Every
year many of the startups come roaring in the market with plenty of new
ideas, passion, and energy. Being an entrepreneur is not easy. With
the launch of the business, comes many responsibilities and an ever
growing 'to-do' list.
One of the high priority items on your list would be managing your books. Bookkeeping or accounting is the lifeblood of the business and poor accounting ethics can damage the company’s reputation and the trust of their clients.
Not every entrepreneur or small business owner can handle the accounting of their business despite how important it is.
So what do they do?
They hire an accountant and pay them a huge amount of money to get things done. For start-ups, Bloggers, Freelancers and small businesses hiring a full time is not the best proposition,
and so most of these entities hire a professional at the end of the
year to take care of their accounting. And as they do not keep their
books up to date they end up rushing through the whole process which may
be costly and is prone to error because of inefficiency.
And
even if the owner is good enough in accounting, they may spend hours in
invoicing, bookkeeping, managing and tracking their expenses or calling
the clients now and then to remind them of the payment due.
I think it is very cumbersome and involves a great deal of your time which you must spend in expanding your business.
While I was doing my internship in one of the startup companies,
I was asked to research and find the simplest and best invoicing and
accounting software. I started my research by signing up for the free
version of much popular accounting & bookkeeping software's I came
across online. I kept my criteria to recommend the software, and that
was, if I can use a particular invoicing and accounting software then
any one can, as I do not come from commerce background.
So,
with that, here are some of the accounting & invoicing software's I
liked, which I believe are all good with slight differences. You will
have to use all of them before you choose one, but I have brought the
list down to just 4 out of the 100's out there.
Best Accounting, Bookkeeping & Invoicing Softwares for small businesses:
Freshbooks
is one of the online invoicing, accounting software which is very easy
to use. You can create, send and track invoices in just a few minutes. Time and expense tracking also becomes a lot easier since you can log time and billable hours.
It also has bookkeeping features
through which it is much easier to organize everything and payment can
also be done quickly. Tracking and managing your expenses can be done
without any trouble since you can also get the details about your
previous invoices, revenue by client, best clients or the profit & loss reports to discover your outstanding invoices.
It does not have the inventory management feature, but it connects to other popular inventory management software. You can integrate PayPal and Stripe for collecting payments. It also offers iOS app & Android app.
It offers many other features with pricing ranging from $19.95/month to $39.95/month. It offers a trial period of 30 days.
Xero
is another online tool that makes your accounting simplified and
convenient. It is simple yet extensive and is like a one stop shop for
all your accounting needs.
You can easily create recurring professional invoices in just a few clicks. You can also set invoice reminders,
and it automatically reminds customers about the payment of the
invoices. Managing your cash flow also becomes easier, and one can log
in anytime and see the up-to-date financial health of the business.
It also has others features including general ledger, quotes, bills and expenses, payroll with automated superannuation payments, etc.
Price
ranges from $9/month (limited features) to $60/month depending on the
region you belong to. Moreover, you can know more about its features by
trying it for free as it also offers a trial period of 30 days.
Topnotepad
is a new invoicing and accounting software. The beauty of this
application is, it goes beyond invoicing and accounting, it couples the
CRM portion, which is important for a start-up.
The overall UI is very intuitive and user-friendly. It has rich built-in features that help you to create and send invoices with just a few clicks.
It also has invoicing templates
from which you can choose the one you like the most. It even lets you
log leads allocate them among your employees, track conversion. It also
offers features for managing your expenses in a much simpler fashion.
It has got all the features you would require to streamline and manage
your invoicing, accounting and leads.
Pricing
starts from $ 10 per month. The freemium plan is free forever! The
catch is, you can create only up to 5 invoices in freemium plan and once
you exhaust, the software would request you to upgrade to a paid plan.
You can integrate PayPal and InstaMojo for collecting payments
Quickbooks
is one of the most popular accounting software available online. It
does everything that one would want in an accounting software. You can
create customized invoices with your company logo and send them to your
customers within few minutes.
You can also store details about your customer, reports of your incomes and expenses etc. Tracking sales and expenses and managing customers, vendors and employee data become a lot easier with this software.
It
also offers ways for managing bills and online banking. You can even
track appointments, to-do items and important business tasks, such as
invoice and bill due dates. How ever it is more suited for a medium to
the high sized company.
After a trial period of 30 days, you have to pay $9.99 per month to $39.95 per month.
As
you can see there are many multi-featured accounting and invoicing
software which is all set to make your work simpler. All you have to do
is explore and choose the right accounting & bookkeeping software
that suits your needs.
I'm
sure after you find the most suitable software of your choice,
accounting will no longer be a daunting task, and it will actually help
you to ace the growth of your company.
It
doesn't matter if your startup is a blog or an app or anything else,
managing your account is must & help you to sustain with the
growth. Do let me know how are you managing accounting & invoicing for your Business?
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