Accounting Software Review

Like most small business owners, you are likely excited about your product or service and enjoy working with your customers. However, when it comes to accounting and managing the tiny details of your company, you may feel frustrated and overwhelmed. The best accounting software can help you manage the details of your small business, improve client relations and streamline routine tasks with relatively few headaches.

Small businesses need nearly everything a large company requires to manage their books, but have a smaller budget and less personnel to support those needs. Therefore, we looked for affordable, all-in-one software that can manage numerous aspects of small business accounting, including invoicing, customer and vendor contact information, inventory, payroll and reporting.

The most helpful accounting software for your business depends on your business type. Some solutions are more suitable for service-oriented businesses rather than companies that need to manage inventory, and others have limited tools for managing employees and payroll so are more suitable for micro-sized businesses. We recommend that you consider top accounting software that can manage your company's unique needs.

Within this site, you will find helpful articles on accounting software and current, comprehensive reviews to help you make an informed decision on which accounting software is right for your small business. To learn more about our top choice products, see Sage Peachtree Complete Accounting, QuickBooks Pro and Bookkeeper.

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Accounting Software: What to Look For

We looked at quite a few accounting programs suitable for small businesses within a reasonable price range. When reviewing the product we tried to keep in mind that most people are going to want one piece of software to do many things and not a handful of programs that may not even work together. We also wanted the software to be as easy to use as possible.

For our reviews we rated the following criteria:

Ease of Use
This criterion is extremely important. Many small business owners who are thinking about buying a new accounting program may just barely be moving out of what Excel did for them when they first started up. So, ease of use is paramount. In addition, accounting is already complicated enough without adding the burden of a hard to use program.

Help & Support
Software of this nature is complex and so is setting up the software initially. Most providers offer only limited free services such as user manuals, help files and FAQs. Telephone, email or chat support is usually only available with a service subscription.

Accounts Receivable
This includes invoicing tools, estimate creation, billing tools and shipping. All small businesses need these features.

Accounts Payable
This module includes the ability to track vendor payments, prink checks and manage purchase orders.

Banking
The software you choose should be able to work with your bank and perform automatic or direct deposits, as well as create checks and deposit forms.

Payroll
The best accounting programs can manage employee profiles and status. They can also track hours, benefits, deductions and taxes. Most will allow you to create a payroll check right from the program or through automatic or electronic payment.

Inventory Control
Most companies have to manage inventory and services. Good inventory tools include the ability to track product by CPU/SKU, the capability to store a location with an item number and warnings when stock levels get low.

Time Costing
This accounting tool can track time spent on projects and can bill based on time spend on a project, project budgets, associated purchase orders and more.

Job Costing
Job costing tools can keep track of the cost of a job and may also be able to create job cost estimates as well.

Fixed Assets
Fixed assets include depreciable or fixed items such as office furniture or company cars, some accounting programs will help you keep track of these types of assets.

Conversions and Updates
Many small business owners may be upgrading from Excel or another spreadsheet program, so we looked to see whether the software could easily upgrade between programs and between versions.

Reporting
Good reporting tools can greatly increase the chance of success. We looked for accounting programs that can run a good variety of useful reports. With easy to use reporting options companies can easily monitor what is working well or poorly for their company.

There is a lot to think about when it comes to considering accounting software, but it is worth thinking about since you will be working with it every day. We have compared a wide variety of accounting software here to help you find the right one to help you run your business.