7 Best Accounting Software for Small Businesses (2024)

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If you are operating a small business, you will have to keep excellent track of your finances just like every other business. And as a small business owner, you may not need to hire a professional to help keep track of your finances. So, you’ll need the best accounting software that will get you an accurate record of all expenses, easily manage stock orders, and track of invoices, receipts, etc. Statistics show that 82% of small businesses use some form of accounting software to optimize their business.

However, there is so much accounting software to choose from, and the number of vendors continues to grow. This will make selecting the best accounting software for small businesses that will suit you and your small hustle somewhat difficult.

To help you make this decision, in this post, we will outline the best accounting software for small businesses that will get your accounting and finance management on autopilot and boost your entrepreneurial game. Let’s dive in!

Best Accounting Software for Small Business Ranking

1. Xero – best all-in-one features for small business
2. Freshbooks – ideal for greater invoicing.
3. Bonsai – best For Helping Small Businesses Prepare For Tax Season
4. QuickBooks – best overall for small businesses.
5. Wave – best free small business accounting software.
6. Zoho – ideal for collaborative work with clientele.
7. Sage 50 cloud – great for small business growth.

1. Xero

This is the best all-in-one accounting software for small businesses offering so many features and tools to users. With its roots in New Zealand, this software comes second on our list of the best accounting software for small businesses.

If you are looking for the right accounting software with excellent customer support, you are definitely at the right place. Xero is also well known and common among small businesses because of its flexibility to your small business as it grows.

Pricing

• Xero offers three plans, which with the Starter plan of $20 per month.
• The standard plan; $30 per month.
• Premium plan: $40 per month.
• Xero offers optional add-ons of Claim expenses for $4 per month and track projects for $7 per month in each of its plans.
• It also offers you a 30 days free trial but no free plan.

We recommend its entry plan for you as it includes most of the accounting software features needed by a small business to help it grow. However, as your business grows, you can easily switch to any other plans.

Features

• One of Xero’s noticeable features is its 24/7 customer support that will help you through My technical issue you might experience.
• You can also easily track your projects, sales, expenses, and cash flows with Xero.
• It helps you to easily pay your employees with its built-in payroll feature.
• Xero offers you the opportunity to create, track, and customers invoices, receipts, and reports in real-time.
• You can also create quotes and estimates easily with Xero.
• It is also compatible with multiple currency accounting, keeping track of your stock and sharing documents, etc.

Why Do We Recommend Xero?

There is not much accounting software that offers you security, excellent customer support, and a good user experience like Xero. Topping the list with these features, Xero, with its cloud services, also offers safety and security to your business data with great uptime.

What’s more? Xero offers you many blog write-ups, courses, access to professional bookkeepers be accountants, and other resources that could help boost your small business.

2. Freshbooks

This is one of the top cloud-based best accounting software for small businesses. Just like Xero, Freshbooks is also well known for its could-based safety and security measures to protect your business data and information.

Oh dear, are you searching for the best accounting software with the best invoicing capabilities? Well, we have been there before, and in our research, we found Freshbooks to be the best option for this purpose.

Pricing

Freshbooks pricing starts with its entry price of $4.50 per month and $108 per year for its lite plan. Other plan and prices are;

• Plus plan: $7.50 per month and $180 per year.
• Premium plan: $15 per month and $360 per year.
• Freshbooks also offers 30 days free trials and 60% and 10% off its monthly and yearly plans, respectively.

We recommend Freshbooks because its Plus plan as it is affordable and includes up to 50 billable clients, a good option for small business.

Features

• With Freshbooks, you can track your revenues, expenses, time and stay continually productive.
• It offers you multiple currency billing, multiple languages invoicing, and you can easily customize your invoice too.
• You can also simply make proposals and estimates with Freshbooks. These estimates can be simply converted to invoices too. Isn’t that a nice feature?
• You will also have access to Android and IOS device compatibility.
• Freshbooks online banking integration makes your whole task earlier as you can track your payments.
• It Incorporates double-entry features

Why Do we Recommend Freshbooks?

We recommend Freshbooks because it is one of the cloud-based best accounting software for small businesses that will offer you good customer service, user experience. Whether you are a tech-savvy person or not, FreshBooks will be easy for you to use.

