Best Accounting Software of 2023

QuickBooks is an intelligent accounting software package developed by California-based financial services conglomerate Intuit. It is primarily marketed toward small to medium businesses as an on-premise and remote accounting solution that accepts payments, captures receipts, and manages employee payroll, among other things.

QuickBooks is widely regarded as the best online accounting tool available in the market, with stellar critic and user reviews across the board. The primary reasons for its popularity are its simple yet comprehensive approach to general accounting features and easy-to-use, customizable GUI.

QuickBooks’ cheapest plan starts at $15 per month and provides you with all basic accounting features, including special options like mileage tracking and vendor payments to 1099 (non-employment payment) categories.

I found QuickBooks’s straightforward approach to accounting solutions is its biggest plus. The bill and receipt capture and microservices made it easy for me to automate almost every clerical task related to day-to-day accounting.

Who is Intuit QuickBooks best for?

I recommend QuickBooks for accountants and small to medium businesses looking for an efficient accounting automation solution. You can do important tasks such as sending an invoice to a customer quickly through easy-to-use invoice forms available on the platform.

Recent updates to Intuit QuickBooks

QuickBooks’s latest upgrade offers a sponsored integration with the email marketing solution MailChimp. This integration allows you to sync your free MailChimp account with QuickBooks to allow the platform access to customer information. The update also allows QuickBooks online to be synced to your Google Spreadsheets for instant data capture and analysis.

Intuit QuickBooks pricing

QuickBooks is reasonably priced for its basic plan. While enterprise-level plans are costly, these plans offer several business development features that provide good value.

All of Xero’s products including the Xero accounting software are sold as subscription-based Software as a Service (SaaS) products. This accounting favorite boasts customers in more than 180 countries, with major markets in Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., Canada, and South Africa.

Xero is an excellent accounting tool for micro-businesses with an accountant or an in-house bookkeeping team. While I didn’t find its interface as intuitive as QuickBooks, Xero is a lucid automation tool that provides all necessary accounting services.

I easily handled invoice management, bank reconciliation, and payroll management through Xero’s easy-access toolbar. The platform also lets businesses simultaneously monitor and manage the spending and ROI on multiple projects.

What sets Xero apart from its competitors is its advanced bank reconciliation options. Xero automatically allows you to select and reconcile specific items on your bank statements and check them against the uploaded invoices.

Xero’s advanced accounting features can further help professional bookkeepers automate day-to-day tasks.

Who is Xero best for?

I recommend Xero for small to medium businesses with existing bookkeeping help. Xero’s low price point makes it an excellent choice for growing small to medium businesses looking for accounting solutions that are both affordable and dependable.

Recent updates to Xero

Xero has a great update cadence, with new feature updates being announced in small packages almost every few weeks.

The latest updates include a Xero Me template upgrade that allows you to add start and end times and declare unpaid breaks on your payroll management timesheets.

Australia, Xero’s largest consumer base, now also enjoys a direct third-party integration option with the Qantas Business Rewards app, including an exclusive partnership that earns you Qantas reward points upon purchases on Xero’s platform.

Xero pricing

Xero offers a great price point for small businesses with its Basic package starting from $12 per month. Its subsequent Growing and Established packages are cheaper than most competitors, at $35 per month and $64 per month, respectively. However, payroll integration with Gusto costs an extra $40 per month over the subscription price.

FreshBooks is a SaaS digital accounting solution developed and marketed by the Toronto-based Canadian 2ndSite Inc. It was first launched in 2003 as a web-based responsive platform that small to medium businesses can access through any digital device with a stable internet connection. FreshBooks’ wide range of core accounting services and business management features are supported by an agile on-call support team.

FreshBooks is an excellent solution for businesses/individuals looking for a highly-accessible solution for service industry professionals. A trial account took me the least amount of time (a minute, flat) and hassle to make, allowing us access to all relevant dashboards on the home screen. The mobile app is incredibly quick, efficient, and well-designed.

FreshBooks is fairly affordable, with its basic five-client plan starting at $6 per month. Subsequent plans allow 50 clients ($12) and unlimited clients ($22) monthly. FreshBooks will flash you a substantially lower price when you first visit the site. The ad is a 70% discount offer you can redeem for three months as a new subscriber.

