The Best Accounting SaaS Solutions in 2023
Quickbooks Online: All-round best
Wave Accounting: Budget-friendly
Zoho Books: User-friendly
FreshBooks: Best for invoicing
Xero: Feature-rich solutions
Accounting is without a doubt, one of the most essential parts of a business. If you don't keep track of your finances, it can be hard to make well-informed decisions about where to cut costs, where to invest more money, and how to set objectives for growth.
Besides tracking your income and expenses, a good accounting software solution also helps you mitigate risks, review performance benchmarks, and have complete financial visibility over every aspect of your business.
If you are interested to learn more about what SaaS solutions are then we have a dedicated article explaining that so you can make the best decisions for your business.
So if you're looking for an accounting SaaS solution for your business in 2023, this post will provide you with that and more.
In this article, we are going to cover 5 of the best accounting SaaS solutions available on the market, their features, plans & pricing, and how you can try them for free!
The Best Accounting SaaS Solutions in 2023
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| Best for | Overall | Budget-friendly | User-friendly | Invoicing | Most features |
| Relevant features | • Invoicing & tax • Track mileage |
• Invoicing • Automation • Mobile app |
• Invoicing • Payroll • Mobile app |
• Invoicing • Track expenses • Mobile app |
• Quotes & invoices • Bank reconciliation • Mobile app |
| Price range (per month) |
$15-100 | Free/ Paid features |
$0-249 | $17-55 | $25-54 |
| Free trial | 30 days | 30 days | 14 days | 30 days | 30 days |
Quickbooks Online - Overall Best Accounting Software
Quickbooks Online is one of the leading invoicing and billing software solutions on the market. It offers businesses more flexibility, detailed reporting, and complete transparency with its automated processes.
With this solution, you get powerful features like bank reconciliation, revenue recognition, budgeting tools, and financial reports. This SaaS-based tool also integrates easily with online payment processors such as PayPal or Stripe.
Quickbooks Online users interface is also a plus point, it’s both easy to use and friendly.
Finally, it allows companies to scale quickly and effortlessly thanks to its offering. Businesses can better tailor their billing systems by providing features such as multi-currency support for international invoices or automatically synchronizing tax rates in different countries.
Tip: QuickBooks is also our pick in our list of the best accounting software in Hong Kong.
Quickbooks Online Features
Quickbooks Online is a great choice for any small business looking to streamline its invoicing and billing process. One of the advantages is its intuitive interface, with a customizable dashboard allowing you to track all your expenses, payments, and overdue accounts easily.
But what sets Quickbooks apart from the rest are its unique capabilities, such as:
- Automated invoices with customizable fields for tracking time and expense entries
- Automatic calculations: help improve accuracy and speed up the billing process.
- A mobile app to access your customer information on the go and manage payments with ease.
- All other essential features, plus many extras including data migration, inventory management, expense tracker, and more.
Quickbooks Online Plans & Pricing
Quickbooks Online offers various plans with 3 pricing tiers to fit your business needs, including:
| Simple Start | Plus All Simple Start features + |
Advanced All Plus features + |
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| Pricing | $15 / month | $42.50 / month | $100 / month |
| Features | • 1 User + an accountant • Track income & expenses • Send & organize custom invoices & quotes • Bank integration • Track GST & VAT • Insights & reports |
• Send quotes and invoices • Up to 5 users • Manage bills & payments • Track employee time • Track inventory • Track project profitability |
• Up to 25 users • Customize access by role • Batch invoices & expenses • Enhanced custom fields • Exclusive app integration • Dedicated account team • Automate processes & tasks |
🔖 Quickbooks Online offers an exclusive 30-day free trial to try Quickbooks Online Advanced plus other tools and features to streamline your business.
Wave Accounting - Budget-Friendly Accounting Software
Wave is an easy-to-use cloud-based accounting software that provides financial insights and real-time updates to help businesses make better decisions with their finances.
Wave Accounting Features
Wave offers users free access to three of its software categories: Invoicing, Accounting, and Banking (US only)
Wave's billing function makes it easy to track client payments, create customized invoices, and send automated reminders. This simplifies the tax procedure and aids small businesses' financial operations.
Wave also offers double-entry accounting, which ensures accuracy in its reports and eliminates errors caused by manual input or duplicate information entry, with features including:
- Unlimited income and expense tracking
- Unlimited partners, collaborators, or accountants
- Unlimited bank and credit card connections
- Helpful reports like Overdue Invoices & Bills and Profit & Loss
Banking integration that enables businesses to manage their bank accounts with instant payouts, Wave debit cards, and more while providing insights on cash flow.
Moreover, its AI-powered analytics provides detailed insights into spending patterns so that small businesses can better understand where they need to make adjustments for performance.
