ACCOUNTING ONLINE PROGRAM

ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE

BEST ONLINE ACCOUNTING PROGRAM

Hey guys. Abid here from TEACH BEAST, and I am excited to talk to you about accounting software. Now, that's pretty lame, but that's what we're going to talk about, because accounting software and accounting for your side-hustle and your freelance business is super important. I have actually gone through a different pieces of software over time, so I thought it was really important to spend a few minutes and tell you about the best online accounting program software for the side hustlers and freelancers. First off, 

Who needs an accounting software?

Well, if you have a business, even a sidebusiness, you need to keep accurate records for tax time. You also need to keep track of your income and you need to keep track of a bunch of different things besides mileage, so it's important to have accounting software.

Now, what is different when it comes to sidehustlers and freelancers? Why does it matter? Why should you have something special?

Well, honestly, because for most side hustlers, you don't always need these giant, robust pieces of software that cost a lot of money, because as side hustlers, you know, we're only making a few hundred dollars, maybe a few thousand dollars extra a month, and we don't need to be spending a lot of money on accountants and book keepers, if we don't need it for our businesses. When I'm looking at accounting software I'm looking for a few different things that matter to me. SUCH AS:

• The first thing is a low price. I want this thing to be cost effective. I don't want to be spending thousands of dollarsa year on accounting, because, honestly, it's an expense in our business. It doesn't necessarily help you grow your top-line sales, so you don't want to necessarily spend more on accounting than you need to.

• The second thing I like is automation, SowHat ever accounting software I choose it better sync up with all my bank accounts, and automatically import those transactions for me, because I don't want to be doing that work manually. It should also have an invoicing system. I think this is a pretty straightforward thing,but you type up an invoice, you want to be able to send it to somebody and hopefully. They pay for it automatically online and you get paid fast, so a great invoicing systemis huge. Like I just said, payment acceptance. You want to be able to be paid in your invoicing system. You want to be able to have that registerin your accounting software and just have everything transact seam lessly. That's the goal.

 

•  Finally, we are moving to a mobile first world,so whatever system you use should have a great app, because a lot of us, let's face it are on the go. We like to do things on our phones. We don't want to have to bust out the laptop to sync up and see how we're doing financially with our business.

So, now that you kind of know the criteria I'm looking for with accounting software, I'm going to talk about four options that really make sense for most side hustlers, and we're going to break them down. These options are: 

      • Quickbooks Online,

      • Xero,

      • Wave Accounting, and

      • FreshBooks.

Now, honestly, there are a lot more option sout there. There's probably about another 10 or 15 different accounting options out there that we've looked at a few of them. But, honestly, a lot of them don't do what we need them to do, or they're too expensive, or they're clunky. So we,just didn't even include them in this. You guys, you could check them out, like I'm not dismissing them. I think you need to do your own homework, but we're going to talk about these four, which are probably the most popular ones and we've used them ourselves. Now, we're going to dive right in:-

QUICKBOOKS ONLINE:

The first off is Quickbooks Online. Now, Quickbooks Online is the solution that I'm using right now on TECH BEAST. The reason I love it, is, it's very robust, it's easy to use, it has a great app, and it's probably the industry standard when it comes to accounting. There are a bunch of different pricing plans with Quickbooks Online. The base one is $15 a month and honestly it works for pretty much every side hustler and freelancer  for the most part. The next plan up is $30 a month, and that one would 100% cover most side hustlers and freelancers. Because beyond that you're getting into things like payroll, and multiple sites and inventory tracking. And you don't necessarily need those for your online side hustle or freelance business. The cool thing with Quickbooks Online is that they also have a free trial to get started. So, why do we love Quickbooks Online, because they have great invoicing and they allow online payments on their platform. They also automatically sync up with all of our bank accounts. They have a great mobile app, and we find them really easy to use. I go in there at least every day, at least multiple times a week for sure and I enter invoices, I track my expenses and I see how my business is doing. The biggest con that we find with Quickbooks is the price. Right, $15 a month is still $15 a month, and that could be a challenge, especially for a small side hustle and you might not want to be paying that.