Freshbooks is also highly affordable, and you can try it with its 30 days free trial and good for startups.

3.  Bonsai

Preparing for tax season is a hassle for small and large businesses. This is because you must have good accounting experience to ensure your books are in order. If you don’t meet this requirement, keeping Bonsai by your side will be helpful.

The platform tracks your income throughout the year, along with the hours you’ve worked. This will ensure all your payments are accounted for and that you are not overcharging any client. All deductible expenses will also be identified by the software.

You can remove these expenses from your tax payments and save more money. The best thing is that the software also offers estimates for quarterly and annual taxes. So you can compare your actual figure with the estimates to ensure your calculations are correct.

Pricing

Small businesses are mainly better off choosing the entry plan. However, Bonsai also has other plans:

• Starter package (entry plan) – $24 every month
• Professional package – $39 per month
• Business package – $79 a month

You can also use these plans with a trial of seven days to test all features of Bonsai. This will help you make a better buying decision and offer you the best value for money.

Features

• Its time tracker will help you track your billing hours
• You can connect the software with online accountant platforms such as QuickBooks
• Pay your workers and vendors on time by using the reminder option
• List achievable goals of a project and tick them as soon as you obtain your objectives
• Update customers using the highly optimized client portal system

Why Do We Recommend Bonsai?

We recommend Bonsai for small businesses because it offers thorough accounting features such as invoicing, bookkeeping, and banking. You can also prepare for tax season easily by the software’s estimates.

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4. QuickBooks

Quickbooks tops our list of the best accounting software for small businesses from our research. Its products custom made for small businesses, makes it the best option among all the ideal accounting software we recommend for small businesses.

While giving you simple and nice features, you can also easily sync your bank and favorite apps with Quickbook. Developed by Intuit, Quickbook offers you both good customer support and a comprehensible navigation system that you can simply access through your phone, personal computer, or desktop.

If you are looking for the best accounting software for your small business with customizable features and add-ons programs, then QuickBooks is the right option for you.

Pricing

QuickBook offers five different plans; self-employed, simple start, Essentials, Plus, and the Advanced plan.

• Its self-employed entry plan starts at $7.50 per month.
• Simple start: $12 50 per month
• Essentials: $20 per month
• Plus plan: $35 per month
• Advanced plan: $75 per month.
• The Simple starts, Essentials, Plus, and advanced plans come with payroll add-ons that start at $22 50 per and a bookkeeping setup priced at $50.
• QuickBooks also offers you a 30 days free trial and 50% off any plan for the first three months. However, it does not offer any free plan.

As a small business owner, we recommend that you buy Quickbook’s Simple start plan as it offers you a combination of compactibility with small businesses, so many features as well as payroll add-ons and bookkeeping setups at a nice price.

Features

• Quickbook gives you an excellent track of income and expenses, inventory and time, sales, sales tax, and mileage.
• It is compatible with multiple users and hence will be nice for accounting software managed by your employees.
• It will help you to easily pay your employees.
• You can easily send and create cost estimates with Quickbook.
• It offers you customizable features, add-ons, invoices, and receipts.
• You can also easily manage bills and cashflows with Quickbook.
• It automates your online banking and invoice creation.

Why Do We Recommend Quickbooks?

Among the best accounting software for small businesses, we highly recommend Quickbook because of its user-friendly features, amazing interface and flexible navigation, and the fact the most of its features are optimized for small businesses.

It will also easily sync with any software you are using to manage your business. Starting from making payments to sending receipts, invoices, estimates in your small business venture, Quickbook is at the top of the game and will make your daily financial tasks easy peasy.

5. Wave

Unlike other accounting software in this list, Wave is free. If you are looking for cheap or free accounting software for your small business while you do not have enough funds to pay for any of the Quickbooks or FreshBooks various plans, you should consider Wave accounting.

However, it does not include many features but will do for you if you are starting your small business.

Pricing

Wave accounting is free and has no distinct plans, but it offers different products and services: Wave payments, Wave invoicing, and Wave receipts.

