Whilst managing the finances of a small or medium enterprise (SME) used to be fraught with difficulties, the migration of businesses onto cloud-based applications has helped reduce tax mistakes, prevent audits and allowed for a greater collaboration between a business and its accountants and financial advisers.
In an industry that has traditionally been dominated by expensive and resource-hungry desktop programs there are now an ever increasing number of lightweight yet powerful cloud-based apps. If you have you have started your own online business, these accounting apps should be a part of your enterprise.
Xero
The software is multi-user, feature-rich and easy to use. The central dashboard gives real-time insight into bank balances, recent sales and upcoming bills, and from there users can manage inventory, create purchase orders, handle expense claims, conduct pay-runs, pay bills, create numerous financial reports and manage their contacts.
Xero also provide an excellent mobile app on both Android and iPhone, and offer 24/7 email support and a detailed online help centre.
Wave
Aimed at small businesses with nine employees or fewer, the award-winning software has now secured $20 million of investment and developed excellent support for invoicing, accounting, payroll and payments. Unusually for a free accounting app, Wave follows double-entry accounting protocol, meaning both the Chart of Accounts and the Journal entries can be modified.
The final feature which sets Wave apart from its competitors is its ability to connect with your financial institutions and download recent transactions directly into its balance sheets. Even several paid apps won’t let you do this, and its inclusion is a real time saver and an undoubted customer-winner.
Freshbooks
Aimed at small and medium businesses, Freshbooks has the simple aim of helping companies get organised and get paid. With online payments, expense tracking, tax assistance, customised invoices, payment reminders and P&L reports, the app can be used as simplistically or as in-depth as the company requires.
The step-by-step wizard makes it easy for non-tech savvy people to quickly use and understand, and there is constant live support should you need to speak to a technician. You can take advantage of a 30-day free trial, where-after the basic business package will cost $19.95 per month.
Outright
Outright should be of particular interest to US-based users thanks to its in-built ability to automatically sort sales and expenses into IRS tax categories.
In addition to typical features such as report production and account management, the software also offers nightly importing of your financial data from banks and credit cards, meaning every morning you will wake up to a complete, organised and up-to-date overview of your company’s finances.
FreeAgent
The benefit for freelancers and contractors comes in its organisation of expenses and incomes by project — allowing users to establish a budget for each area and thus display their profitability. FreeAgent also utilises a time-tracking feature, making it perfect for remote workers to control and manage their timesheets within each project whilst the software maintains an overview of the project in its entirety.
The app offers a 30-day trial and thereafter is $20 per month.
I have to use QuickBooks on my office. How about this one?
ReplyDeleteNice blog with awesome information. it’s very helpful. thanks for sharing.
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