One of the easiest ways to keep your accounting records is to do it online. Here is what to look for as a solution, as well as a few potential choices:
What to Look for in an Accounting Solution
First of all, know what you need to do with your accounting software. Do you need to only track expenses, or manage payroll, invoice clients, and create profit and loss statements? The more complex your needs, the more you can expect to pay for accounting software. Naturally, if all you need are simple features, then you can go with a simpler choice and save a lot of money and learning time. Take the future of your business into consideration. If in twelve months you expect to have substantial growth and need additional accounting features, then it is best to start with a more powerful application now rather than make a switch a few months later.
Gone are the days when you needed to create Excel spreadsheets, print them to PDFs and mail them to your clients. Here are three popular choices for online business accounting.
FreshBooks
FreshBooks is a unique online solution that makes it very simple for anyone to create invoices and send them out online. With FreshBooks, all it takes is about 30 seconds to send out an invoice. You can track all your clients, your invoices and your income from FreshBook’s easy-to-use interface. FreshBooks also ties into several other popular online applications. For example, you can manage your projects in Basecamp and then bill for those projects using FreshBooks.
Less Accounting
The name explains their philosophy. They aim to help business owners do less accounting, meaning less paperwork and less maintenance to keep their books in order. Their user interface is extremely simple and can be learned in about an hour. They have all the features you would expect in an accounting solution, but laid out in a very intuitive manner. Keep in mind that Less Accounting shouldn’t be used for large businesses, as it is not Generally-Accepted Account Procedures (GAP) compliant. It is great for a small business to keep accurate records, but not for businesses that need to be technically correct in their accounting (e.g., venture-backed firms, companies preparing for a sale, etc.).
QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks is the heavyweight of online accounting solutions. It has everything from employee payments, to vendor management, to accounts receivables to financial statements. It has cross functionality with Excel, Outlook, Gmail and of course its offline counterpart. QuickBooks is the ideal solution for a medium-sized business that needs a robust accounting solution. It will take considerably more time to learn than FreshBooks or Less Accounting, but the payoff is in its wide variety of features. QuickBooks also has free, unlimited support.
These are three of the most popular choices for accounting online. Each of them has a different specialty. FreshBooks is great for consultants and freelancers whose primary accounting needs is invoicing and tracking receivables. Less Accounting is generally great for the small business that wants simple accounting. Finally, QuickBooks Online has the all-purpose industrial grade accounting power that larger businesses need.