Wave Premium Plans & Pricing
For business owners looking for improved cash flow management, smarter expense tracking, and budgeting tools for managing multiple business accounts, Wave offers this and more within its paid feature, which provides you access to crucial tools for your business.
There are two main pricing tiers for Wave accounting software: Free and Premium Plan
Let's take a look at Wave's free plan and all of the features you try.
| Invoicing | Accounting | Banking (US only) |
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| Pricing | FREE | ||
| Features | • Create customized invoices • Send automated reminders |
• Unlimited income and expense tracking • Unlimited partners, collaborators, or accountants • Unlimited bank and credit card connections • Helpful reports like Overdue Invoices & Bills and Profit & Loss. |
• Instant Payouts • Wave debit card • Mobile app |
Besides Wave's free plan, this budget-friendly accounting software also offers a premium, paid plan, including Payments, Payroll, and Advisors.
| Payments | Payroll | Advisors | |
| Pricing | Credit cards: 2.9% + $0.6 per transaction 3.4% + $0.6 per AMEX transaction Bank payments: 1% per transaction |
Tax service states: $40 / month Self service states: $20 per month |
Bookkeeping support: $149 / month Accounting and payroll coaching: $379 one time fee |
| Features | • Get pay via bank deposit, credit card, and Apple Pay • Invoice payments automatically sync to your accounting dashboard • Recurring billing and payments for retainer clients |
• Send quotes and invoices • Up to 5 users • Manage bills & payments • Track employee time • Track inventory • Track project profitability |
• Up to 25 users • Customize access by role • Batch invoices & expenses • Enhanced custom fields • Exclusive app integration • Dedicated account team • Automate processes & tasks |
By subscribing to Wave's premium capabilities, which include online payment processing, payroll software, and access to specialist bookkeeping services and coaching, you can take advantage of rapid payments, recurring bills, invoice automation, and more.
With its unique features and powerful capabilities, Wave Accounting software is an excellent choice for those looking for a budget-friendly SaaS solution in 2023.
📑 Wave offers a 30-day free trial for complete accounting solutions with all the major features your business needs.
Zoho Books - User-Friendly Accounting Software
Accounting software is one of the types of SaaS solutions that is efficient and cost-effective to use for small businesses. They offer various essential features, and some of them are also friendly to use.
One of the top picks is definitely Zoho Books. This cloud-based financial software combines powerful accounting tools with a simple user interface, giving users everything they need for bookkeeping and more.
Zoho Books Features
Zoho Books has a simple, user-friendly interface design that offers end-to-end accounting tasks and supports multiple integrations and collaborations with other apps such as Shopify, PayPal, Stripe, and more for easy payment processing, and its cloud storage for improved accessibility.
Here's an overview of Zoho Book's key features:
- Invoicing – You can create invoices for your customers and keep track of payments with their user-friendly system.
- Reporting – You can access valuable business insights via an array of reporting capabilities, including custom reports designed around specific needs.
- Accounting Automation – You can streamline accounting tasks with automated processes.
- Inventory Management – You can monitor inventory levels, prices, and vendors through integrated stock management tools.
- Multi-Currency Support – You can bill in multiple currencies.
- Tax Filing & Reporting – You can automate tax filing & reporting, and track financial updates related to taxes, inventory levels, customer payments, and more.
On top of this, Zoho Books focuses on its security features when it comes to data protection, including key components such as two-factor authentication and data encryption.
Zoho Books Plans & Pricing
Zoho Books offers simple and affordable price tiers that are tailored to your business needs.
Let's look at the features you can expect from each plan.
