Laying my cards on the table: I’m not an accountant. And I said goodbye to all the bookkeeping tasks associated with my freelance career many moons ago. So what qualifies me to write this article? When I was self-employed and begrudgingly had to balance my own books (I couldn’t afford an accountant), I had to go through the nightmare of trying to find the right software to help me get the job done.
Being the juggernaut that it is, QuickBooks Online came as one of the top recommendations. But back then, the aesthetics of the platform alone scared me off. I didn’t find it user-friendly enough for an amateur like me. And the price point was far beyond what I could justify.
Whether you’re a freelancer looking for a less scary option or a small business that’s looking for a specific feature QuickBooks doesn’t have, here are the five best QuickBooks alternatives. I’ve based my picks on thorough app testing done by the Zapier team, along with my own experiences.
5 QuickBooks alternatives
How we evaluate and test apps
Our best apps roundups are written by humans who’ve spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. Unless explicitly stated, we spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it’s intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We’re never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.
The best QuickBooks alternatives at a glance
|
Best for |
Standout feature |
Price |
|
|---|---|---|---|
|
Wave |
Free accounting software |
Native credit card payment processing |
Free plan; Pro plan for $16/month |
|
Xero |
Project tracking with accounting |
Intuitive user interface |
Plans from $15/month; $78/month for project tracking features |
|
FreshBooks |
Easy-to-use option for freelancers |
OCR data extraction from receipts |
Free 30-day trial; Paid plans from $13/month |
|
Zoho Books |
All-in-one solution |
Wide feature set |
Free plan available; Standard plan for $15/organization/month |
|
Sage Accounting |
In-depth reporting |
Customizable audit trails and cash flow statements |
Available upon request |
The best QuickBooks alternative for free accounting software
Wave
Wave pros:
Wave cons:
Wave tops our list as the best QuickBooks alternative for two main reasons: (1) great features across the board and (2) a really attractive pricing model. The only snag? It’s available only in the U.S. and Canada. (If you’re on the other side of the ocean, you may want to skip ahead.)
The whole app has a friendly vibe, with rounded fonts and simple icons. The dashboard shows you a cash flow graph, the balances on your bank accounts (you have to integrate them with Wave, but they’ll pull only transaction data, never push data or orders to your bank account), a set of links to common actions, and a profit and loss graph.
With Wave Checkouts, you can accept payments from your website with a payment link. You can also attach your receipts to expenses, keeping everything in one place. And if you’re on a paid plan, Wave uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology to extract receipt data and turn them into bookkeeping records.
Now, let’s talk about pricing. While QuickBooks will almost certainly meet all of your accounting needs, it’s going to cost you—even for the most basic plan. Wave, on the other hand, offers its core invoicing and accounting features for free. But we all know there’s no such thing as a free lunch, so what’s the catch? Wave takes a small percentage plus a fixed rate out of every online payment processed by the platform. Considering that most payment processors and accounting apps that accept payments will charge you a fee to process credit card and ACH payments, you really do get the accounting features for free.
If you’re not sold on Wave by now, you might be once you connect Wave with Zapier to integrate it with the rest of the apps you use. Learn more about how to automate Wave, or try these pre-made workflows.
Zapier is the leader in workflow automation—integrating with thousands of apps from partners like Google, Salesforce, and Microsoft. Use interfaces, data tables, and logic to build secure, automated systems for your business-critical workflows across your organization’s technology stack. Learn more.
Wave pricing: Free plan available; Pro plan for $16/month (or $170/year) includes no Wave branding and OCR data extraction for receipts. Online credit card payments charged at a percentage plus a fixed rate.
Learn more about how these two apps stack up in our app showdown: Wave vs. QuickBooks.
The best QuickBooks alternative for project tracking with your accounting
Xero
Xero pros:
-
Intuitive user interface
-
Good range of reports
Xero cons:
Xero’s mission is to help you “do beautiful business.” And with all the features it offers, you can do that and much more—especially when tackling your projects.
You can review projects in three stages: draft, in progress, and complete. Clicking on a project will take you to the project dashboard, with the estimate, the amount invoiced, time and expenses, and the deadline. A thorough approach, while at the same time helping you focus on all the relevant metrics.
Projects are the main course, but there’s a lot more on offer. The bookkeeping features are top-notch. In addition to basic invoices and expenses, you can also create purchase orders, file expense claims, and print checks. All these features are peppered with reports and local dashboards to help you see what’s going on with your business.
QuickBooks also offers project tracking, but it requires an additional subscription to QuickBooks Time. If you subscribe to the lowest paid tiers for QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Time, you’re looking at about $75/month, which is a few dollars cheaper than Xero. But the moment you jump to a higher paid tier for QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Time, you’re looking at a heftier overall price tag.
Xero natively integrates with hundreds of apps across many categories—from the automotive industry to tourism. If you don’t find what you need, you can connect to thousands more apps with Zapier’s Xero integration. Here are some examples, or you can read more about how to automate Xero.
Xero pricing: Paid plans start at $15/month. To get project tracking features, you’ll need the $78/month Established plan.
For more options, check out our roundup of the best self-employed accounting software.
