Accounting Software for Small Business

Accounting software for small businesses is a must if you’re planning to handle everything from creating invoices to calculating monthly payments. While there is plenty of accounting software you can utilize in your small business, not all of them are going to offer you everything you need. Although you may not need much, having something extra is always better than not having that bit of more. 

Most accounting software for small businesses has specialties where it appeals to certain types of people. In this article, we’ll go over the best accounting software for small businesses for different business types/owners.

Free accounting software for small businesses

Among the bazillion free accounting software for businesses, Wave stands out as the most benevolent one. You can handle many of your business needs like invoicing, receipt scanning, accounting, and create as many users as you want. It also comes with a free payroll-service feature but it’s only available in AZ, CA, FL, GA, IL, IN, MN, NY, NC, TN, TX, VA, WA, and WI. 

Best accounting software for freelancers

Freelancing has been on the rise for a couple of years in the United States but the COVID-19 pandemic left many unemployed and forced them into picking up online jobs and gigs. Even though working from home remotely has been a thing for over a decade, it certainly gained traction and more people are now working from the comfort of their homes and making money. Even if you’re not in a position where you’re earning a whole lot of money, you may need accounting software to handle some of the aspects of your own business. Whether you do digital marketing, photo/video editing, writing and editing articles, when you make above a certain amount, you will need to handle taxes and accounting. 

For those who are working as freelancers – including those that aren’t working remotely or have physical jobs, the best accounting software is QuickBook’s Self-Employed. With QuickBooks Self-Employed, you’ll get to handle many things, including taxes. A large streams of data where you can look back and see the growth of your business is a great approach to pursue your business goals. It offers plenty to freelancers that hire other freelancers to help them with and those that are working as solopreneurs.

Best accounting software for all small businesses

Although QuickBooks Self Employed is recommended for freelancers, QuickBooks Online is by far the one that has the most functions and features. There are plenty that can be done on QuickBooks. You can set up users for your employees or accountants to fulfill business tasks. It works seamlessly with all business sizes whether you’re employing one or two people or have hundreds or even thousands of employees. QuickBooks Online is the most widely used accounting software by all walks of businesses regardless of size and income. Learn how to create and give user permissions on QuickBooks Online.

One of the best features of QuickBooks is that you can import information from the accounting software to TurboTax. Because both QuickBooks and TurboTax are a product of Intuit, both services are compatible with each other.

Best accounting software for micro-businesses

The definition of a micro business is a business that employs less than ten people. If you fit this definition, Xero might be the one accounting software that can help you loads. Although QuickBooks is one of the more preferred accounting software, you probably won’t need all those extra features when you’re managing a micro-business. Making the transition from Xero to another accounting software is also possible but considering that Xero is very scalable, it’s not just for micro-businesses. If you get the feel of Xero and take advantage of everything that it offers, you won’t need to ‘upgrade’ to another accounting software. 

Take note that all accounting software for small businesses mentioned above has a mobile application you can utilize in your accounting. This gives you the flexibility to handle some of the business tasks without whipping out your laptop and do some work on your smartphone.