What is the 4 most common Software for Small business bookkeeping?

Simon Stuart | July 30, 2020

Whether you're starting a new business or you're already in business everyone needs a great accounting solution to keep their business running smoothly.

Let's Begin the Best Software for Small Business Bookkeeping

1. Spreadsheets

whether you're using Google sheets or Microsoft Excel can be extremely powerful for small businesses spreadsheets allow small businesses to organize their information faster and more accurately than plain old paper and pen in addition spreadsheets can act as great aids when it comes to financial reporting and tax reporting at the end of the year one of the downsides to spreadsheets is that.

They're extremely manual and therefore they take a lot of time to update especially if you fall behind another downside is that spreadsheets tend to be local based meaning they're stored on your computer directly and you'll have to access them from that computer or using special software so makes collaboration a little harder spreadsheets are great for businesses.

That are just starting out or maybe they're just testing the waters with an idea but they're not a practical long-term solution.

2. Wave Accounting

Wave accounting is a free cloud based accounting software that's right. it's free wave accounting offers Bank integration which means that it will actually download your information directly from your bank into the software you can perform reconciliations.

You can even send invoices if your business needs to process payments from customers or offer payroll for employees does that too but both of those features come with a service fee some of the downsides the way or that it is pretty antiquated in its appearance so it's harder to use and it's also an ad based platform so you can expect to see plenty of advertisements while you're using the software at the end of the day it's still free and in my opinion it's better than a spreadsheet.

3. Xero

Subscription-based cloud accounting software known as Xero is pretty popular outside of the United States but it's also growing in popularity within the States.

Xero does everything from bank integrations to invoicing to payment processing to financial reporting and it also do your payroll one of the great things about Xero is that it's very customizable so that makes the user experience great two drawbacks though.

one they offer quite a few pricing tiers which can be pretty confusing to new users and they also find that what they're buying isn't powerful enough so they have to upgrade to the next level and also since it's not as widely known especially in the States it's harder to find professional help if you need it.

Xero is still a great solution for growing businesses.

4. Quickbooks

Quickbooks is also a subscription-based cloud accounting software known as quickbooks online or better known as QBL you may have heard of QBO because it is the number one cloud-based accounting software in the world QBO is great it's a one-stop shop.

It can do everything accounting related for your business it does bank feeds invoicing payment processing, online bookkeeping, payroll it'll track your sales tax it will even help you prepare your tax return it's great it's also got an app store for integration with third-party applications if you so choose to use them one of the drawbacks to qbo is that it can be expensive by far more expensive than zero but there are so many power users out.

There if you need help you can find help in almost any part of the world immediately my clients use QBO. We use QBO everyone that We know that uses it loves it if you can afford it We would highly recommend it so that's it those are the four most common accounting or bookkeeping solutions that We see used among small businesses one thing that.

Discussed cloud-based solutions a cloud-based solution is a piece of software that can be accessed from any device at any time it differs from a desktop or a local solution in that it doesn't require any special software to be installed or special files to be passed around that's extremely helpful.

When it comes to collaboration with others cloud-based solutions tend to be a little bit more expensive than desktop or local based solutions but in my opinion the benefit far outweighs the cost every business whether new or existing needs a great accounting platform.