Top 11 Best Accounting Software for Small Business in 2020

Looking for the best small business accounting software to manage your accounting with ease? Here are 11 best accounting software for small business in 2020.

Running a small business is hard enough in the first place but if you are someone who’s not the best at maths and accounts then managing the finances of the business becomes even harder.

There are countless small business accounting software and services available in the market to help you efficiently run your business and manage the accounts of your small businesses. And in this article, we will be taking a look at some of the best accounting software for small businesses.

Bookkeeping isn’t fun for most of us but it is an essential component of any business.

small business accounting software

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Traditional methods of bookkeeping are soon becoming obsolete and manual bookkeeping is almost dead. This change has given birth to a more robust and wholesome set of premium and free small business accounting software.

These accounting programs and invoicing software come in all shapes and form and most of them have developed into a full-blown customer relationship management platform than just financial management software or bookkeeping software.

Allow us to help you decide which is the best free accounting software for small business and what paid options should you consider.

You might also like to know: Top 8 Best GST Accounting Software in India

Top 11 Best Small Business Accounting Software of 2020

Some key features are to be kept in mind while selecting the best accounting software for small business and these key features are:

  • Ease of use and user-friendliness
  • Integration with other platforms and solutions
  • Security and privacy
  • Pricing
  • Cloud accessibility and mobility of use of the platform.

With all these important key points in mind, let’s take a look at the list of accounting software for small business in the year 2020. Here we go:

Wave Financial: Financial Software for Small Businesses

Built specifically for small businesses with less than 10 employees, Wave Financial has garnered a niche fan following in the startup and the new business community. An easy to use tool, Wave Financial software allows users with absolutely no prior knowledge of accounting to manage the books of accounts with ease.

Wave Financial can connect directly to your bank account and pull the requisite data as and when requires. It supports over 10,000 banks and has absolutely no limits to the number of banks and cards you can link to it.

accounting software for small business

This free invoicing and accounting software allows you to manage accounts receivables, raise invoices and mark them as paid, Send estimates to clients, manually make payments to suppliers and vendors and even pay your employees using the built-in Payroll function (Available only in Canada and USA at the moment).

For top management, it also offers an overall financial report with a birds-eye view to easily understand the financial standing with the help of Graphs and charts.

While most features are free to use some features like Payroll are chargeable at $4 per employee and a base fee of $35. Bank payments and credit card processing fees are set at 1% and 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction respectively

Pros:  Cons:
  • Free to use
  • Robust Reporting
  • Designed for small businesses
  • Doesn’t handle automatic payments

FreshBooks: Invoice and Accounting Software for Small Business

Solopreneurs and Freelancers rejoice! FreshBooks is the easy accounting software for small business and Digital Nomads of the world. FreshBooks allows you to easily raise bills to your clients, track the hours spent on a project, raise an invoice based on the logged number of hours etc.

best accounting software for small business

FreshBooks accounting software has a set of templates for everyone. You can customize the invoice template to your liking and send it to your clients and get paid instantly thanks to the ability to connect your bank accounts and your cards. Currently, FreshBooks doesn’t have features like payroll or robust reporting but what it offers is more than enough for a Solopreneur.

Pros: Cons:
  • Developed for Freelancer and Digital Nomads
  • Flexibly raise invoices and get paid directly
  • Limited Financial reporting
  • No free offerings

FreeAgent: Easy-to-use Accounting Software for Small Businesses

It doesn’t matter whether you are a freelancer, small business owner, or their accountant, if you want to take control of your small business accounting then FreeAgent’s online accounting software is one of the most appropriate solutions for you.

FreeAgent is a feature-rich, cloud-based accounting software intended to help freelancers, micro businesses and their accountants. It was voted the UK’s number one accounting software of 2018.

