As a business owner, one of your top priorities must be managing finances efficiently and effectively. To do that, you need the right yet free accounting package software. A free accounting software that offers all the essential features to accommodate your specific business financial requirements.
Indeed, it must be able to perform regular daily accounting tasks such as tracking expenses, creating invoices, managing receipts, recording payments, and more.
Free accounting software is a great way to begin if you are new to integrating accounting software into your business operations or are not sure enough to invest in paid premium software. Once you acclimate to accounting software, you can scale up to premium plans or paid tools.
Till now, here are we going to help you choose the best free accounting package software out there depending upon your business needs, along with some notable options to consider.
Overview Of Free Accounting Software
A free accounting package software is a tool that helps you automate basic accounting and bookkeeping tasks without any investment. Many viable free options even allow storing financial information, recording transactions, tracking expenses, income, and payments, creating and sending invoices, and generating financial reports.
Free accounting software is crucial for a business to automate the manual tracking procedure of business finances, saving time with more precision and making it easier and simpler to access.
Opting for free accounting software is ideal for freelancers, solopreneurs, small businesses, or startups. Businesses trying to track their finances manually are going to struggle to manage; it is difficult, time-consuming, and prone to mistakes.
Top Free Accounting Package Software
With so many free accounting package software out there, we have handpicked some of the best ones with versatility in their features and suitability, catering to all type of businesses and their specific needs.
1. Wave
The best way to describe the Wave accounting package software is it is the simplest and easiest to use with its intuitive and straightforward navigation. So, if that’s your priority, Wave is a great pick without any thought.
Also, if you’re familiar with the software Mint, this will feel right at home as the interface is quite similar. Wave allows business owners to track their income expenses, generate and send invoices, track sales tax, and create reports.
Also, if you’re someone running multiple businesses from the same accounting, this tool gives you a dashboard where you can easily see how all your businesses are doing at one glance.
The paid plan with Wave provides you access to some additional features, such as Wave Payroll, payment tracking, invoicing double-entry bookkeeping, and more.
2. FreshBooks
FreshBooks is a highly effective accounting package software that helps businesses keep their finances in order. They use a payment model based on your company’s number of billable clients instead of how many users need access.
This accounting software is ideal for micro-businesses, contract workers, or large-scale service-based solopreneurs. However, the features can still be suitable for any small-scale business if they are starting out to use accounting software.
Freshbooks offers several impressive features, such as expense tracking, automatic recurring bills, estimate submissions, vendor management, invoicing and more.
Also, switching to their premium plan once you exhaust their free plan capabilities or want to scale your business, they offer such cost-effective plans that can aid any small business finances easily.
3. GnuCash
GnuCash is a free accounting package software perfect for Linux users. Already, with Linux, your options are limited, and GnuCash simply offers you the best accounting features that are compatible with the Linux operating system.
The free tool facilitates many great features sucha as expense tracking, bank accounting tracking, generating financial reports, financial calculations, and more.
Indeed, you’re going to miss some extra features you find easily in other free accounting software; however, it does make up for its flexibility and other investment tracking features.
4. Zoho Books
Zoho Books is another promising free accounting package software offering a platform with end-to-end accounting resources to handle effectively.
It does make tedious and monotonous accounting work much more visually appealing and cohesive as you can access everything in one place.
Zoho offers creating invoicing, raising sale orders, and a lot of other financial or business-related accounting-based activities that are easy to track within one platform. It also offer a client portal where you can seamlessly connect with the client or customers within the accounting tool.
With a user-friendly interface and an intuitive and feature-rich mobile application, Zoho proves to be one of the best options to pick for free accounting package software. However, without their paid plan, there are some huge limitations, such as a lack of chat or voice support.
5. ZipBooks
ZipBooks is one of the highly considered free accounting package software for small business owners who are primarily looking for basic accounting functionalities with strong invoicing features.
This tool is such a smart choice for business that relies heavily on creating invoices for revenue. Also, it offers various reports for vendor management, customer management, and more.
Of course, with their paid plan, you will get access to some additional great features such as reminders, auto-billing, and time-tracking, further enhancing invoice-driven businesses for effective streamlining.
This only means when you exhaust the capabilities of the tool within the free plan and your business requires expansion, you can simply upgrade to a paid plan instead of finding another premium accounting package software.
6. ProfitBooks
ProfitBooks are a great free accounting package software option, particularly because they were designed specifically for business owners who do not possess any accounting knowledge.
You don’t have to install or download anything with this. It offers a simple, easy-to-use online user interface that is highly accessible to any user.
Not to mention the extensive number of features it packs at no cost. It is also available on Android and iOS mobile app stores where you can create invoices, manage vendors and customers, track inventory, and so much more easily.