The best QuickBooks alternative for an easy-to-use option for freelancers
FreshBooks
FreshBooks pros:
FreshBooks cons:
FreshBooks is a freelancer’s dream, providing inexpensive access to simple invoicing and accounting features. For example, you can send unlimited customized invoices for only $17 per month, whereas QuickBooks charges you $30 per month to do the same. If invoicing clients is the main reason you need a QuickBooks alternative, FreshBooks is hands-down the way to go.
FreshBooks is also simpler to use. It’s evident as soon as you enter the platform. The dashboard is full of bright colors, relatively few navigational options, and clear breakdowns of tools. And if you stumble, there are links to the knowledge base scattered throughout, so you always have in-depth information close at hand. For more advanced stuff, you can call FreshBooks, hop on a chat session, or send a support ticket.
QuickBooks also does a good job of walking you through its interface and features. But considering its “business professional” dashboard filled with charts and graphs summarizing business metrics, it’s more overwhelming to navigate than FreshBooks.
If you love how easy FreshBooks is, you’ll love how much easier it is when you connect FreshBooks to Zapier. You’ll be able to do things like automatically subscribe new FreshBooks clients to your email list and receive notifications when new invoices are created. Here are a few examples to get you started.
FreshBooks pricing: Free 30-day trial available; paid plans start at $13/month (billed annually) and include unlimited invoices up to 5 clients and online payments. Add team members for $11/user/month.
See how FreshBooks compares to other accounting powerhouses in our showdowns: FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks and FreshBooks vs. Xero.
The best QuickBooks alternatives for an all-in-one solution
Zoho Books
Zoho Books pros:
Zoho Books cons:
QuickBooks offers a handful of well-integrated accounting and invoicing products. But this pales in comparison to the approximately one zillion apps on offer from Zoho. With Zoho, there’s an app for everything—a CRM, a project management tool, an accounting solution. You name it, Zoho’s got it.
But we’re here to talk about QuickBooks alternatives, so let’s focus on Zoho Books.
All the core bookkeeping features are there, including projects, time, and inventory tracking. These are easy to use once you get used to the amount of information and input fields on each page. There’s a budgeting feature where you can set limits for the accounts you choose, and even include asset, liability, and equity accounts in the mix. It’s not the intuitive personal finance approach, but it makes sense for business budgets. The reports section has a lot of variety, and you can mark your favorites and even configure report layouts.
The accounting features are great, both for your accountant (who you can invite) and for you. There’s a whole section dedicated to tracking tax payments and tax adjustments over time and a journal section to record all other accounting events.
Bigger picture: if you’re looking for a robust software suite that goes beyond accounting and invoicing, go with Zoho.
Zoho also integrates with eight different payment portals to let your customers pay invoices online. If you use Stripe, it separates Stripe transaction costs as its own expense category, so you can see how much you’re spending on fees. If Zoho doesn’t natively integrate with your payment gateway, use Zapier’s Zoho Books integration to connect it with other options—and thousands more apps. Here are some ideas to get you started, or you can learn more about how to automate Zoho Books.
Zoho Books pricing: Free plan includes 1 user, 1 accountant, and 1,000 invoices/year; Standard plan for $15/organization/month includes 3 users, 5,000 invoices/year, and no Zoho Books branding.
For more options, check out our roundup of the best accounting software for small businesses.
If you’re looking for a robust software suite at a lower price point and you don’t need quite as many apps as what Zoho’s offering, try OneUp. Starting at $9/month for one user, you’ll get a CRM, invoicing, projects, expenses and purchasing, inventory, and accounting.
The best QuickBooks alternatives for in-depth reporting
Sage Accounting
Sage Accounting pros:
Sage Accounting cons:
Like Intuit (the parent company behind QuickBooks), Sage has been around since the ’80s. It offers a no-nonsense approach to accounting for every type of business—from small operations to corporate behemoths.
The reports are the best part about Sage. Audit trails and cash flow statements, two examples from the over 20 available, can be customized to your liking by applying filters or date ranges. But if you want even more insight into your data, you can send it to Sage Business Cloud Intelligence, a report-building platform that will give you lots of new angles to play around with.
From the Sage dashboard, you’ll get an overview of everything you need to know about your business, including cash flow statements, forecasting, and your bank account balances. Speaking of bank accounts, integrating them is easy. And you can set up workflows to automatically categorize your transactions.
Access to Sage’s receipt capture functionality costs almost twice as much as QuickBooks’, but with Sage, you get more than just receipt capture. Once you set up rules to import data, you can upload any relevant documents, and Sage will take care of sorting it out, extracting data, and having it available for you when you need it. It’s definitely a step up from the classic capture receipts feature, so if you’re handling a lot of paperwork, this could cut the sweat from the blood and tears equation.
Sage offers a decent library of app integrations—over 40 of them. But a word of caution: some of them may come at an extra cost. To integrate Sage with even more of your tech stack, connect Sage to Zapier. Here are a few examples to get you started.
Sage Accounting pricing: Available upon request. To give you an idea, the Start plan begins at $17 CAD/month, but you’ll want the Standard plan for $39/month to have more than one user and access to robust features.
Other QuickBooks alternatives
If none of these options work for you, or you’re looking for an app that’s more in the neighborhood of accounting software, here are some ideas.
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