If prioritizing robust customer support is crucial, we suggest considering FreshBooks, where you can engage with a live agent directly through phone communication. A free plan or a discount for new customers, a feature offered by other software such as Zoho Invoice and Square Invoices, could enhance its pricing strategy. Furthermore, it faces challenges in ease of use as it lacks comprehensive bookkeeping capabilities unless it is integrated with software like QuickBooks Online.

The Fit Small Business editorial policy is rooted in the company’s mission, which is to deliver the best answers to people’s questions. This serves as the foundation for all content, demonstrating a clear dedication to providing valuable and reliable information. Our team leverages wk 4 liabilities of an auditor ppt its expertise and extensive research capabilities to identify and address the specific questions our audience has—and this ensures that our content is rooted in knowledge and accuracy. We gathered average review ratings of all providers from leading user review sites.

Additionally, because Zoho Books is a complicated program with some features that are hidden within each other, it can be difficult to navigate, so it lost points for its ease of setup and use. Although there may be a learning curve for some users, QuickBooks Online is relatively easy to use and scored high for both ease of use and setup. While it is our top-recommended small business accounting software, the subscription cost can be a major factor in why you should look for an alternative.

1. It is also awarded points if it offers a free trial or discount for new users and if monthly vs annual plans are available.
2. This is unique among all the bookkeeping software we’ve looked at—including QuickBooks—but makes for a very simple way to enter expenses for non-bookkeepers.
3. She has owned Check Yourself, a bookkeeping and payroll service that specializes in small business, for over twenty years.
4. Furthermore, Zoho Invoice fell short in terms of customer support lacking options for direct contact via phone or live chat.
5. In comparison, QuickBooks doesn’t require an integration and doesn’t have any usability concerns.

FreshBooks does have decent project accounting features, however, including the ability to create estimates and compare estimated costs versus actual costs. Wave offers a free plan (Starter) and a paid subscription option (Pro) that costs $16 per month when billed monthly or $170 per year when billed annually. The free plan includes features, such as income and expense tracking, invoicing, and a mobile app. Zoho Books is our overall best QuickBooks alternative because it’s similar to QuickBooks Online but has a more functional mobile app. Among its many useful features are the ability to receive payments, send invoices, record time worked, capture expense receipts, and view reports from your mobile app. What sets the solution apart from other invoicing options on this list is that it can track billable hours that have been written off—a feature that even QuickBooks lacks.

QuickBooks Self-Employed: Best for Tracking Expenses & Transferring to Schedule C

It offers a comprehensive set of invoicing features that allow you to create custom invoices, automate recurring billing, manage expenses, and handle multiple currencies. Because of its poor bank reconciliation feature and inability to print checks and connect bank accounts in the free plan, it also scored low in banking. However, the free plan does allow you to upload your banking transactions from a CSV file. Its inventory and project features are almost non-existent, so it took a hit there as well. While the platform is fairly easy to use, its mobile app and integrations are lacking. These are all features that QuickBooks Online offers, as well as the ability to track using classes and locations.

In addition, it allows you to bill your clients directly from time entries and billable expenses—which is great for businesses that offer services billed by the hour or project. To help you speed up payment collection, you can add payment links to your invoices, which your clients can use to conveniently process their payments. We selected Zoho Invoice as the best free standalone invoicing software because, despite being free, it offers a wide range of invoicing features that are crucial for businesses. It allows users to create and send professional invoices and supports multiple currencies and tax regulations. Also, although Zoho Books offers a 14-day free trial, it doesn’t offer a discount for new customers.

It also assists with calculating your quarterly federal tax payments and paying them from QuickBooks. For instance, expenses cannot be assigned to particular checking or credit card accounts. Instead, the system compares entered expenses to all live bank feeds to determine which account the expense was paid from.

Zoho Invoice: Best Free Standalone Invoicing Software

However, Xero fell short in customer service, with only a chatbot, email, and self-help information available to its users. While Xero does have an advisor network, it is small compared to the QuickBooks ProAdvisor Network. It also is difficult to set up without some accounting knowledge, so Xero took a hit in ease of setup.

Best Free Accounting Software Programs for 2024

We looked into essential invoicing features, like the ability to create recurring invoices and set up automatic payment reminders. We selected Square Invoices as the best for businesses processing infrequent transactions because while its rates are transparent and predictable, they aren’t the lowest on the market. Also, you can offer your customers flexible payment options, including buy now, pay later (BNPL), and ACH processing. Square Invoices also integrates with other Square products, such as Square POS and Square Payments. QuickBooks Self-Employed wasn’t rated in this evaluation because of its inability to track assets and liabilities. The platform includes many useful features like the ability to generate and track invoices, track mileage, and export your Schedule C to TurboTax.

Software is rated based on its price for various levels of users, including one, three, and five users. It is also awarded points if it offers a free trial or discount for new users and if monthly vs annual plans are available. We rated the accounting software on this list based on their capabilities to be a substitute for QuickBooks. Moreover, we included the insights we gathered from our case study to show you what we think about these solutions based on the case study criteria. We recommend the following QuickBooks alternatives for invoicing if your small business doesn’t need a complete bookkeeping solution, such as the providers above.

It lets you select from different templates, change the invoice colors, edit the invoice fields, and upload your company logo to make your invoice look more professional. It also received perfect scores for its invoicing features, pricing, and mobile app. In our review of Xero, we found that it performed especially well for its general accounting features, where it received a perfect mark, and nearly perfect scores for its A/R and A/P features. It also aced our evaluation of integrations, with more than 100 apps available in the Xero App Store.

Xero beats QuickBooks Online in terms of pricing, and it also has no user limit, which makes it more scalable and flexible than QuickBooks Online. It also lets you compare actual and budget project costs, a feature that QuickBooks Online lacks. Xero’s fixed asset manager is unique to this guide, as it is the only provider that allows you to record the sale and depreciation of fixed assets. It’s not the easiest program to set up, so it took a hit in that category, as well as its customer service. It does have solid tax and general reporting features, however, and it can track sales tax—although you must set up the sales tax for each jurisdiction manually where you’ll be paying tax.

QuickBooks Self-Employed is especially good for individuals without a separate bank account for their business transactions as it has a feature to separate business and personal expenses. We evaluated the invoicing software based on its ability to be a substitute for QuickBooks. We included the insights we gathered from our case study to illustrate our findings about these solutions based on the case study criteria. We include QuickBooks Self-Employed on this list because it is a great fit for self-employed individuals who want to track income and expenses to file a tax return. While still a QuickBooks product, it is completely separate from—as well as much less expensive than—QuickBooks Online. It also has a built-in fixed asset manager that will calculate and track depreciation expense for each piece of equipment automatically.

Why We Chose Square Invoices

A good mobile app should be able to perform all the same functions as the computer interface. You can evaluate Sage 50 by https://intuit-payroll.org/ clicking “Take a test drive” on its website, which will allow you to access a hosted version of it with sample data.