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 $8.50 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:

• The Best Small Business Accounting Software
• What Is the Easiest Small Business Accounting Software to Use?
• Accounting Software Benefits
• Methodology: How We Test Small Business Accounting Software
• Choosing a Small Business Accounting Software Provider
• Small Business 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 accounting software for small businesses
2. Xero – Best for online businesses
3. Wave Financial – Best free software
4. Zoho Books – Best automation
5. FreshBooks – Best for usability
6. Sage – Best for invoicing
7. Kashoo – Easiest setup

Crossed out prices above refer to the ongoing software cost, while the lower prices refer to the limited-time deal available to new users.

QuickBooks Online – Best Overall Accounting Software for Small Businesses

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. This is because you will get all the important features a small business needs in these areas, from estimating and invoicing to cashflow projections and custom reports.

Paired with a 9/10 for more advanced features (including hundreds of integrations), and an impressive 9.3/10 for customer support (around-the-clock live chat support is offered on all plans), our testers' research scores prove 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 accounting 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 by giving smaller businesses the tools they need to scale up.

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 once again has all the features you’d need. For example, it integrates with users’ accounts across platforms including bank accounts, credit cards, PayPal, Square (see our Square pricing guide), 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. These tools all add up to a perfect 10/10 accounts payable score from our research team.

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. Small businesses that don't need this granular time tracking ability can simply opt not to pay for the add-on.

We do have an entire page on QuickBooks pricing, but the table below 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

Our research team found 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. It'll track invoices and bills, while covering report for taxes, sales, and more.

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 (see our Shopify pricing guide), 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 $70-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), since Xero lacks both phone and live chat support across all plans. Useful, rapid help can be key for a small business, and if that's true for you, 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 some we've reviewed (see our Squarespace review and Square Online review), 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.

Read more in our full QuickBooks vs Xero guide.

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 use Wave, so there are no price plans for us to share with you. 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 due to invoicing, estimates, and payment reminders. Bookkeeping features received a 9.5/10 score, for tools like receipt scanning and the ability to import bank statements.

With its free selection of apps, Wave 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 small business owners have to make sure they stay on top of all that paperwork, and it drops Wave's accounts payable score down to an 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 simply does not offer tools for any large businesses or ambitiously growing small ones.

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 with our Wave accounting review.

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 good scores. Our team of testers gave it a perfect 10/10 for bookkeeping, 8.5/10 for both accounts payable and receivable (bill scanning is only available with an add-on, but expense and bill tracking are covered), and 8.4/10 for financial reporting, due to sales, taxes, and cash-flow reporting.

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.

Our team still found that Zoho gives you all the standard 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 — you can get a 14-day free trial of Zoho on plans, plus a limited permanently free plan that's open to any business with an annual revenue of less than $50,000.

Read our full Zoho Books pricing and review.

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 for tools like automatic bank reconciliation and inventory management), accounts payable (6.5/10, with bill scanning on all plans but Lite), and financial reporting (8.4/10, for reports on sales, taxes, and more). In other words, our exhaustive research says this software is easy to use and has the basics you need.

However, help and support options are underwhelming (4.3/10) due to a lack of any around-the-clock live support. 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, FreshBooks pricing covers a range of costs (the crossed out price above is the ongoing price, while the lower price refers to the deal you receive for the first three months). 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, Tech.co research teams puts FreshBooks at the top our list of the best accounting software for restaurants. It's a good pick for any small business that deals with meals.

However, FreshBooks doesn’t have a native payroll processing feature. Instead, it integrates with Gusto (see Gusto Payroll pricing here or check out our Gusto vs ADP Payroll guide here) 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 granting it an impressive 8/10 ranking for the category for its expense tracking and recurring billing, 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 (types of reporting include income and cash-flow statements, balance sheet, sales, and taxes). Small businesses will be able to regularly track and collect information about expenses or invoices with Sage, thanks to its features and interface layout. It's our top pick for the best hospitality accounting software.

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 (we compare QuickBooks vs. Sage here), 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. It only has two plans, its interface is straightforward and, while it isn’t as complex as some of the other providers on our list, it 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 decent features for bookkeeping and accounts payable needs, and small businesses will enjoy the above-average score our researchers gave it for the value-to-cost ratio: Thanks to plenty of features at a reasonable cost, Kashoo earns 8.5 out of 10 stars, 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 still 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. These features are all bundled with the $27 per month plan.

You can also opt for the $18 per month “trulysmall” plan, which offers many of the same features but limits others: You'll get logos, but without customization options, and you'll only have access to essential business reports rather than advanced options. The trulysmall plan does have a few tools that the main Kashoo plan does not, however: It supports auto categorization and bulk editing for financial transactions.

Kashoo's profit and loss report.

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 Small Business 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.

Methodology: How We Test Accounting Software for Small Business

Verdict: Choosing a Small Business 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 accounting software 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