If you’re looking for the best accounting tools and software for your business, you’ve come to the right place. Every growing business needs a good tool, software and strategy to ensure they have a good handle on their finances.
Why?
Because you can’t run a successful, growing business without the back-office support of efficient finance and accounting tools. Tools that keep track of your costs, revenues and profits, and ensure you are tax compliant wherever you sell from and where you’re selling to.
Whether you’re a brand-new store owner looking to track your profits and get a handle on your tax compliance or an established omnichannel business needing top-class financial tracking, there is a variety of cloud-based and downloadable accounting tools and software out there to meet almost every business need and budget.
We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of 40+ financial and accounting tools and software to cover any and all of your accounting and business needs, ranging from totally free tools for small businesses to customized packages for bigger and faster-growing enterprises.
If you already know what type of tool you need but not which brand to choose, you can jump to any of the following sections below.
If not, grab your coffee, get comfortable and let’s get started!
1. Brightpearl
Price: Customizable plans starting from around $375 per month for 3 users
Best for: Small to medium omnichannel and eCommerce businesses and retailers
Platform: Cloud-based
Integrates with: Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, eBay, Amazon, Shipstation, UPS and more
Brightpearl’s eCommerce management system is a full-service platform that integrates accounting with back-office inventory and warehouse management. It integrates with your shipping systems, and like other platforms such as FreshBooks, it is mobile-optimized and offers APIL developers options for easy integration.
Key features include:
- CRM
- Order management
- Batch processing and supplier ordering
- Payment management
2. NetSuite
Price: Varies, at it offers build-your-own package options; but their rough base-license costs are around $999 per month with access costs of $99 per user, per month.
Best for: Any sized, fast-growing business that sells physical products
Platform: Cloud-based
Netsuite offers a variety of comprehensive online financial, accounting and business management solutions. But if you’re looking for a full solution, then their ERP package includes everything you need to run a successful commerce business including cloud financial management and warehouse and fulfillment warehousing.
Key features include:
- In- and out-bound logistics product management
- Full accounting services
- Billing
- Financial planning and reporting
- Supply chain management
- Order management
3. ProfitBooks
Price: On request
Best for: Small, growing businesses
Platform: Cloud-based
Integrates with: Amazon, QuickBooks, WooCommerce
ProfitBooks works seamlessly with QuickBooks to offer you an all-in-one accounting and inventory management platform for your business. You can do anything from creating invoices to managing branch-level sales transactions, while you manage your stock, purchases and sales orders all from one convenient platform.
Key features include:
- Purchase workflow simplification
- Stock control and adjustments
- Product batch maintenance
- Multiple warehouse maintenance
- Multiple currencies
4. QuickBooks
Price: Free 30-day trial then starts at $15 per month
Best for: Small to medium growing eCommerce businesses
Platform: Cloud-based
Integrates with: ProfitBooks
QuickBooks has a variety of solutions catering to any size business. It’s their Plus Plan that offers you the most flexibility with its inventory tracking and advanced accounting options. However, if you are a complete accounting novice or won’t have an accounting service provider, you could find their system a little hard at first.
Key features include:
- Sales, expenses and profit tracking
- Invoice creation and sending
- Sales tax tracking and management
- Bill payment and management
- Inventory tracking
- Profitability tracking
5. Apache OpenOffice
Price: Free
Best for: Budgeting and planning for small or new business owners
Platform: Windows, Linux, OS
If you’re looking for an alternative (free) software option to Microsoft Office, then Apache’s OpenOffice is an easy-to-use solution for your spreadsheet needs. Their library of templates has hundreds of small business templates from budgeting to project planning sheets. In short, OpenOffice offers a cheap, user-friendly alternative for planning your new budget across all areas of your business.
Key features include:
- Budgeting sheet templates
- Project planning
- Timesheets
6. DeepMine
Price: 60-day trial and then from $10 per month
Best for: For small to medium Shopify store owners
The DeepMine Shopify app allows you to view accounting information (such as sales, tax, shipping, costs, etc.) in real-time from one dashboard. They are also busy beta testing a new feature that will enable you to set up and pay vendors and royalties. DeepMine gives eCommerce store owners access to vendor, SKU, order status and best-selling product reports while also enabling you to set up the cost for each product, automate email reports and remit partner percentages.
Key features include:
- Order status (paid, authorized, pending, refunded, voided, abandoned)
- Fulfillment status (unshipped, partial, shipped)
- Cost of product setup
- Automated email reports
7. Delirious Profit
Price: Free 7-day trial then $7 per month
Best for: Shopify store owners
The Delirious Profit Shopify app enables you to quickly and efficiently calculate your profits and margins on Shopify. Giving Shopify users an overview of earnings over time, it allows you to add your cost price (COGS) to variants and is super easy to set up.
Key features include:
- Top products
- Inventory stock costs and profits per product, month, vendor, category and channel
- Discount performance reports
8. Profiteer ‑ Cost of Goods Sold
Price: Free 3-day trial then $15 per month
Best for: Lean eCommerce store owners wanting a complete look at product costs
Profiteer is a handy Shopify app that will show you your real profits on total sales in real-time. In short, it records the cost price of each product as it’s sold, having costs adjusted automatically as that currency fluctuates against the USD.