XERO:

The next option that we looked at is Xero. Xero is probably the biggest competitor of Quickbooks, because they also offer a full-fledged online accounting platform, and they have all the same major features of Quickbooks Online. A lot of people also say that Xero has better customer service than Quick books Online, so if you're looking for that service piece,Xero might be the option for you. What really holds Xero back for us when we were looking at it is that the cheapest plan, which is $9 a month, and they call it their starter plan, limits you to just five invoices and bills per month. Now, for some small freelancers that mightwork, but for us that won't work. We've out grown that. We send about 20-30 invoices a month. We have a ton of expenses that come through and so we need more than that just to keep our base level of business. When you jump up to what plan would work, we're at the $30 a month plan on Xero and you can be getting the $15 a month plan on Quickbooks, so half the price. That's why we like Quickbooks over Xero.

WAVE ACCOUNTING:

The next one is Wave Accounting. Wave Accounting is actually the accounting program that I started with several years ago and the reason is it's free. Wave Accounting is the free option when it comes to accounting software, and it's great if you're starting out and you don't want to spend any money when it comes to accounting. Wave has all the basics covered. It has invoicing, expense tracking. It's a very basic system. Their interface is a little clunky, we think. And, sometimes stuff doesn't sync up right.But, once again, you're getting free. If you don't want to spend any money on accounting, Wave is great. Ultimately we outgrew it. And so we went to Quickbooks, because we needed more features, and we needed that syncing to be accurate. But, you know, free is honestly the best price you're going to find when it comes to online accounting options. Now, they do charge for some things, so if you send out an invoice and you get a payment on that invoice, they do take a transaction fee, and they also have some upsells with book keeping and different things. So, you know, you got to pay for that. Also, their apps are a little clunky, so, instead of having one app they have like two or three apps. You have one app for invoicing, you have one app for expense tracking, and then you have another app for payroll, which I find to be a hassle. I don't want to have apps for the same thing. Put it all on one app, get it seamless. So that's a little clunky. Once again, it's free.

FRESH BOOKS:

The final option we looked at here is FreshBooks. So, FreshBooks is probably one of the most popular invoicing software programs for freelancers and side hustlers. Over the last few years it's really evolved into a full-fledged accounting system. Why people love FreshBooks, is, it's all about invoicing. So, they had an invoicing first platform. If you're a freelancer that trades time for dollars or you send out a lot of invoices, FreshBooks is great. The other thing that FreshBooks is great for is if you take PayPal for your business. With PayPal typically they change a percentageof your transaction, but if you use FreshBooks with PayPal you get business pricing, and that means it's only 50 cents per transaction versus that normal fee. Now for me, I can tell you I get a lot of like $100, $150 payments, and like those $100 payments I have to pay PayPal like $4-5 everysingle time. Where as if you use the FreshBooks invoicing it would just cost you 50 cents,so you save a little bit of money right there. Fresh Books also has one of the best mobile apps we have ever seen when it comes for accounting and invoicing. It's really well designed for invoicing, and that's great if you're going to be sending invoices from your phone. Once again, what really holds us back on FreshBooks is that pricing. Similar to Xero, their Lite plan, which is their smallest one, limits you to just five active clients per month. For us that translates into five different invoices is the maximum that we can send, and that's tough, because we have probably about 30 or 40 clients that we work with every single month. That Lite plan is $15 a month. But, honestly, you max out at five so then you have to jump up to the Plus plan, which is $25 a month. Now, granted that's cheaper than the middlelevel of Quickbooks Online, but it's $10 more than their simple plan, which does unlimited invoicing, so that's why, even though FreshBooks is great for invoicing, that Lite plan is limiting, and they also lack some expense tracking and other accounting features.

Our final verdict here for the best accounting software for freelancers and side hustlers is Wave Accounting if you want the freeversion and Quickbooks Online if you are outgrowing Wave, or you want more features, because that $15 a month you pretty much get it all and it's a great tool. So, Wave, Quickbooks Online those are what we think are the best online accounting software options for freelancers and side hustlers, so that you can keep track of your business income and expenses, and make sure that you get everything you deserveat tax time when you have to file your taxes.

Let us know in the comments what you find to be the best online accounting software options. If you like our website please follow it and check out more post at https://techbeastbd.blogspot.com