This financial management software has almost all the features you need to keep your growing business finances on the right track such as payrolls, tax return filing, expenses, estimates and invoices, bank transactions, monitoring cash flows, time tracking, and project’s financial performance.

free accounting software for small business

FreeAgent’s Dashboard brings everything together in one place. You can have the cash flow at a glance, see the invoice timeline, live profit and loss status, and much more.

The ability to handle functions like simple expense tracking, sending a professional estimate in minutes, multi-currency and multi-language invoicing, better project visibility and clear project profitability, tracking billable and unbillable time on desktop or mobile, automatic bank feeds, and creating configurable sales tax reports etc. makes this online accounting software for small businesses more powerful.

FreeAgent comes with a 30-day free trial plan that lets you try out all the key features. For the universal plan, you have to pay $10 per month for the first 6 months and then $20 per month.

Pros: Cons:
  • Automated invoicing and accounts overview
  • Ability to photograph receipts
  • Super responsive customer support
  • More expensive than its competitors
  • Old-fashioned UI for viewing recent expenses

QuickBooks – Online Accounting Software for Small Businesses

This is another popular and one of the best accounting solutions which are ideal for small businesses. QuickBooks is an easy to use (No need to know finance or accounting) cloud accounting software for small business which will help you in filling your GST, preparing it from scratch and much more.

The user-friendly interface of QuickBooks makes it very easy for one to access all features and functions effortlessly. This small business financial management software is available at the prices of $10 per month, $17 per month, and $30 per month.

best small business accounting software

You can use QuickBooks for generating payrolls of your employees. You can also use the mobile app of Quickbooks which will allow you to manage all your taxes when you are on the go.

QuickBooks is based on the cloud (it is a cloud accounting software) which ensures that you get the best experience without worrying about system resources, crashes. There is no need for any antivirus software on the system to ensure that there is proper functioning of the software. You get high control over data which ensures that all the data which you have stored on this software never gets compromised.

Pros: Cons:
  • Easy to use
  • Excellent accounting reports
  • Flexible with 3rd party applications
  • Lack of direct professional support
  • No option to customize the app
  • Limitations on the number of users

GnuCash: Free Accounting Software

As a small business owner you may not be comfortable with sharing your financial details with 3rd party organization and hence many small businesses still use spreadsheets to keeps things in the house. In this scenario, you could consider free and open source accounting software such as GnuCash.

free small business accounting software

GnuCash free accounting software has the ability to create custom reports by tweaking the source code, you can also run cashflow statements, Create invoices, assigns clients and also track receivables. GnuCash doesn’t allow you to connect to bank accounts so that’s a downside, but it does allow you export reports in a standard format you may prefer.

Pros: Cons:
  • Open Source
  • Can work Offline
  • Can’t add bank accounts
  • Single User only

Zoho Books – Online Accounting Software for Growing Business

If you are looking for an easy to use accounting software which is specifically designed for small businesses and lets you send invoices, reconcile bank transactions, track inventory, generate reports, and file GST returns effortlessly then you should go with Zoho Books Online Accounting solution.

Zoho Books Software is online accounting software which will help you in managing your accounting, inventory and to file your GST returns with ease.

online accounting software

The software is available for $9 per organization/month and will get you features such as mobile application, accounting and as the software is cloud-based you don’t have to worry about system restrictions.

There are many advantages of this GST compliant software‎ with one being no worry about resource consumption of your system. As Zoho books is cloud-based software, so even if your system malfunctions, all the data present in this online accounting software will stay safe. Users also get the option the customize Zoho Books as per their needs.

While there are many good things about this software, one thing which we didn’t like is that it needs an active internet connection for full functionality. Also, you can use a maximum of 10 users on one account of Zoho Books.

Pros: Cons:
  • Automatic bank feeds
  • Free trial available
  • Great customer engagement
  • Limitations on the number of users
  • Sometimes it takes too long to work

ZipBooks: Free Accounting Software and Online Invoicing

If you started off with using Spreadsheets for the accounting of your business and want something better but maybe not as feature rich like the other platforms then ZipBooks is your solution.

