Accounting software is the one category where the right answer depends on where you file your taxes. Start there, and the shortlist halves before you look at a feature table.
1. Start with the country
Filing features do not travel. FreeAgent, Pandle and QuickFile state Making Tax Digital submissions and filing to HM Revenue and Customs, which is what a United Kingdom business needs. Xero, QuickBooks Online and Zoho Books state United States sales tax and 1099 handling.
A product that is excellent in one jurisdiction can be merely adequate in another, and no feature list will tell you that as clearly as the filing section of its own pricing page.
2. Count the people who need access
This is where the money is.
- Unlimited users: Xero on every plan, Pandle on its free plan.
- Counted users: QuickBooks Online (1, 3, 5 and 25 by tier), Zoho Books (1 free, then 3, 5, 10 and 15), Akaunting (1 to unlimited), Odoo (per user).
- Per-user extras: FreshBooks charges US$11 a month for each additional team member.
A bookkeeper and an accountant are two more logins. On QuickBooks they are included as accountant seats; elsewhere they may not be.
3. Decide whether you need a ledger or an invoice book
Several products in this catalogue are invoicing tools with accounting attached rather than double-entry systems.
Invoice Ninja and FreshBooks organise everything around clients and billable work. Wave, Zoho Books, Xero, QuickBooks, Pandle, QuickFile, Akaunting and GnuCash keep a ledger. If your accountant wants a trial balance, that distinction matters more than any feature.
4. Then look at price, and read past the discount
Almost every vendor in this category was running an introductory offer when we read their pages: 90% off for six months at Xero, 90% off for three months at FreshBooks, 50% off for three months at QuickBooks, 50% off for six months at FreeAgent. Those are the numbers on the page; the numbers in this catalogue are the standard ones, because the discount ends and the subscription does not.
For genuinely free options, Wave, Zoho Books, Pandle, QuickFile, Invoice Ninja, GnuCash and Odoo's one-app plan all publish a free tier that does real work.
5. Check the three add-ons that are rarely included
Payroll is stated by Xero, FreshBooks, Wave, FreeAgent, Akaunting and GnuCash, usually as an add-on with its own price. Inventory is stated by Xero, Zoho Books, Akaunting, Pandle, Invoice Ninja and Odoo. Project time you can bill is stated by Xero, FreshBooks, Zoho Books, FreeAgent and Invoice Ninja.
If you need all three, the shortlist is short.
What we could not verify
Sage's pricing pages refused automated access, and Manager's pricing page could not be located from its navigation, so neither is in this catalogue. Where a vendor showed a promotional price without a standard one, we recorded the promotion and said so.
