Making Finance Easy: 6 Types of Accounting Tools for Beginners
So you’re looking through your company’s accounts and you feel like pulling your hair out!
Keeping track of your company’s finances can often be a major strain. Many entrepreneurs would like to postpone this responsibility. But doing so can lead to harsh consequences for your business.
So what’s the remedy for your accounting problems? You want to choose the right accounting tools to handle your business accounting.
These will help you with record-keeping, creating financial reports, and fulfilling tax obligations.
Here are our recommendations on the best accounting tools.
- QuickBooks
This is one of the best accounting tools for any type of business. You’ll find it easy to keep track of your accounts. With advanced packages of QuickBooks, you can also help prepare tax forms.
As a side note, if you find yourself struggling with tax forms you should check this link to help prepare 1099 forms.
Some of the other features that you’ll find with QuickBooks include creating receipts, creating invoices, and processing payroll.
Regardless of whether you run a small startup or a large enterprise, you’ll likely find that QuickBooks can help you with your company’s finances.
This is one of the more expensive accounting tools, however. If your company is on a tight budget you might want to forgo QuickBooks. But as your company scales, you might wish to upgrade to this accounting tool.
The pricing depends largely on the features you’ll need from QuickBooks. Your pricing can be $5 per month or $28 per month or upwards of $100 per month. The pricing also depends on how many staff members you have.
- Gusto
Payroll is one of the biggest responsibilities that you’ll have as a business owner. This will include paying your workers, creating pay stubs, and paying payroll taxes.
In short: your payroll obligations can be a great hassle. Gusto makes it much easier to handle these obligations.
If you find it easy to keep track of your finances, you might want to handle those on your own. Meanwhile, you can handle strenuous payroll obligations using this simple accounting tool.
You can also handle a few HR obligations through Gusto. This can include enrolling workers in health care plans and retirement plans.
Gusto costs $39 per month plus $6 for every employee you have on the payroll.
- Expensify
Keeping track of your company’s expenses is crucial and often overlooked. Remember, when it comes to filing your taxes you might reduce your obligations based on your expenses.
Now, are you convinced that you should track your expenses? You’ll also need to track your expenses as part of your record-keeping. If you want to look into how you can boost your profits, you may need to reduce your expenses first.
With Expensify, you take a picture of your receipts and save them within the app.
Expensify will organize these receipts based on different categories. As such, you’ll then see how much you’ve spent and how you can cut costs.
You can work alongside your accountant to see how to reduce your expenses. You’ll make their job easier if you have accurate records of your expenses.
Pricing can range from $5 per user per month to $9 per user per month.
- FreshBooks
This is a great accounting tool specifically for startups. It also works well for sole proprietors and freelancers.
The main focus with FreshBooks is to handle your company’s bookkeeping. You’ll find a simple process to keep track of your revenue, profits, losses, and expenses.
It’s made for entrepreneurs who don’t have a talent for accounting. This means that you don’t have to worry about complex procedures for keeping records.
FreshBooks is also lauded for its excellent customer service who can help you with your company’s financial needs.
It comes in different packages depending on the size of your business. It starts at $15 per month and rises to $50 per month for premium features. As your business scales, you can request a quote for custom features and dedicated service.
- OneUp
Are you obsessed with creating financial reports? If you want to assess your company’s financial health, then you better be!
With OneUp, you can view your company’s financial information within a dashboard. You can export this financial information into reports that are succinct and easy to understand.
You can keep track of cash flow, income reports, expense breakdowns, and your profit and loss information. It’s perfect for small business owners who can’t hire a third-party financial advisor.
While it’s not a perfect replacement for a financial advisor, you can share your financial reports with a financial advisor.
You’ll save them the added responsibility of assessing your company’s financial health on their own. You’ll also receive better advice because of your reports.
It comes with different pricing plans depending on the size of your business. You can start at $9 per month and pay up to $169 per month as your company scales.
- Wave Accounting
This is the best accounting software for freelancers, digital nomads, sole proprietors, and micro-businesses.
You can use it to create invoices within a few minutes to send to your clients. You can also then collect funds and transfer them to your bank account within the application.
You can also create financial reports and export them to a variety of formats including PDF and CSV.
Best of all it’s free! The only charges are a small commission fee if you accept online payments through the service. Wave also charges $35 per month plus $4 per worker for payroll processing.
If you are just starting out in business, you might want to give Wave Accounting a try!
Choose Your Accounting Tools
Now you can choose the right accounting tools for your business. Make sure you assess the needs of your business before choosing your accounting tools.
If you run a startup, you might want to consider the cost of the accounting tool. As your business scales, you might want to upgrade to a more complex tool.
If you need to focus on keeping records, most of the tools on this list will suffice. If you have no issues with record-keeping, you can choose one that has a specific function.
You can read more tips on running a business on our website!
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