7 Best Accounting Software for Startups (2024)

Upfront Conclusion

The best accounting software for startups right now is Freshbooks and Zoho Books.

The startup space is bubbling as more Startups get launched day after day. However, Statistics say that 90% of new startups fail, and about 21.5% of them don’t get to see the end of the first year.

Some of the reasons why these startups fail include bad financing, bookkeeping, etc., all of which are solvable by incorporating the best accounting software for Startups. Simply put, you might have a great product or service, but without proper accounting, time, income, expenses, and mileage tracking, cash flow analysis, etc., your startup is doomed to fail.

To help you make an informed decision in selecting the right and best accounting software option, we have researched and compiled a list of the best accounting software for Startups. Let’s dive in!

The Best Accounting Software for Startup Ranking

Freshbooks – overall best accounting software for Startups.
Zoho Books – best invoicing for startups.
Bonsai – Best For Boosting Income Of Startups
Kashoo – fastest accounting software for Startups.
QuickBooks – best accounting software for scalability of a startup.
Freeagent – top easy-to-use interface for startups.
Wave – free accounting software for Startups.

1. Freshbooks

This cloud-based accounting software tops our list of the best accounting software for Startups. It has become a significant competitor to the most popular accounting software, QuickBooks, with its amazing features and add-ons. Freshbooks is perfect for small businesses, freelancers, and startups.

As a Startup, Freshbooks will cover you with time tracking, income and expenses tracking, online payments processing through many platforms and banks, project management, as well as invoicing and estimates.

Pricing

Freshbooks’ entry price is $4.50 per month for its lite plan. Other pricing plans are;
Plus plan: $7.50 per month.
Premium plan: $15 per month
Freshbooks also gives 30 days free trial for Startups.

We recommend that you start with its highly affordable Lite plan and then switch to other plans as your startup grows. These plans are also a great value for your money.

Features

It helps insightfully track time and projects—a nice tool for your startup project management.
You can also easily track and schedule payments.
It lets you create customizable estimates and invoices.
It offers mobile apps for Apple’s iOS and Android with which you can track your finance and stay updated even on the go.
It offers you seamless collaboration within and outside your startup team
You can also use Freshbooks as your online file storage.

Why Do We Recommend Freshbooks?

We recommend you Freshbooks for your startup as it best for startups. Having one of the lowest prices and plans that lets you switch as your startup grows makes it the best accounting software for Startups as every startup wants to grow. It also has one of the best user interfaces for Startups which is a good thing for startups as you would want to increase the number of customers of your products or services.

Try Freshbooks

2. Zoho Books

This cloud-based software is one of the best accounting software for managing your Startups. Zoho Books integrates with Zoho inventory, fintech, banks, and other apps to give you one of the best experiences in managing your startup. It also tops the game with its bookkeeping and accounting, with its mobile apps giving you reports while you are on the go.

Zoho books integrate with more than 40 apps to help optimize your efforts.

Pricing

Zoho books entry price is $20 per month for the standard plan.
Professional plan: $50 per month
Premium plan: $70 per month.

However, Zoho Books offers 14 days free trial below the market average free trial period of 30 days.

We recommend that you buy Zoho books standard plan as it offers most of the features for Startups and a great value for your money.

Features

It gives you easy and efficient tax reporting with Integration with Avalara, 1099 reports, etc.
These will give you the best of consolidated sales tax reporting.
It allows time tracking. You will stay productive with the use of Zoho books.
It lets you track payments and receivables.
Facilitates reconciliation with your bank
Access to good customer support and some self-help articles and resources.
Zoho books let you create custom estimates and invoices. You can easily turn these estimates into invoices.

Why Do We Recommend Zoho Books?

Do you want to keep at the top of your tax reporting and invoicing easy and faster? So many Startups want to. That is why we recommend Zoho books for your accounting software. It generally is the best when you come to creating, sending, and tracking invoices.

