The Best Cloud-Based Accounting Tools for Small Businesses / It's taken more than a decade, but online accounting solutions for small businesses are finally close to matching their desktop counterparts. Here are the top-rated cloud-based products we've tested.

Kathy Yakal for PC Magazine writes: It's hard to deny the appeal of online, Web-based tools. From personal banking services to Gmail, the convenience of accessing your information from any Internet-connected device is unparalleled. Wouldn't it be ideal, if you could run your small business from the Web, too? While it might be premature for some businesses to move all their bookkeeping and management online, we're certainly getting closer to that dream. For some small and micro businesses, however, cloud-based tools already make perfect sense.

I looked at several of the top online accounting solutions and found four that are worthy of consideration, depending on the type and size of business you run. They all follow standard double-entry accounting rules, equipped with a customizable Chart of Accounts and the ability to create journal entries. You can create records for customers, vendors, items and employees. Using that data, your business can manage its income and expenses via transaction forms, such as invoices and bills.

Payroll processing is available in all these cloud-based solutions, either as an integrated add-on or as a standard feature. Financial reports give managers critical information about the company's financial standing. And businesses are encouraged to invite their accountants in to monitor their work and perform thorny tasks, like journal entries, which are at the core of the double-entry accounting system, but which are hidden by these applications' exceptional user interfaces and navigational tools.

These four also use Web and mobile technology capably. You can connect them to your financial institutions online and track transactions from your bank and credit card accounts, and mobile apps make accessing them remotely possible, too.

Only you (and your accountant) can decide if a cloud-based accounting solution is right for your business, but our in-depth reviews can help you start thinking about them. Click the titles of the services below to read our full reviews. Think we missed a great service? Had a terrific (or terrible) experience with a cloud-based accounting service? Let us know in the comments below. For PCMag's complete business coverage, please visit our business landing page. [snip]  The article continues reviewing Quickbooks, Wave, Xero, & Paychex, continue reading by clicking here.