Best Small Business Accounting Software 2023

Our accounting software recommendation for small businesses would be QuickBooks Online for its unbeatable features for bookkeeping as well as accounts payable and receivable, in addition to the software's incredible customer support.

Xero is another top accounting software, offering robust features and slightly better pricing than QuickBooks, though its customer support isn't as good as QuickBooks's support. There are also some great value plans to be found from FreshBooks, thanks to a deal that makes the accounting solution cost just $6.80 per month for the first three months.

Small business owners and managers need great features, low prices, and strong customer support, so that's what our researchers prioritized. Take a look at the table below to get a better idea of your options, and read on for more in-depth reviews covering our top picks.

In this guide:

• What Is the Easiest Accounting Software to Use?
• Accounting Software Benefits
• Our Research Methodology
• Choosing an Accounting Software Provider
• Accounting Software FAQs

Here at Tech.co, we take the guesswork out of choosing. We’ve independently reviewed every major accounting software to help make business owners’ lives easier.

Let’s take a closer look at each of the providers:

1. QuickBooks Online – Best overall
2. Xero – Best for online businesses
3. Wave Financial – Best free software
4. Zoho Books – Best automation
5. FreshBooks – Best for useability
6. Sage – Best for invoicing
7. Kashoo – Easiest setup

QuickBooks Online – Best Overall Accounting Software

QuickBooks is, in our opinion, the best accounting software on the market.

According to our tests, the service ranked a perfect score on five out of eight product categories. QuickBooks earned 10/10 stars for software attributes, bookkeeping, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and financial reporting. Paired with a 9/10 for more advanced features, and an impressive 9.3/10 for customer support, this research proves QuickBooks is the best accounting service available.

There's just one area where QuickBooks doesn't impress: Pricing. With just 6/10 stars, the service doesn't deliver a bad value for its cost across each of its five plans when compared to other services, but the cap on users can be limiting, while a few key services (like project accounting) are reserved for pricier plans. Still, QuickBooks' features and support are unrivaled, and it'll more than pay for itself in the long run.

The QuickBooks dashboard

QuickBooks is built around tracking all your expenses. It sorts all your transactions into tax categories, and links photos of receipts to the transactions they represent. QuickBooks offers personalizable invoice templates, with automatically added biddable hours, and automated reminders. It’ll also let you know when your invoices have been viewed or paid.

When it comes to expense tracking, QuickBooks has all the features you’d need. For example, it integrates with users’ accounts across platforms including bank accounts, credit cards, PayPal, Square, and more. Users can create custom categories to make expenses easier to understand and can run reports for added visibility. The QuickBooks app will also let users track miles they have driven, which can be useful for tracking business trip deductions.

QuickBooks doesn't offer time tracking as standard, but will sell you QuickBooks Time from $8 per month per user, after a monthly $20 base fee. It's packed with features including task and shift scheduling, real-time reports, time-off management, alerts, and even a time clock kiosk with facial recognition.

We do have an entire page on QuickBooks' price plans, but the table above can get you up to speed with a glance.

QuickBooks does offer payroll processing for standard needs, and will auto-calculate your taxes and end-of-year forms. Employees can even access an online portal to view pay stubs, tax, data, and deductions, and can also download historical data reports.

Xero – Best for Online Businesses

Xero offers all the features you’d expect of an accounting platform, stacking up to QuickBooks for breadth of features: Both services earned the same perfect 10/10 scores across the same categories of software attributes, bookkeeping, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and financial reporting — the only two accounting softwares to do so.

With Xero, you can generate invoices quickly, and check whether recipients have seen them and paid them. It’ll also help you track your inventory, and syncs with Amazon, Shopify, Etsy, and more. Similarly, users can download the Xero Projects app on iOS and Android to record time and costs, with the data seamlessly integrating with invoices and reports.

Xero even beats QuicksBook in another category, pricing, where QuickBooks only earned 6/10 compared to Xero's 7/10 score. Xero's plans have risen in costs over the past few years as the service added more features, but they start at a reasonable $13 per month, undercutting QuickBook's $15 per month starting cost.

So why did we rank QuickBooks above Xero? First, because QuickBooks has a better selection of advanced features: Xero doesn’t cover expenses on all of its plans, instead only offering the service on the $65-per-month Established plan, while Xero's invoicing templates can't be modified as well as QuickBook's templates.

Second, Xero's customer support (4.7/10) doesn't rival QuickBooks' support (9.3/10), so if your team foresees needing useful and rapid help, Xero may not be your top pick.

All told, however, Xero is second only to QuickBooks and remains a very competitive package, especially given its online-first attitude: Xero integrates with some of the biggest website builder platforms on the market, including Squarespace and Square Online, making it an attractive pick for a business that relies on one of these platforms. If your business makes a lot of online, direct-to-customer sales, we’d recommend Xero.

Xero offers a richer feature set and better integrations than options like Sage and FreshBooks too. Read our Xero vs FreshBooks vs Sage guide to see how these solutions weigh up side by side.