7. Xero
Xero is an advanced accounting software that allows you to access all its otherwise premium features for free for 4 months only. This can be ideal for business owners with experience using accounting software and who want to expand after a while.
So, using the tool for free for four months gives you a headstart and getting comfortable with the tool. When it comes to the features, Xero offers most features that are available in most other paid premium accounting tools.
It helps businesses track their expenses, store financial data, manage customer or supplier contacts, create invoices, and make payments, all within a single platform.
Features To Look For
When you are opting for the best free accounting package software for your business, here are some top features that you should look for:
Basic Accounting
Small businesses require basic accounting functions like creating and sending invoices, tracking expenses and incomes, generating financial reports, and managing customers.
So, to begin with, these are must-have features that every business needs, irrespective of their specific needs.
Inventory Management
Inventory management is also another feature that can fall under the basic accounting feature you will find in the many free accounting package software.
Basic accounting features will particularly be helpful for businesses dealing with multiple products or SKUs, making it easier to record, track, and manage.
Vendor Management
Vendor management is also another crucial feature you can expect from a few free accounting software.
Some basic accounting features like vendor and inventory management can be available, but they have limitations under the free plan, package, or trial.
Automation
Some free accounting package software allows businesses to set up and send recurring invoices and notifications post due dates on automation. This not only saves time and effort but also streamlines the invoicing task for timely payments and efficient outcomes.
Automation can be utilized across several accounting functionalities and operations, such as data entry, error recognition, identifying repetitive data, suggesting transaction matches, and more.
Tax Preparation
Accounting package software makes taxation so much easier, more efficient, and error-free.
It has extensive features custom-made to cater to tax calculations, tax reporting, and multiple tax rates, all using automated workflows.
This also makes sharing the required accounting data or financial files easy and secure with your accountant, client, or other trusted parties.
Microservices
Some particular free accounting package software also includes dedicated accounting microservices such as payroll services, payment processing, and more.
These can help make the online payment procedure hassle-free, convenient and easy. It can come in handy for businesses that want to make it easy to accept payments from their clients and pay their employees, too.
Third-Party Integration
Accounting software helps operate your business through third-party integration, where you can utilize other programs and services as well.
These can be the ones you’re already using or want to enhance productivity and functionality and scale the business further.
Most high-rated accounting package software allows integrations with payment processing, e-commerce platforms, email marketing tools, Google apps, point-of-sale systems, CRM, and ERPs.
How To Choose The Right Accounting Package Software?
Apart from the top features, other factors that account for finding the right accounting package software are the following:
Must Offer Connectivity With Credit Cards And Bank Accounts
Manually drafting receipt entries can be tedious and takes a lot of human resources and mental drainage for your business.
So you need to find a free accounting package software where you get connectivity to credit cards and bank accounts, which is essential. This means that the entire process is automated instead of manual recipient entries.
Ensure Accounting Software Accessibility
Since you’re looking for free accounting software, you’re more likely to be a professional or business owner trying to aid long-term plans and day-to-day operations.
You don’t want to spend all your time, effort, and energy learning an overly technical accounting software. So, you need to ensure that the accounting software you choose is accessible and has simple functionality that you can utilize efficiently.
You Must Able To Export Your Records
As your business scales, you will grow out of your free accounting package software and experience its limitations. This is the perfect time to expand towards paid or premium accounting software. But what about all the data you’ve collected over the years.?
Business expansion shouldn’t mean you need to start from scratch. You must have maintained extensive customer data in the free accounting software plan.
That’s why you must choose a free accounting package software that allows you to export your records seamlessly and easily migrate them to a new paid accounting package software.
Conclusion: Choosing The Right Free Accounting Package
Choosing the right free accounting software starts with identifying your specific business needs. Are you a product-based business or service-based? What exact features do you need for your business to grow? Is it creating, sending, and managing invoices or storing financial data?
Depending on your priorities, when you explore the top free accounting package software listed, you can simply shortlist two or three of the most suitable tools. Then, you can compare on another basis, such as ease of use, accessibility, features based on your priority, additional features, and more.
Also, you can finally opt for the one with the best customer reviews and other essential factors such as reliability, customer support quality, and reputation. Finding the right free accounting package software can grow your business exponentially.
We at Mocha Accounting are known to adapt to the requirements of your business and its specific requirements, offering a user-friendly interface, top features, exceptional customer support, extensive financial reporting, tax compliance, and so much more.
Scale your business with Mocha, where with our 30-day free trial sign-up, you have nothing to lose, only to gain that it is the perfect accounting software you’ve been looking for. Contact us today to schedule a demo or to get more information.
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