Besides that, Zoho books also have one of the best pricing in our research of the accounting software for Shopify. You should try it out.

Try Zoho Books

3. Bonsai – Best For Boosting Income Of Startups

Running your own startup can be difficult because you don’t have to budget to hire an accountant to track income and expenses. Luckily, you don’t have to take any stress if you have Bonsai. The software has well-developed trackers to understand the hours you work every week.

It will also help check your reimbursed and non-reimbursed expenses along with total figures. You can also set reminders for receiving payments from clients. The best part is that getting paid on time will boost the income of your startup.

You can also identify deductible expenses using Bonsai to save that money when paying taxes.

Pricing

Bonsai allows people to benefit from three packages. The entry plan is the best option for startups. Here is the pricing for a better understanding:

Starter package – $24 per month
Annual Starter plan – $17 per month (one-time yearly payment)
Professional package – $39 per month
Annual Professional plan – $32 per month (one-time yearly payment)
Business package – $79 per month
Annual Business plan – $52 per month (one-time yearly payment)

You will get a free trial of seven days to test the software and decide if it is good for your needs. With annual plans, you can save more money because you will be getting two months free.

Features

Visualize your income on detailed graphs and reports by Bonsai
Track your expenses and maintain cashflow easily
Connect your account to different credit cards for the following transactions
Ensure you never forget to update your apps and clients by setting reminders
The clean dashboard will help you overview all features in one place
Create task lists and check off things as soon as you get done

Why Do We Recommend Bonsai?

Bonsai is great for startups because of its low entry price and free trial option. You can also use the workflow options of this software to enhance your startup productivity, do more projects, and get paid faster.

Visit Bonsai

MORE: Best Crypto Accounting Software Right Now

4. Kashoo

This amazing accounting software comes second in our list of the best accounting software for Startups. It automates most of your bookkeeping and accounting. While using double-entry principles also uses machine learning to make expenses reconciliation with your banks, credit cards, and online payment platforms.

Kashoo is popular among startups for its speed in executing the features it offers small businesses and startups.

Pricing

Kashoo accounting software has two plans;

A simple entry plan priced at $20 per month.
An advanced plan starts at $30 per month.
It also offers 15 days free trial of all of its plans.

We recommend starting with the advanced plan, which has all the features, free resources, and add-ons Kashoo offers. It is also a great value for your money.

Features

It lets you automatically create and send custom invoices.
You can easily track time, income, and expenses.
Enables multi-currency transactions and accounting for your startup.
Easily integrates with other apps and software.
You can also easily track the sales made by your Startups as well as the sales tax. Kashoo makes excellent IRS and CRA reporting easy and faster.
Incorporates double-entry bookkeeping, which gives you a better view of your Startups’ performance.
Includes payroll management and filing for your Startup’ employees

Why Do We Recommend Kashoo?

We recommend you Kashoo because of the speed and how fast it completes most of its features. All your time, income, expenses, and payments are just a second away. This is the right accounting software option for you if you want to know your Startup performance constantly.

What’s more? Do you worry about industrial espionage? Don’t worry; Kashoo secures your data with bank-level 256 – bit encryption.

5. QuickBooks

This can be said to be the most popular accounting software, and from our research, it is also good and is one of the best accounting software for Startups. Developed by Intuit, QuickBooks offers excellent accounting and bookkeeping features geared towards small and medium-sized businesses as well as startups.

It offers on-premises service, cloud-based services, and mobile apps version that operates on IOS and Andriod. QuickBooks also has one of the most easy-to-use interfaces among the best accounting software for Startups.

Pricing

QuickBook plans start with the entry price of $7.50 per month for the self-employed plan.
Simple start: $12 50 per month
Essentials: $20 per month
Plus plan: $35 per month
Advanced plan: $75 per month.
QuickBooks also offers you a 30 days free trial.

We recommend that you buy the simple plan for your startup as it offers the basic features a startup needs, such as payroll accounting, bookkeeping, etc.