Wave Financial – Best Free Software

That’s right – you don’t need to pay a penny to get started with Wave, so there's no need for a pricing table. In fact, you don’t even need a credit card to sign up to its accounting, receipt-scanning, and invoicing apps – they’re all free and ready to use. Wave makes it easy for a tiny business to track its expenses at no cost.

Our researchers like what Wave has to offer, giving it high scores across most categories: Pricing got a 10/10 score, of course, while software attributes and accounts receiveable features also got 10/10 stars each, bookkeeping got 9.5/10 and financial reporting earned a 8.4/10. With its free selection of apps, Waves lets you track your business’ income and expenses (as well as any associated sales tax), generate financial statements, as well as report on cash flow or profit and loss. You can invoice in any currency, as well as send quick estimates before turning them into full invoices.

The Wave payroll add-on

Wave even offers an affordable payroll add-on to help make its service a bit more complete, as well as a payments plan, both of which will, in fact, cost you money.

So, what’s the catch? Well, there’s no built-in inventory tracking, for a start. This means that you’ll have to make sure you stay on top of all that paperwork, and drops Wave's accounts payable score down to a only-okay 7/10 stars, compared to Zoho‘s 8.5/10 score and Sage's 8/10 score within that research category.

Plus, it only has one plan available, meaning you can’t really scale with the platform as your business grows. As a result, our researchers awarded Wave a dismal 0/10 stars for advanced features, the lowest of any accounting software on this list: The service is simply not for large or ambitiously growing businesses.

Still, Wave would make a brilliant choice for small companies that are just starting out. The free plan provides no obstacles to entry for businesses on a budget and the basic features still provide the help you need to get started.

Learn more about Wave accounting here.

Zoho Books – Best Automation Features

Zoho Books would be a decent fit for most small businesses: While the quantity and quality of its features doesn't quite reach QuickBooks or Xero's level, Zoho holds solid scores, with a perfect 10/10 for bookkeeping, 8.5/10 for both accounts payable and receivable, 8.4/10 for financial reporting, and 8/10 for software attributes.

Its automation features are a highlight, as well as a key element behind why accounting software is so essential: Accounting makes up about 29% of all high-tech automation. Zoho can also send hard copies of invoices or estimates to customers for you. A domestic letter costs one credit, while an international letter costs two credits – credits themselves are $2 per go.

Plus, Zoho earned an above average 8/10 for the quality of its customer support, putting it second only to QuickBooks according to our research, and above two accounting services that we found to be better overall, Wave (5.5/10) and Xero (4.7/10).

Invoice payment with Zoho Books

Zoho will also autoscan any documents you upload to its system. This means that you can save time manually re-creating or changing documents, as Zoho will already have all the details. This costs $8 per month, paid annually and capped at 50 scans a month, but remember – time is money.

You can schedule payment reminders to be automatically emailed to customers, and even create a multitude of messages to be sent at different points during your chasing. Reports can be scheduled to generate weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually in PDF, CSV, or XLS formats. These features, paired with reliable customer support, can help you concentrate on the fun side of your business.

Of course, Zoho still gives you all the features you’d need for accounting software, with inventory tracking tools, invoice payments, and transaction tracking features. Feel free to check Zoho out if it sounds right for you — there's a 14-day free trial of all plans, plus a limited permanently free plan that's open to any business with an annual revenue of less than $50,000.

FreshBooks – Best for Usability

FreshBooks stands out for two perfect 10/10 categories, software attributes and accounts receivable features, as well as more strongly performing feature categories including bookkeeping (7.5/10), accounts payable (6.5/10), and financial reporting (8.4/10). In other words, it's easy to use and has the basics you need.

However, help and support options are underwhelming (4.3/10), as are advanced features (4/10). Inexpensive pricing was once a standout benefit from FreshBooks several years ago, but as inflation has grown in recent years, the service has brought its price plans in line with competitors.

Without low prices to help it compete with the feature-packed likes of QuickBooks and Xero, FreshBooks has dropped to fifth place on this list. That said, the prices are still a little lower than most, and the service delivers excellent usability and solid features.

FreshBooks’ software is based around a “Double-Entry Accounting” feature, which tracks revenue items against their related expenses, and it makes understanding your profit and loss figures a breeze. FreshBooks will also automatically check that debit and credit amounts are all in order, and it’ll even pinpoint errors as soon as they arrive. You can also use FreshBooks to track your inventory.

As you can see above, the service offers a range of pricing. While it has raised prices recently, the lowest plan is a reasonable $17, although the $30 per month plan is more popular.

FreshBooks also makes it easy to categorize transactions, with distinct sections for equity, transfers, or refunds. FreshBooks also generates invoices, with custom templates and email integration. You can even track how much time your employees have clocked, and it integrates with Asana, Basecamp, Trello, and Teamwork – meaning you can see what everyone is working on. Thanks to these features, FreshBooks tops our list of the best accounting software for restaurants.

However, FreshBooks doesn’t have a native payroll processing feature. Instead, it integrates with Gusto or PaymentEvolution. It’s not a complete deal-breaker, but it is annoying that there’s no native feature.