FreshBooks is a fairly affordable solution with an excellent mobile application built for easy use. It is the prime choice for businesses willing to make a long-term commitment. The initial 70% discount for the first three months and an additional 10% discount on yearly subscriptions make it a pocket-friendly option.

Who is FreshBooks best for?

I recommend FreshBooks for service industry businesses willing to commit relatively longer. The invoicing feature comes with a special service-centered feature titled retainers, which helps account for token/retainer-based services.

Recent updates to Freshbooks

FreshBooks’s latest update package allow you to manually track mileage over Android and iOS applications. It also permits mobile and desktop users to import specific transactions from an uploaded PDF/CSV file for advanced bank reconciliation.

Freshbooks pricing

FreshBooks is fairly well priced with a comfortable basic price point of $6 per month. This is the most affordable option for businesses looking for long-term subscriptions. Its added discounts for long-term purchases make it an excellent choice for small to medium businesses and individual accountants with an extensive service-industry-based clientele.

Sage50 cloud is a user-friendly solution for small to medium businesses with features that simplify accounting and are highly scalable. Sage50 comprises several local accounting software solutions, all acquired, rebranded, and redesigned by the Sage conglomerate for distribution as different versions of the Sage50 accounting and bookkeeping services platform.

Sage is the perfect choice for small businesses looking for a downloadable tool that can be used offline (except for the cloud features). Unlike most providers on the list that market SaaS products, Sage’s software is an on-file, downloadable tech ecosystem that small to medium businesses can use to power accounting operations.

Small to medium businesses can essentially redesign Sage’s platform through its customizable SDK to create need-based UI screens, workflows, and invoice form templates for your business.

Who is Sage50 cloud best for?

I recommend Sage50 for businesses looking for a full in-house accounting solution they intend on using for a long time. Sage’s malleability and annual discount make it ideal for budding small businesses looking for a scalable accounting solutions provider that doubles as an in-house proprietary solution and can be tweaked to specific business needs.

Recent updates to Sage50 cloud

All of Sage50’s updates are downloaded on individual devices to keep all users in sync. Sage recently partnered with PayPal and Stripe to enable faster payment processing, so you can now add a ‘Pay Now’ link to your invoices. The new update also allows you to withhold specific tax amounts on sales transactions. Sage’s 300 cloud — the cloud version of Sage50, allows you to control on-screen text and graphic sizes through the settings panel.

Sage50 cloud pricing

Sage50 comes at a premium price point and is hence only suitable for businesses looking to invest in a proprietary solution. The Quantum Accounting package, while expensive ($919/year), can double as a customizable management tool that helps you automate your internal workflow. Because of its pricing structure, I recommend taking a demo for Sage50 before purchasing a subscription. Sage offers a 40% discount for all subscribers on annual purchases.

Wave Financial is another Toronto-based accounting software company that started in 2009 with a revolutionary à la carte service model. The company first started with free basic accounting services and a highly affordable personal finance and document capture system through optical character recognition (OCR), which helped it garner a sizable consumer base.

Wave Financial is by far the best free accounting solutions provider available online. This efficient, easily-accessible service. I was able to build an à la carte type subscription by adding my own payroll and accounting help according to my business needs.

Wave’s subscription model makes it an incredibly scalable service. Businesses can essentially outsource all of their accounting services, including day-to-day bookkeeping, with the help of Wave Advisors — an on-demand professional bookkeeping service.

Who is Wave Financial best for?

I recommend Wave for businesses looking to try out a fully-customized option where they get to pick what services they use through an à la carte mechanism. The pay-per-use payment processing and pay-as-you-go payroll integration are ideal for nascent-stage businesses looking for dynamic solutions. It is also a great choice for businesses that require quickly scalable solutions that can be dynamically customized to suit their changing needs.

Recent updates to Wave Financial

Wave Money, Wave’s dedicated banking services provider, now comes with a mobile check deposit feature. You can download and upload checks to your banking provider’s platforms directly through Wave using the feature.

Wave Financial pricing

While Wave Financial might market itself as a free accounting services provider, its catalog of free services is quite limited. Important services like payment processing, payroll management, business development, and bookkeeping help are all paid for monthly, albeit at reasonable rates.

