Over time, several companies, regardless of their size, have learned the hard way that Excel isn’t enough to suffice their accounting needs. In particular, start-ups and agencies concerned with SaaS have accounting needs that cannot be met by using basic accounting software. For instance, monthly revenue tracking is an essential task for every company. However, software like Excel makes it difficult to carry out such a task.

Unfortunately, several companies tend to undermine the importance of accounting for a business or try managing it all themselves and end up wasting a lot of time and resources just to avoid the cost of hiring. 

Check out these 5 best accounting software for small businesses & startups that can help you streamline your accounting workflow and improve efficiency.

1. Xero

Xero is an excellent accounting SaaS tool that helps small business owners and startups in accessing and keeping tabs on relevant financial data in real-time from almost anywhere and at any time. The best part about this tool is that it can be accessed using any device. Being an effective tool for accounting, it helps companies carry out several tasks including receivable and payable tracking, wages tracking, revenue tracking and so much more!

This tool also offers support in multiple languages. The updates of currency exchange are reported in real-time by Xero. A noteworthy aspect of Xero is that SaaS company owners can easily customize it as per their needs.

Features

• Bill payment and tracking
• Expense tracker
• Bank feed setup
• Online payment assistance 
• Job tracking
• Integrated with Gusto for payroll
• Categorizing and reconciling transactions
• Contact management
• Automated data capture
• Accounting reports

Price

• Early plan at $12 per month
• Growing plan at $34 per month
• Established plan at $65 per month

Rating

• Capterra: 4.3
• G2: 4.3

2. Zoho Books

Zoho Books is another great accounting tool for companies. Zoho Books has several advanced features including templates for invoices, domain customization, recurring journals, bulk payments, deletion of projects, and so much more. This tool can send payment reminders automatically and it also helps you in tracking retainer invoices with ease. It makes payment reconciliation easy by integrating with Stripe. 

With the help of this tool, any form of miscommunication between the accountancy and sales units can be eliminated completely. Since it has mobile optimization, you can easily integrate this tool with other applications relevant to your business.

Features

• Customized invoicing
• Professional estimate creation
• Client portal
• Expense tracking
• Bill generation
• Bank transaction tracking
• Inventory level monitoring
• Billable project tracking
• Real-time report scheduling
• Streamlined document storage

Price

• Free version with limited features
• Standard version at $9.87 per month
• Professional version at $19.75 per month
• Premium version at $39.50 per month
• Elite version at $65.85 per month
• Ultimate version at $105.36 per month

Rating

• Capterra: 4.4
• G2: 4.5

3. Wave

If you are looking for a SaaS tool for accounting that is free, Wave is the right choice. This tool has been designed specifically for small businesses with less than ten employees. Even independent accountants and consultants can rely on this tool completely. Although it is a pretty easy-to-use tool, the security of the data and information it processes remains the best. 

You can carry out unlimited invoicing using Wave and also carry out real analysis of your company finances. The features of the tool like automated payments and recurring billing make the entire process of creating and sending professional invoices a hassle-free task.

Features

• Invoice tracking
• Cloud-hosted platform
• Management of expenses
• Easy to use interface
• Centralized dashboard
• Quote conversion
• Automated active invoice reminders
• Multilingual support
• Mobile app
• Pricing model based on pay-per-transaction

Price

Free of cost

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6
• G2: 4.4

4. Intuit – QuickBooks

If you are a high-growth business and have challenging financial evaluation requirements, Intuit – QuickBooks is the right SaaS accounting tool for you. This tool has multiple useful features including payroll management, inventory monitoring and several other features specific to your industry to make financial transaction tracking easier. Although this tool comes with such great features, its primary functionality lies in the area of financial reporting and management.

Since this platform uses easy-to-understand language and is pretty easy to navigate, you would not find the task of using this tool cumbersome. Since it has a massive capacity for document storage, even complex tasks related to accounting can be easily handled by it.

Features

• Cloud account management
• Professional invoice creation
• Customized sales receipts
• Online banking integration with QuickBooks
• Automatic bank statement and transaction updates
• Customizable dashboard and reports
• Recurring payment scheduling
• Employee time tracking
• Mobile and tablet access
• Free customer support

Price

$6.97 per month with a 30-day free trial

Rating

• Capterra: 4.3
• G2: 4.6

5. FreshBooks

FreshBooks is another efficient SaaS tool for accounting that offers plenty of useful solutions for businesses and freelancers to make accounting tasks simpler. This tool is specifically great at time tracking and invoicing. There are several useful features offered by the centralized dashboard of this tool like reminders for overdue payments, payment claims, delay fees, and payment gateways, among others.

The billing processes that are recurring can be easily automated by FreshBooks and all payment modes like Amex, PayPal, credit cards, and Google Checkouts, can be integrated with it. Effective collaboration between your employees is now possible, thanks to the redesigned dashboard.

Features

• Customizable invoices
• Automated reminders for pending payment
• Automated late fee application
• Multiple payment modes
• Scheduled invoicing for recurring invoices
• Customizable due date setting
• Centralized storage of sent and received invoices
• Invoices in multiple languages
• Invoice duplication
• Billing in multiple currencies

Price

• Lite version at $6 per month
• Plus version at $10 per month
• Premium version at $20 per month
• Custom pricing for Select version

Rating

• Capterra: 4.5
• G2: 4.5

With a myriad of accounting tools available today, making the right choice can be quite challenging. This list can help you to a great extent when it comes to gaining some clarity on choosing the best SaaS tools for accounting.