The Best Small-Business Accounting Software of 2021

Xero is our favorite accounting service for small businesses, but FreshBooks is a good alternative for business owners who want unlimited invoices. Meanwhile, QuickBooks Online works well for business owners who value solid reporting and tax tracking, Wave Accounting is a good free option for budget-cautious freelancers, and Zoho Books automates key tasks that can suck up business owners’ time.

We love Xero for its robust features and low starting price. For just $11 a month, Xero lets you send custom invoices, reconcile bank transactions, capture receipts for easier record keeping, and track inventory.

But as a small-business accounting tool, Xero really stands out on the collaboration front. Unlike nearly every other accounting solution (including QuickBooks and FreshBooks), all of Xero's accounting and inventory software plans include unlimited users. You don't have to pay extra to delegate responsibilities like bank reconciliation or expense tracking to another team member: time-saving collaboration is built into your price.

However, Xero's $11 a month plan limits you to entering only five bills and sending only 20 invoices a month. You can send unlimited invoices and quotes with only the Growing and Established plans, which start at $32 and $62 a month, respectively. Plus, you can only track expenses with the priciest plan—both QuickBooks and FreshBooks offer small-business expense tracking up front.

FreshBooks’s combination of stellar features, customizable invoices, and well-reviewed mobile apps make it pretty much perfect—especially for freelancers. Unlike Xero, FreshBooks lets you send an unlimited number of invoices and estimates with every plan. Each plan also includes time tracking for easier, more accurate client billing. FreshBooks’s built-in small-business expense tracking helps you maintain a balanced budget. And, like QuickBooks Online, FreshBooks includes built-in mileage tracking—a must for freelancers who plan to claim mileage expenses on their year-end tax forms.

But while FreshBooks doesn’t limit your invoices, it does limit the number of customers you can bill each month. You can send your customers an unlimited amount of invoices, but the cheapest plan limits that client number to just five. Additionally, FreshBooks doesn’t include bank reconciliation with its cheapest plan. Since bank reconciliation is a foundational accounting task, we can only recommend FreshBooks’s cheapest plan to freelancers or brand-new startups with just a few transactions a month.

QuickBooks is easily one of the most popular financial, tax, and accounting software options in the world. And while QuickBooks Desktop is still an option for those who prefer desktops to laptops, QuickBooks Online is Intuit’s cloud-accounting software solution. QuickBooks’s basic plan includes typical features like invoicing, billing, and receipt scanning along with more comprehensive tracking than many competitors:

• Mileage tracking
• Sales tax tracking
• Automatic tax deduction categorization
• 1099 contractor payment tracking

QuickBooks also has the absolute best mobile accounting app you can find. The app can do basically everything the software can (a rarity for any software provider, no matter the industry). If you work on the go, QuickBooks's app, which includes mobile mileage tracking, might make it a good fit.

QuickBooks's stellar reporting and tracking features come at a price, though: its cheapest small-business plan starts at $25 a month and restricts you to one user plus an accountant. The priciest plan, which includes 25 users, starts at $150 a month. At $15 a month, QuickBooks Self-Employed is a cheaper option, but it’s primarily an invoicing, mileage-tracking, and tax-tracking plan—not a fully featured bookkeeping or accounting app.

For exactly $0, Wave presents you with a slick, user-friendly dashboard and a slew of features that rival those of its paid competitors. For instance, Wave Accounting includes multi-currency support, expense tracking, unlimited invoicing, and double-entry accounting—a more accurate method of accounting that FreshBooks' basic business accounting plan notably lacks.

Wave also lets you juggle multiple businesses with the same account. If you're an Amazon or eBay seller who also manages a small team of contractors, you can track both sets of finances without paying anything.

Even though Wave has a useful payroll tool, its accounting software isn't necessarily right for businesses with dozens of employees. Since Wave offers just one accounting plan, businesses can't scale up to plans with more features as they grow. And Wave's lack of inventory tracking makes it better matched to service-based solopreneurs and freelancers who don't need both accounting and inventory software.

Zoho Books easily automates the most common (and, let's face it, boring) bookkeeping tasks—which means you can dedicate more time to your business and customers and less time to the tedious task of data entry. Most notably, it lets you set automatic customer payment reminders, create recurring expense profiles, and manage 1099 contractors.

Plus, Zoho Books is just one piece of software in the larger suite of Zoho products. Each Zoho product integrates easily with the rest, which means you can use Zoho for accounting, project management, and customer relationship management (CRM) for a start. Zoho Books costs $15 a month if you pay annually or $20 if you pay month to month. The cheapest plan includes three users, but you can also pay an extra $2.50 per month for each additional user. That’s a standout bargain, especially compared to FreshBooks' extra $10 per user per month.