Zoho, a multinational corporation based in Chennai, India, is known for its stronghold over the web-based business tools market in the subcontinent. Like Sage, Zoho is a tech conglomerate with several products and services under its banner, including Zoho Suite, a G Suite-style comprehensive office documentation service. Zoho Books is the accounting-based SaaS platform/CRM owned and marketed by the Zoho Corporation.

Zoho Books, a proprietary accounting software solution marketed as a SaaS product, offers excellent, in-depth accounting features for both free and paid accounts. Zoho Books is a good choice for businesses looking for comprehensive business solutions, primarily a powerful CRM.

I found Zoho Books a little complicated to use, but a great solution for businesses with an in-house accounting team looking to outsource everyday tasks and streamline workflows through intelligent data analysis.

I especially liked the proactive time tracking and complimentary payroll integration for the more pricey packages. Zoho’s easily accessible but verbose UI that might confuse you if you are non-technical.

Who is Zoho Books best for?

Zoho Books is best for businesses looking to supplement an in-house accounting team. It offers extremely easy integration with Zoho CRM, which can help businesses generate better customer profiles and hence more actionable data insights.

Recent updates to Zoho Books

The most recent update allows you to convert Zoho’s Bundles template to PDF and print it in one click. It also allows customers to bulk pay all the invoices you send through their portal. Finally, all financial and business performance on the Zoho Books platform can automatically be compared with year-to-date data.

Zoho Books pricing

Priced at $20 to $275 per month for paid plans, Zoho Books is one of the more expensive services I reviewed. Only businesses below a certain net annual revenue can opt for a free account. While a bit expensive, Zoho Books’ pricing plans are much more comprehensive than other service providers. It does not charge any extra fee for payment processing and tracking or payroll management. Also, it allows cash flow forecasting and complimentary integration with Shopify stores for better data capture.

Kashoo in Vancouver, Canada, is a cloud accounting service designed to help small to medium businesses scale up faster and completely automate their accounting operations. The service operates under the Trulysmall banner as an automated accounting service provider.

While Trulysmall takes care of payment processing, invoice management, and payroll services, Kashoo markets itself as an easy-to-use cloud accounting service designed to simplify day-to-day operations for small business owners.

I found Kashoo to be a lucid, easy-to-use UI. The homepage makes the platform easy to fully access and understand, even if you're not a trained accountant. The page is divided into three easy-access parts:

A favorites panel with buttons for all standard accounting features like bills, checks, banking, and journal entries.

An easy insights column displays important information like account balance, credit card payments, and unpaid invoices. The third column displays links to vendors, clients, and accounts lists.

Kashoo is the most user-friendly accounting software I reviewed and is a good option for solidifying accounting workflows. Trulysmall’s basic accounting features make it easy to automate day-to-day accounting activities like payment tracking and invoicing. Yet Kashoo’s advanced features simplify using business data to draw actionable insights and streamline accounting operations.

Who is Kashoo best for?

I recommend Kashoo for small to medium businesses establishing accounting workflows, especially small-business owners. The platform is user-friendly and dynamic, making it easier for business owners to handle their daily accounting while bookkeepers handle complex tasks like bank reconciliation and double ledger entries. My testing showed that Kashoo is the most user-friendly accounting service available.

Recent updates to Kashoo

Kashoo’s new mobile update now offers simpler UIs for you, whether you have Android or iOS, along with multi-currency transaction support across all platforms. The update came shortly after Trulysmall added the multi-currency support feature to the web platform.

Kashoo also increased account security by adding phone verification to all user accounts across the platform. Verification is conducted through a time-sensitive text code which Kashoo will verify on the platform/app.

Kashoo pricing

Kashoo offers very affordable services, perfect for small businesses looking to experiment with simple accounting software. Its cheap, straightforward pricing options make it attractive to nascent-stage businesses looking for account help.

The platform’s perpetually free invoicing and income tracking feature is well suited for businesses looking to outsource only a small, clerical part of their day-to-day accounting to a digital platform.

Patriot Software LLC is a U.S. software services company specializing in accounting and payroll solutions. In business for over three decades, Patriot boasts thousands of users across the country and focuses on building and maintaining SaaS accounting solutions for small to medium businesses and individual accountants.

One of Patriot’s unique selling points is its high regard for data privacy and security. Patriot employs high-level secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption to hide user data from all third parties.