Sage –  Best for Invoicing

Sage's interface is simple but effective. It's all built around customers and suppliers, a decision that makes creating and paying invoices a piece of cake. All of the software's accounts payable features are good, with our researchers granted it an impressive 8/10 ranking for the category, behind just Zoho Books‘ (8.5/10), after Quickbooks' and Xero's 10/10 scores.

While it's not the best for features overall, Sage does hold a respectable 7/10 for bookkeeping, 8.5/10 for accounts receivable, and 8.4/10 for financial reporting. If your operation is one that needs to regularly track and collect information about expenses or invoices (such as a hospitality business), Sage is the most straightforward choice, thanks to its features and interface layout.

Sage isn’t the most advanced platform on the market. It covers the basics of bookkeeping well, but doesn’t offer much beyond that. It can't hold a candle to QuickBooks, and it's missing more advanced features such as any method for allowing employees to track their time. The services may well add more advanced features in the near future (they just introduced an add-on for payroll, for example), but until then, Sage is best suited to small businesses that need the basics for getting their invoicing completed.

Kashoo – Easiest Setup

Kashoo is designed to make getting started as easy as possible. Its interface is straightforward and, while it isn’t as complex as some of the other providers on our list, it still has everything you need to get going. In fact, Kashoo claims that you can get set up with full double-entry accounting in less than a minute.

The service has solid scores for software attributes (8/10), bookkeeping (7.5/10), and accounts payable features (6.5/10), and small businesses will enjoy the above-average score our researchers gave it for the value-to-cost ratio: At 8.5 out of 10 stars, Kashoo is third only to Wave (10/10) and Sage (8.7/10).

If you just want to get set up as quickly and as easily as possible, we recommend QuickBooks or Kashoo. QuickBooks has more features than Kashoo, though, so it might be a better fit for more companies.

Another reason Kashoo is easy to work with? It offers automated features to handle chores including receipt copying and contact generation through its smart inbox, which can collate all the vendors you normally do business with. The service also lets you create reports in moments, covering everything from profit and loss to income, expenses and cash flow.

Paying invoices is straightforward, and users can choose from KashooPay – Kashoo’s own payment processor – or Stripe. Kashoo also claims that it will automatically connect any incoming transactions with the right invoice to make tracking even easier.

What Is the Easiest Accounting Software to Use?

QuickBooks is our pick for the easiest accounting software to use, since everything from uploading invoices to tracking payments and sales is a piece of cake.

Plus, it's a cloud-based system, so your records are available everywhere, on every device, all the time. The system's integrations with merchant accounts, credit cards, PayPal, and Square makes tracking everything that much easier.

Accounting Software Benefits

Many small-time business owners start out balancing their bills with nothing but spreadsheets to help them. But good business is all about making trade-offs and time is money. If you start paying for an accounting software, you'll save yourself untold hours of work and you can spend your newfound free time making far more money.

Here are the top benefits that make a good accounting software the best investment a business can make:

• Reduce errors — Lost inventory, misplaced decimal points, and unpaid invoices can all slip through the cracks. With an accounting software system, it'll be easier to spot a discrepancy. Plus, the intuitive interface will make you less likely to make a mistake in the first place.
• Automate processes — You won't need to download files manually from your bank accounts, you can easily search for the right invoice with a keyword, and management tools can ping you when you need to send a bill or invoice. The impact? Endless time saved.
• Generate financial reports — P&L statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements are all essential to doing business, and accounting softwares can create them immediately, store historical records, and let you download any documents you need.
• Centralize data — Bank accounts, credit card accounts, and your employee payroll service can all be accessed from the right accounting software, so you won't need to shuffle through a ton of different accounts to figure out how they relate to each other.
• Files taxes easier — Tax season doesn't have to be the bane of all business owners: Accounting software services can auto-populate your tax filing papers and, depending on the state, may even be able to file them on your behalf.

Finance and accounting software are useful for all businesses small and large. But different use cases will determine which type of software plan is best for you.

Our Research Methodology

To figure out which accounting software services to include on this page, and how to rank each one, our Tech.co researchers used a metric listing the top eight categories that matter when it comes to an accounting service:

• Software Attributes
• Bookkeeping
• Accounts Payable
• Accounts Receivable
• Advanced Features
• Pricing Factors
• Financial Reporting
• Help & Support

We then ranked each software on this page in each category on a score scale of one to ten. By adding all the scores together and dividing by the total number of categories, we found a single overview assessment number for each service.

Once rounded off, those assessment numbers turned into the five-star reviews listed in the table at the top of this page, while the entire research process helped us better explain the ups and downs of each service in its respective entry in this article.

Verdict: Choosing an Accounting Software Provider

In our view, the best accounting software provider for small businesses is QuickBooks. It’s easy to use, and has an range of powerful features more impressive than any other software our researchers tested.

Of course, it might not be the best fit for your company. You might want something a bit more focused, such as Xero, which also offers stellar features and stands out for ecommerce functionality, or Zoho with its automation prowess.

But the best way to find out which service is right for you is by using our quick and easy comparison page. It’ll help you work out which service is the best for your business, and help you get started.

Best Accounting Software for Small Businesses FAQs