Built for freelancer and Microbusiness owners, ZipBooks allows for easy invoicing and reporting to manage your business more efficiently. You can connect a bank account and manage your whole business right from Zipbook.

financial management software

It is free accounting software for small businesses which gives you basic features. Advanced feature-rich plans start at only $15 monthly. You can also get a personal bookkeeper if you wish by getting the top tier the service plan.

Pros: Cons:
  • Freemium model
  • Tracks time, accounts receivable and accounts payable
  • Connects to a bank account
  • Visual reporting
  • Advanced features aren’t free and cost a pretty penny

SlickPie: Free Accounting Software for Small Businesses

Delightfully easy to use is what SlickPie free accounting software claims to be and I don’t disagree. A great user interface and features such as robust reporting of financials when the bank accounts and cards are connected, easy invoicing and tracking of accounts receivable and manual processing of accounts payables is what makes SlickPie a holistic small business accounting software.

free accounting software

You can receive payments online directly in your bank account with the help of SlickPie for a fee and have unlimited accounts linked to your SlickPie account. You can also track unlimited projects and send as many invoices as you like.

Pros: Cons:
  • Easy to use
  • No Limits on anything
  • Cross-platform support
  • Doesn’t show cash flow statement
  • Relatively weaker reporting capabilities

GoDaddy Bookkeeping: Online Bookkeeping Software

If you run an online business, you are probably already familiar with GoDaddy (The World’s Largest Domain Name Registrar), the Domain, Hosting, and various other Internet business-related service provider. GoDaddy Bookkeeping connects to all your E-Commerce platform like Amazon, Etsy, and eBay to allow you to see visual reports for business intelligence purposes.

best accounting software

GoDaddy Online Bookkeeping allows you to create invoices, processes them and account for taxes all from the comfort of your home. The platform is quite restrictive and mostly suitable for solo entrepreneurs who make a living by selling mostly on the supported e-commerce platforms. The platform is best suited for people from the United States.

Pros: Cons:
  • Well Reputed
  • Cross-platform compatible
  • Helps you provision for taxes
  • Restricted to only one project
  • Paid
  • Suitable mostly for US residents

Xero: Online Accounting Software for Your Small Business

Xero is on the more professional end of accounting software for small business, while it is easy to use it isn’t the easiest and will require some working knowledge of accounting beforehand.

A dedicated bookkeeper can be tasked to handle your accounting duties if you wish for one. Features such as quotations, invoicing and multicurrency transactions are also present in Xero online accounting software but cost a pretty penny to use.

list of accounting software

Overall, this small business accounting software is pretty expensive with the basic pack coming in at $25 a month.

Pros: Cons:
  • Professional grade features
  • Inventory management
  • Holistic financial reporting
  • Expensive
  • Not very easy to use and intuitive

Sage Intacct: Cloud Financial Management Software

If an all-inclusive cloud accounting software is what you need to grow your small business then Sage Intacct should be your ideal choice. Sage Intacct is a widely used small business accounting software which is preferred by the AICPA as well.

It is full-blown financial management software which deals with purchases, subscriptions, billings, petty cash management as well as reconciliations and consolidations. It does everything a CPA or a CA would do. The software is designed to improve overall business efficiency and minimize losses if any.

types of accounting software

Sage Intacct if one of the most expensive online accounting software for small business but one of the most versatile as well.   

Pros: Cons:
  • Versatile
  • Helps with complete accounting for a business
  • Excellent reporting
  • Hard to use
  • Requires some understanding of accounting and finance

Conclusion

So, this was our list of accounting software for growing businesses (small and medium-sized businesses). We hope we were able to help you in finding the best accounting software for small business that you can use to manage your business finances with ease.

If you have any question or opinion about any of these small business accounting software and online financial management services, do let us know in the comments and we will try to help you out.

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2 thoughts on “Top 11 Best Accounting Software for Small Business in 2020”

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