I found Patriot to be a simple-to-use accounting solution perfect for individual accountants or accounting/finance-based small to medium businesses. The UI is engaging and efficient and allows easy access to all basic accounting tools, such as an invoice generator, payment tracking, and vendor management. It was easy to add and manage vendor sub-accounts with a fully-guided onboarding service.

Patriot is a small, user-experience-focused business that offers proactive sales and onboarding help. I found the support team to be courteous and highly responsive. Customers are offered guided tours and free onboarding help with each Patriot package.

Who is Patriot best for?

I recommend Patriot for all accountants/accounting-based businesses looking for an affordable, user-friendly solution. Patriot’s special focus on customer service and data security further ensures that accountants and small to medium businesses have a great experience with the product.

Recent updates to Patriot

Patriot’s most recent software update allows customers to list subtractions under the transactions chart. Customers can also assign certain transactions to specific customers/vendors while importing a bunch of transactions onto the platform. The bank reconciliation feature has also been updated and is now capable of automatically matching invoiced transactions to those that are on file.

Patriot pricing

Patriot accounting services are offered at standard rates of $20 per month, whereas payroll services cost an extra $17 to $37 per month. Special accountant packages include service bundles that offer both these services at a 5% to 20% monthly discount.

Deskera is a U.S.-based multinational SaaS platform offering accounting, payroll, and business development services to small to medium businesses. Unlike most accounting software I reviewed, Deskera solely focuses on accounting and bookkeeping services through its accounting product Deskera Books.

Other services like payroll and workflow management are offered under labels like Deskera People and Deskera CRM. Being one of the most expensive services on the list, Deskera is a premium offering marketed toward businesses looking for a complete workspace solution.

Deskera markets itself as a premium business solutions software. I managed everything from day-to-day accounting to CRM and payroll management in testing. My testing showed that Deskera, while efficient, is only worth the money if it’s used as a complete business solutions provider.

The platform functions as a set of services (all operating under different names through different sites) offered to customers in product bundles. While the services are all integrated, I found it difficult to keep jumping back and forth between the websites.

Deskera’s biggest selling point is its state-of-the-art mobile application, the best currently available on the market. The application is specially designed for Android and iOS environments and made it easy for me to access every advanced accounting service through my phone.

Who is Deskera best for?

I recommend Deskera for businesses looking to outsource their accounting and workflow management to a digital solution. Deskera offers several different business development and CRM-related services that make it an efficient business tool.

Recent updates to Deskera

Deskera Books’ most recent update allows you to make bulk payments/order fulfillments directly through the invoice. It also allows you to simultaneously capture and analyze data from receipts from multiple goods warehouses. The platform, as a whole, is expected to add a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) service to its catalog this year.

Deskera pricing

Deskera is the most expensive accounting software I reviewed. Its price point of $83 to $833 per month makes it a premium offering only fit for businesses that are willing to spend extra for advanced services and a best-in-class mobile app. I recommend switching to Deskera only if you want a long-term, company-wide commitment.

Free Agent is an accounting software provider based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The platform is easy to use and true to its roots, focusing primarily on providing cheap and efficient accounting services to small to medium businesses and novice accountants.

Free Agent is a straightforward accounting tool meant exclusively for small to medium businesses and small accounting teams. While the service does have some advanced accounting features like bank reconciliation, it does not offer too many business or workflow management tools or services.

Free Agent’s UI was extremely lucid and easy for me to use. The company markets itself as a user-friendly service meant for novice accountants and small to medium businesses just starting to tackle complex bookkeeping. I found the dashboards to be well-segregated, so it’s easy for beginners to navigate the platform without much help.

Who is Free Agent best for?

My testing showed that Free Agent is particularly good for businesses that haven’t had a full-fledged accounting department in the past. The platform’s lucid UI and low subscription fees allow businesses to get familiarized with digital accounting solutions without making a long-term commitment or going through a lengthy onboarding process.

Recent updates to Free Agent

New updates allow you to file taxes directly through the platform as a Free Agent client. It also allows for multi-category bills and cash-basis accounting, all embedded into the platform’s default features. Free Agent now allows businesses to compare revenue and other important parameters with similar-sized businesses using the platform.

Free Agent pricing

Free Agent offers extremely affordable solutions starting at $12 per month for the first six months, then $24 per month. It's perfect for micro-businesses and individual accountants that are just starting. The payroll management service can be further integrated with any package for no extra cost.