Features

QuickBooks syncs with your bank and reconciles all transactions.
It tracks and manages your startup sales taxes.
You can easily create and send customized unlimited invoices.
It offers a great user-friendly interface that the startup team has found very comfortable with.
You can also easily track your startups’ income and expenses.
It offers security for your data. You do not have to worry if losing your business data as you can easily access your account on its cloud version from anywhere and at any time.
Another awesome feature it offers is scalability. It allows you to easily switch from one plan to another if you need more functionalities and as your startup grows.

Why Do We Recommend QuickBooks?

Every starter who has a professional accountant knows that Quickbooks is an awesome choice among the best accounting software for Startups. However, besides the wide number of integration s and features it offers, QuickBooks is popular because of its scalability feature, and that is why we recommend it.

As most startups are looking for accounting software for Startups that comprises scalability features, you can go for QuickBooks.

6. Freeagent

This is cloud-based award-winning accounting software built to help small businesses and startups keep on top of their bookkeeping. While offering so many features, FreeAgent is well known for the easy-to-use, user-friendly interface it has.

It will also automate and track your accounting, tax reporting and offers some helpful integrations. Hence, it has earned its place in this list.

Pricing

Its price is $10 per month, which is 50% off the first six months, after which the price is $20 per month.

Freeagent gives you 30 days of a free trial.

Features

It lets you create, send and track professionally crafted estimates and invoices.
Includes time and payments tracking
Give you an easy-to-use interface—a great feature for the Startup team who may not be professional accountants or bookkeepers.
Tracks your startup income, expenses, and profitability
Just like QuickBooks, it offers top-level security too.

Why Do We Recommend FreeAgent?

We recommend Freeagent mainly because of its easy-to-use, user-friendly interface, which is the best accounting software interface option for Startups from our research of the best accounting software for Startups. It also has an affordable plan priced at $10 for the first six months; this makes the right option for you if you do not have a huge budget for your startup.

7. Wave

Wave accounting is the only free accounting software to make this list. It offers hassle-free double-entry, journal entries, and financial statement analysis to small businesses and startups.

While it is free, Wave accounting still a range of awesome features to help startups; this makes a good option for new startups, especially those who don’t have much on their budget but still want to be at the top of their finances.

Pricing

Wave accounting is completely free.

Features

Incorporates double-entry bookkeeping
It offers you great invoicing and payment reminders.
Enables easier startup tax reporting
With Wave, you will get bird eyes view of how your startup performs right on your dashboard.
Allows unlimited bank, credit card, and fintech transactions
Wave offers top+notch 256+bit encryption security to secure your Startups’ business data.
You will get some free resources to help you up to your Startups’ performance.

Why Do We Recommend Wave Accounting?

There is one main reason why we recommend Wave, and that is because it is free. This is a good thing for startups that don’t have much in their budget but want basic bookkeeping and accounting features to keep at the top of their business.

What’s more? Wave accounting works perfectly for small businesses and startups; hence it is very suitable for your startup.

Last Tip

Both experienced startup founders and teams are looking for the best accounting software for Startups that would keep them at the top of their finances while focusing on their startups. The best accounting software for this growing number of startups should be able to make bookkeeping, accounting, and others functionalities easier and faster for startups, and you should be able to have your financial reports at your fingertips at any time.

To remove this confusion and help startups make better choices, we have outlined and received the top best accounting software for Startups in this post. These include Freshbooks, Kashoo, QuickBooks, Freeagent, Wave account, and Zoho Books.

You should know that the right accounting software for your startup is based a lot more on the type of business in which your startup is. However, considering which amongst these top best fits your startup, you should consider your budget, the software’s features, pricing, etc.

Our last tip to you is that as a startup, you should make sure that whatever accounting software you select has the right amount of scalability for your startups. Even though most businesses are not to become multinationals or conglomerates, they will certainly grow.

As you will use these tips to select the right accounting software for your startup, you will see your Startup scaling soon!