Features

• Wave accounting software is completely free, which could help your small business, especially at its startup stage.
• Wave offers you expense, income, and sales tax tracking.
• It syncs with your bank and automates transactions as well as retrieves payments and donuts details.
• You can easily see how your small business is performing on your user-optimized dashboard.
• It lets you easily manage multiple small businesses and hustles through one account.
• Wave accounting software aids your small business with its blog and helps center.

You can also create estimates with your Wave accounting software.

Why Do We Recommend Wave?

We recommend that you go for Wave free accounting software, a nice alternative to other accounting software, especially if you are just starting your small business venture and need a cheap alternative.

As an award-winning accounting software, Wave fits this recommendation with lots of unlimited features that you can easily customize to fit your liking. Oh yeah! It is all free.

6. Zoho Books

This is one of the best accounting software for small businesses. It offers you online easy finance management, automates your business workflow, and encourages corroborative work with your employees and clients.

Zoho books are your best option when it comes to choosing the right accounting software for managing corroborative work between your small business and clients. It also features budget-friendly prices for its different plans, which are good for small businesses.

Pricing

Zoho books pricing starts at $20 per month/organization for its standard plan.

Other plans and prices are;

• Professional plan: $50 per month/organization
• Premium plan: $70 per month/organization.
• Zoho Books offers a 14 days free trial but no free plan.

We recommend that you buy its standard plan as it best fits a starting small business with its affordability and a long range of features. This could also be the best plan for you as you engage in projects that would kick-start your small business.

Features

• It offers you ample customer support, which you can easily get through phone, chat, email, or video.
• It offers you payment reminders, online payment, and mileage tracking.
• You can also easily track projects expenses, incomes, and invoices
• Zoho books are good for creating reporting tags, sales tax, and tax calculation and reporting, etc.
• It offers the capability to customize views, add-ons and manage up to 5000 invoices.
• You can also use multiple bank accounts and up to 1099 contractors.
• Zoho books let you create and manage estimates that you can also easily turn to invoices.

Why Do We Recommend Zoho Books?

Zoho Books is one of the best accounting software that optimizes user experience when working with clients and contractors. It creates a client portal and is essentially structured to match your clients with its multi-lingual invoicing and data-sharing features.

Therefore, we recommend Zoho books for these features, along with its excellent customer support and budget-friendly plans that start at 20 per month/small business.

7. Sage 50

Sage 50 cloud accounting software, initially known as Peachtree, is high-end accounting software for small businesses. It aims to make accounting and financial management easy and simple for small businesses and, over the years, have become an industry choice for its excellent features and insights into the best way to grow your small business.

However, its yearly plan pricing can be pricey.

Pricing

• Sage 50 cloud accounting software prices start at $310 per year for its Oro accounting plan.
• Premium accounting plan: $510 per year
• Quantum accounting plan: $842 per year

We recommend that you buy its Pro accounting plan as it comes with most of the features which a small business need. You can also get 40% off the price for the first year.

Features

• It offers you scalability ad your small business grows.
• Sage 50 aims to secure your business data with its cloud security features.
• You can also easily plan and track inventory.
• All of its plans offer integration of Microsoft office 365
• With Sage 50, you can also do an effective business health hacking with cash flow, profits, A/R, etc.

Why do we recommend Sage 50 cloud?

One of the major reasons we recommend Sage 50 cloud accounting software for small business is that offers you access to key insights, articles, resources material and a host of professionals on how to boost your business.

While its plan can be pricey, it offers plans and features optimized for small business growth.

Final Thoughts

Since having a good accounting software and system that your small business operates on is one of the key foundations of success, if you don’t start operating your business with good accounting software, it is doomed to fail. It is paramount that you choose the best accounting software for small businesses that will help you be at the top of your game in financial management.

We have in this post listed from the overall best accounting software – Quickbooks to Wave – a free accounting software to help you make a rational decision and decisions what’s best for small business. However, while considering many features and offers that these distinct software offer you, the best fit for your small business is one that matches your budget, location, and goal of your small business.

What’s more? Make sure to subscribe to accounting software that encourages Scalability and will easily move your go plan with more features that will best suit small business. It begins to grow, which is it as you make the best choice making this list of the best accounting software for small businesses.