Key features include:
- See the total value of your unsold inventory at any time
- Changing cost and retail prices
- Profits and margins report
9. SimplyCost
Price: Free 14-day trial then $4.99 per month
Best for: Small to medium Shopify store owners
SimplyCost is a Shopify app that allows you to add COGS (cost of goods) to your Shopify store thereby enabling you to calculate profit in real-time. Taking into consideration any current discounts, refunds, shipping and taxes, it helps users automatically calculate and track their profitability.
Key features include:
- A variety of profit reports by time, channel, location, SKU and more
- Cost price bulk upload
- Supports additional costs: shipping, handling, etc.
- Export reports
10. Adminsoft Accounts
Price: Free
Best for: UK-based business owners
Platform: Windows
Adminsoft is a free, downloadable Windows accounting program that offers a complete money management toolkit. This program is particularly useful for business in the UK, as it will be MTD compliant for VAT as of April 2019. That’s not to say that you can’t use it if you’re not in the UK, since they include other currencies as well.
Key features include:
- Invoice, statement and quote management and creation
- Customer and supplier list creation and management
- Supplier payments, control stock and purchase order management
- Profit, loss, budgeting and cash flow tracking
- Payroll management
11. Brightbook
Price: Free, with feature upgrades
Best for: Freelancers, contractors and small or new business owners with zero accounting experience
Platform: Cloud-based
Brightbook is a free online bookkeeping and accounting platform. With an emphasis on easy, Brightbook enables you to set up multiple companies with multiple users. With this accounting software, you can accept online payments and process your bills.
Key features include:
- Invoicing
- Bank statement importing to reconcile accounts
- Profit and loss tracking
- Prepare tax reports
- Expense and bill processing
12. HDPOS Smart Accounts and Billing
Price: Free 14-day trial and then from $22 per month
Best for: Small to medium omnichannel businesses and retailers
Platform: Android app and cloud platform
HDPOS Smart Accounts and Billing is a downloadable software that offers a host of accounting and billing features from billing and invoicing to barcode sticker printing. Starting at just $22 per month for a single computer, it’s an affordable option for small businesses.
Key features include:
- Billing and invoicing
- Inventory stock management
- Custom sales invoices
- CRM tools
- Barcode sticker printing
13. FreeAgent
Price: Free 30-day trial and then from $20 per month
Best for: Small or new businesses and freelancers
Platform: Cloud-based
Integrates with: Stripe, PayPal, Zapier, Capsule, Cyclr and more
FreeAgent is an all-in-one accounting software that is specifically designed with small businesses in mind. Offering a variety of tools from one dashboard, it covers a host of functionality to manage your finances.
Key features include:
- Profit, cash flow, tax, time tracking and project tracking
- Quoting and invoicing
- Payroll features
14. FinancialForce Accounting for SalesForce
Price: Custom prices
Best for: Larger businesses looking for comprehensive accounting software
Platform: Cloud-based
Integrates with: Avalara, AccessPay, Expensify and more
FinancialForce has a variety of accounting and financial solutions. Their various packages include automated ordering and billing, cash-flow optimization features, flexible general ledgers, pre-sale planning, fulfillment management and reporting. The advantage with FinancialForce is you can build a package of relevant services to ensure you are able to streamline all your bookkeeping, accounting and budgeting.
Key features include:
- One-stop revenue management
- General ledger
- Accounts payable and receivable
- Fixed assets
- Financial reporting
- Cash management
15. FreshBooks
Price: Free 30-day trial and then from $15 per month
Best for: Small businesses and accounting freelancers
Platform: Cloud-based
Integrates with: Shopify, WooCommerce, Zapier, Stripe, Trello and more
FreshBooks is a popular all-in-one invoicing and accounting solution for small businesses. They have worked very hard to take the frustration out of day-to-day bookkeeping by keeping their platform easy to use. With over five million users, their features are comprehensive.
Key features include:
- Financial reporting
- Invoicing
- Expense management
- Receipt management
- Time tracking
- Project management
- Online payments
- High-volume billing
16. GnuCash
Price: Free
Best for: Individuals and small business owners
Platform: Linux, Windows, BSD, Solaris and OS X
GnuCash is a flexible, open-source accounting and financial management software that incorporates professional accounting principles to help you balance your books and prepare reports. Another alternative to Office, with GnuCash you can do a bunch of accounting tasks.
Key features include:
- Credit notes and invoice creation
- Receivables and billables management
- Basic payroll accounting
- Scheduled payments
17. Invoice Expert
Price: Free, or paid version for $69
Best for: Small or new businesses selling physical products
Platform: Windows
Invoice Expert does more than just invoicing; it’s a complete invoice, inventory and billing software. The free version is a little bit limited, but the paid download will give you adequate templates and functionality to match your accounting needs.
Key features include:
- Invoicing and billing
- Inventory management
- Customer management
- Vendor management
- Invoice and quote designer
18. QuickFile
Price: Various free packages and then £45+VAT per year for the…
