Supports importing transaction from bank accounts
• Supports third-party integration with over 600 third-party business apps.
• Allows unlimited users’ login
• It comes with 401 (k) tracking capabilities

Pricing

Xero offers the most essential features for all their pricing plans and there is also a free trial to try it out. The Starter plan starts at $11.00 per month, while the Standard plan costs $32.00 per month and it’s most suitable for growing small businesses, the Premium plan goes for $62.00 per month and it’s the best plan for those whose businesses are already established.

3. FreshBooks

FreshBooks, as accounting software, is best suited for retail businesses looking for the right software to keep a tab on their expenses and revenue with simplified reports. With its bookkeeping software, FreshBooks is accounting software designed specifically for retail needs. It’s great for staying up to date with your cash flow management and reducing time spent on manual paperwork. There are so many you can achieve with the app such as tracking your billable hours and expenses, creating professionally-looking invoices, and getting paid on time.

What We Like About FreshBooks

• Offers great time tracking so you can speedily apply tracked time to tasks like payroll
• Comes with customizable and professional invoice creating features
• Has an in-built app for creating estimates and proposals
• Supports an endless number of app integration with third-party platforms like Dropbox, Squarespace, HubSpot, and GSuite, among many others
• Provides your clients with checkout links thereby making receiving payments from your clients easy and fast.

Pricing

In total, FreshBooks has four pricing plans which include Lite, Plus, Premium, and custom pricing. As for the Lite, the pricing starts at $4.50 /month billed $108/year and it covers 5 billable clients, while the Plus plan goes for $7.50/month billed $180/year with 50 billable clients, the Premium costs $15.00/month billed $360/year and there is no limit as to the number of billable clients. The custom pricing plan comes only on custom requests.

4. Zoho Books

Zoho Books is the preferred accounting software for most retail business owners in that it takes off your neck the stress of having to manually deal with cash registers, ledger accounts, and stock lists. With this retail accounting solution, you can easily automate your business workflows, manage your finances, and collectively work across different departments in your business. One of the exciting things about this accounting app is that it lets you organize and store your data in a way that makes retrieving easy for you any day any time.

What We Like About Zoho Books

• Easy collaboration that lets you add your accountant and colleagues to your organization for easy view and management of your accounts
• Smooth third-party integration with over 40 apps supported
• Excellent dashboards
• Easy to use and set up

Pricing

Zoho offers three pricing plans ranging from Standard to Professional and Premium. The Standard plan starts at $15.00 per month per organization billed annually, while the Professional plan costs $40,00 per month per organization billed annually. Last but least is the Premium plan which goes for $60.00 per month per organization billed annually.

5. Sage50 Cloud

Sage50 Cloud is a web-based accounting software that offers businesses total freedom over how, when, and where they want to store and access their business data. With this accounting app, your data is backed up in the cloud and you access them on the go on your mobile devices.

What We Like About Sage50 Cloud

• Excellent cloud-connected accounting features and functionalities
• Exciting Sage contacts so you can easily sync all your contact details, records, transaction history, and many more with Outlook. This makes it easy for you to access your business-related information on the go and on all devices such as desktop, mobile, or cloud
• Smart reporting capabilities so you can view how your business is doing any time you feel like doing so
• Cloud backup which stores your data in a secure and easy to access location for you

Pricing

Sage offers different pricing plans to suit your business needs and you can check out their various pricing plans for more information on the best pricing option to choose.

6. Wave

Wave is a free accounting software that offers lots of exciting features without any artificial limitations on their features. There are so many things you can do with the app free and these include tracking and managing your revenue and expenses as well as invoicing, to mention but a few.

What We Like About Wave

• It’s free to use without limitation on its features
• Offers amazing tracking capability for expenses and revenue

Pricing

It is free to use. You don’t have to pay any setup fee, or monthly fee to use the app.

7. Kashoo

Kashoo is an easy-to-use retail accounting software for both E-commerce and retail businesses. As a cloud-based accounting solution, it lets you automate your bookkeeping, track your business expenses and invoices, as well.

What We Like About Kashoo

• Perfect for small businesses and freelancers
• Easy to use
• Provides accurate and real-time reports with a single click of a button.

Pricing

Kashoo offers a 14-day free trial to decide if the app is for you or not. For their paid plan, it starts at $27.00 per month. Kashoo doesn’t offer a free version.

Wrapping Up On Best Accounting Software For Retail Business

So you have all there is to decide which of the above-mentioned accounting solutions will best suit your retail business needs. Kindly share your experience with any of these apps with us as you start using them.