Unfortunately, even though it’s a solid accounting tool, Zoho Books has one huge flaw: Zoho doesn't offer a payroll plan unless you live in California, Texas, or India. And it doesn't integrate with third-party payroll providers either. Instead, you have to manually update the payroll-related aspects of your books—which detracts from Zoho's primary perk of automation in a big way.

Similarly, Zoho Books’s cheapest plan doesn’t include automatic journal entry creation. Instead, whenever you debit or credit an account, you’ll have to manually create an entry. If you log more than a few transactions a month, the lack of automation adds major time and hassle—you’ll want the $40 a month (or $50, billed monthly) Professional plan instead.

Not sold on our top picks? Here are five more small-business accounting software options that could work better for you.

Sage Business Cloud Accounting’s cheapest plan lets you create invoices, track amounts owed, and automatically reconcile your bank accounts. If you’re willing to pay a bit more ($25 a month), Sage adds unlimited users, quotes, estimates, cash flow forecasting, and purchase invoice management. Unfortunately, Sage charges extra for receipt scanning, a feature competitors like Wave, FreshBooks, Xero, and QuickBooks include for free. And Sage’s pricier plan has fewer features than, say, Xero’s cheapest plan (though Sage doesn’t limit your monthly invoice amount).

Looking for more fully featured plans with intense support and automation? Sage Intacct could be a good pick, and it’s also our top accounting software recommendation for nonprofits.

All of OneUp's plans include customer relationship management (CRM) features, which makes it perfectly suited to sales teams that frequently follow up with customers. Plus, it's affordable: pricing for one user starts at $9 per month. If you’re a Mac user, though, you’re out of luck: OneUp works only for Windows users. And while every OneUp plan includes all of OneUp’s features, its plans limit your user numbers. Only the priciest plan, which starts at $169 a month, includes unlimited users.

Got a minute to spare? You can set up Kashoo in 60 or so seconds, and the app immediately starts to categorize your expenses and learn your business spending habits. Like Zoho Books, Kashoo's automation is its selling point—and unlike Zoho Books, it syncs with SurePayroll, one of our top payroll providers. However, Kashoo's simplicity makes it ill-suited to larger businesses that need more features and functions than Kashoo's straightforward software can provide.

If you’re looking for a cheaper solution, Kashoo offers an invoice-only plan for $0.00. It’s also in the process of developing payment-only and expense-only plans for the smallest of small businesses.

Don’t need full-service accounting software? GoDaddy Online Bookkeeping is an easy-to-use bookkeeping software program perfect for freelancers and eBay sellers who don’t need more than the basics. This bare-bones, no-frills software lets you process debit and credit payments, send invoices, and track finances for $4.99 a month. Bear in mind, though, that it's just bookkeeping: GoDaddy can help you chart your finances, but it can't help you analyze those finances to grow your business.

If you don't need quite as many features as Wave offers, ZipBooks is a solid free accounting software alternative. Even though it's free, it doesn't limit the number of invoices you can send (like Xero) or clients you can bill (like FreshBooks) per month—you can access unlimited customizable invoices and accept payments too. ZipBooks' paid plan starts at $15 a month and offers better bookkeeping and automation features than its free accounting plan. But if you prefer your accounting tools on the go, look elsewhere. ZipBooks has a solid billing-only app for Apple users, but its Android accounting app is near-uniformly panned on Google Play.¹

Xero offers fantastic accounting features at a reasonable starting price, but the best accounting software option for you depends on your business’s unique needs and budget. For instance, Wave works very well for freelancers on a budget, QuickBooks helps small-business owners who travel a lot for work, and FreshBooks’s customizable invoices are great for business owners who frequently collaborate with clients.

QuickBooks is definitely among the most popular accounting software for small businesses, but being popular isn't the same as being the best. Sure, QuickBooks could be the best software for your small business, or you might find its prices too high and its features too limited. Depending on what you need, another bookkeeping software pick like FreshBooks or Sage could be better for your business. Not sure what your other options are? Check out our list of the year's best QuickBooks alternatives to get started.

Finding the best online accounting software for your small business can seriously transform your working life. With less time spent on data entry, you have more time for the things you like most about small-business ownership, whether that's getting to know customers or making products you're proud of.

Most of our top accounting software picks include a free trial, so don't be shy about trying a few different brands if you don't hit on your favorite right away.

Need to pair payroll software with your new small-business bookkeeping and accounting software? Head over to our piece on the best payroll software for small businesses.

Disclaimer

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don't guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services.