Freelance accountants, CPAs, and bookkeepers need all the help they can get to have an edge over their competitors. This often means using the best tools available for your business, and your clients. Fortunately, there is a plethora of simple, affordable software for accountants that allows them to manage the finances of multiple businesses at once with ease.
This article offers a concise guide on the best accounting software to utilize for your freelance accounting company in 2022.
Best Accounting Software for Your Freelance Accounting Company
The accounting software solutions below make it faster and easier to carry out the necessary accounting and bookkeeping responsibilities that come with working for yourself:
- QuickBooks Self-Employed
If you prefer utilizing TurboTax to file your taxes, QuickBooks Self-Employed will save you a great deal of work during tax season. TurboTax and QuickBooks are integrated because they are both Intuit products. When it’s time to file taxes, automatically uploading data from QuickBooks to TurboTax saves hours – or even days – of manual computations and data entry.
If you hire an accountant to handle your taxes, QuickBooks Self-Employed is a fantastic bookkeeping tool, especially for tracking tax and expenditure payments. Connect it to your personal or business bank accounts to track all transactions automatically. QuickBooks also calculates your federal tax liability every quarter, ensuring that you never overpay or underpay.
Features
QuickBooks Self-Employed has a broad feature set, and it excels in tax support, thanks in part to its integration with TurboTax. Here are some of the features of QuickBooks Self-Employed:
- Monitor your income and expenses.
- Keep personal and business expenses separate.
- Invoicing
- Keep track of tax deductions.
- Management of fixed assets
- Estimate your quarterly taxes.
- FreshBooks
FreshBooks is a fantastic piece of accounting software with an incredibly easy and well-designed UI that is ideal for freelancers who are new to handling their own accounting.
Furthermore, FreshBooks is built for businesses with various invoice requirements. Within the system, you can register several clients and multiple projects for these clients. If you have clients who are known for missing payments, you can create automated payment reminders in FreshBooks to remind them of impending and past-due invoices, so you don’t have to.
FreshBooks’ most basic plan covers practically every use case for self-employed bookkeeping, allowing you to manage time, send invoices, accept payments, and log general business and billable costs. If you upgrade to a mid-tier subscription, you’ll also be gaining a tool that will help you submit proposals, work with an accountant, and impose late penalties on late invoices.
Features
FreshBooks offers a reliable feature set that freelancers may access through its well-designed interface. There aren’t many flaws in the program, and you can always upgrade your subscription. Here are a few of FreshBooks’ standout features:
- Invoices
- Estimates
- Client portal
- Expense tracking
- Bank reconciliation
- Accounts payable
- Time tracking
- Proposals
- Wave
Wave is great for self-employed professionals looking for a full accounting solution or those looking for a cost-effective approach to handling their freelance finances.
Wave is a free application that provides all of the tools you need to manage your business accounting, from mailing professional invoices (which include recurring invoices) to scanning receipts on the mobile app and even payroll processing.
Wave, like QuickBooks and FreshBooks, links directly to your credit card or bank accounts, pulling in the whole of your transactions for easy business expense tracking. You can also transfer old banking information to the system to catch up on overlooked expenditures. This is useful if you neglected your bookkeeping for a period of the year.
Pricing
Wave only provides one accounting solution, which is entirely free. There are no restrictions on users or features. The only additional costs are payroll, transaction processing, and professional bookkeeping services.
Features
Wave has a very extensive feature set. While there is no tax support, Wave is a fully functioning accounting software. Wave is the only software on this list that can allow you to balance the books. Wave comes with the following features:
- Invoicing
- Estimates
- Contact management
- Expense tracking
- Accounts payable
- Inventory
- Reports
- FreeAgent
If you provide estimates for huge projects as part of your service, FreeAgent may be the accounting tool for you. You can generate and distribute project estimates to potential clients directly from the platform. If those prospects ultimately turn into clients, you can compare future invoicing to those estimates to determine which contracts are profitable and which are not.
FreeAgent also includes useful extra features such as time monitoring and invoicing. You can use its built-in time-tracking application to record every second you spend working on a project, then convert that time to an invoice to easily bill clients. Invoicing can be programmed to send automatic payment notifications to clients who are late on their payments.
- Xero
When you first start out freelancing, you simply need to send invoices and manage expenses for a few clients. You’ll eventually open a business bank account and wish to manage costs separately – as well as possibly track time spent on projects and other things.
Xero can help you achieve this. Xero is a leading accounting platform with a broad feature set and a significant number of integrations. It can handle accounting needs for large organizations as well as freelancers. The software is arguably best suited for freelancers with extensive accounting needs such as invoicing or time tracking, but it is also very flexible if you need to expand.
Features
Unsurprisingly, Xero provides a plethora of features that you can access through its higher-tier services. However, its initial package is suitable for new freelancers and is reasonably priced. Here are a few of Xero’s best features:
- Reconcile bank transactions
- Live bank feed
- Inventory management
- Reports
- Unlimited users
- Purchase orders
- Document storage
It’s Time to Choose the Right Software
It can be difficult to select the best software for your freelance accounting firm. You can make a better decision by being aware of the features you want, setting a budget, and taking advantage of free demos. Review all options carefully before committing to one and you’ll certainly make the right call.