| Plans | Pricing | |
| Free / Basic 1 User + 1 Accountant |
• Manage Invoices (Up to 1,000 per annum), Automate Payment Reminders, Multi-lingual Invoicing, Recurring Invoices, Expenses & Mileage Tracking, Add Multiple Bank and Credit Card Accounts, Import Bank and Credit Card Statements Basic Plan also includes: • Bank Reconciliation | Reports | Invoice Customization | Taxes | Payment Gateways | Schedule Reports | Integration with other apps |
$0 (for businesses under 50K USD/annum) |
| Standard All in Free Plan + 3 Users |
• Manage Invoices (Up to 5,000)
Recurring Expenses, Connect and fetch bank & credit card feeds via the bank feeds provider, Predefined User Roles, Track Project Expenses and Invoice, Project Tasks, Bulk Updates Standard Plan also includes: • Bulk Updates | Transaction Locking | Custom Views | Custom Fields | Reporting Tags | Timesheet and Billing | Payment Gateways | 10 custom reports |
$12 / month |
| Professional All in Standard Plan + 5 Users |
• Sales Approval, Retainer Invoices, Payments Made, Vendor Credits, Recurring Bills, Sales Orders, Purchase Orders, and Purchase Approval, Currency Adjustments, Stock Tracking / Price Lists, and Landed Costs Professional Plan also includes: • Timesheet Approval & Customer Approval | Contextual Chat | Retainer Invoices for Projects | Project Profitability | Tasks | Workflow Rules (Up to 10) | 25 Custom Reports |
$24 / month |
| Premium All in Professional Plan + 10 Users |
• 3 Branches, Custom Domain, Vendor Portal
Multi-Transaction Number Series / Budgeting / Custom Buttons, Validation Rules & Related Lists, WebTabs Premium Plan also includes: • Workflow Rules (Up to 200) | 10 Custom Modules | 50 Custom Reports | Cashflow Forecasting Report | Tax Rules |
$36 / month |
| Elite All in Premium Plan + 10 users |
• Unlimited Custom Reports • Advanced Multi-currency Handling • Advanced Inventory Control |
$129 / month |
| Ultimate All in Elite Plan + 15 Users |
• 25 Custom Modules • Advanced Analytics |
$249 / month |
All these make Zoho Books one of the best accounting user-friendly SaaS solutions you can use in 2023 and beyond!
📕 Zoho Books offers a full-featured premium plan for 14 days to try out for your business.
FreshBooks: Best Invoicing Accounting Software
FreshBooks is one of the best accounting software solutions currently available on the market. This SaaS tool is exceptionally well-designed and offers an intuitive interface that is easy to learn and use.
FreshBooks Features
FreshBooks offers a comprehensive range of features tailored to small businesses and freelancers. What makes it unique among other accounting software is its invoicing solutions.
The cloud-based solution also provides unlimited access to real-time account information so your data is always up-to-date. Users can track invoices, expenses, and more with the ability to connect with many payment gateways and bank accounts.
FreshBooks Plans & Pricing
FreshBooks offers three main pricing tiers, including:
| Plans | Pricing | |
| Lite | • Send unlimited invoices to up to 5 clients • Track expenses • Send estimates • Get paid with credit cards and bank transfers • Track sales, tax, and see reports • Access on iOS and Android |
$17 (for businesses under 50K USD/annum) |
| Plus | • Send unlimited invoices to up to 50 clients • Automatically track expenses • Send estimates and proposals • Get paid with credit cards and bank transfers • Set up recurring billing and client retainers, plus other features including: Run business health reports | Double-entry accounting reports | Invite your accountant | Access on iOS and Android | Mobile mileage tracking |
$30 / month |
| Premium | • Send unlimited invoices to an unlimited amount of clients • Track Bills, Bill Payments & Vendors with Accounts Payable • Track project profitability • Customize email templates • Customize email signatures • Automatically track expenses • Automatically send late payment reminders and bill late fees, plus other features including: Send estimates and proposals | Get paid with credit cards and bank transfers | Get paid with checkout links | Set up recurring billing and client retainers | Run business health reports | Run financial and accounting reports | Invite your accountant | Access on iOS and Android | Mobile mileage tracking |
$55 / month |
All in all, FreshBooks excels in providing an intuitive invoicing experience without sacrificing quality or failing to fulfill particular requirements.
It is without a doubt one of the greatest accounting SaaS solutions for your business in 2023.
📒 Try FreshBooks premium plans for FREE with a 30-day free trial to experience seamless features, live customer support, and more.
Xero: Accounting Software with the Most Features
Xero is an award-winning cloud-based accounting software that has won multiple awards for its features and user experience. Xero is an accounting software with the most features. It offers more features than any other accounting software.
Xero Features
There are several features you can try with Xero. It supports invoices, payroll and sales tax calculations, credit card reconciliations, and integrated bank feeds to help simplify complex tasks.
Xero also makes it easier to get paid faster with invoicing and payment options like ACH payments, eChecks, and more.
But beyond those basics, Xero also integrates with over 500 applications — such as Salesforce — Their app syncs with all your online accounts, making managing your business easier no matter where you are.
Xero Plans & Pricing
Xero plans are simple and effective. The accounting software offers three affordable pricing tiers.
| Starter | Standard | Premium | |
| Pricing | $25 / month | $40 / month | $54 / month |
| Features | • Send quotes and 20 invoices • Enter 5 bills • Reconcile bank transactions • Capture bills and receipts with Hubdoc • Short-term cash flow and business snapshot |
• Send quotes and invoices • Enter bills • Reconcile bank transactions • Capture bills and receipts with Hubdoc • Short-term cash flow and business snapshot • Bulk reconcile transactions |
• Send quotes and invoices • Enter bills • Reconcile bank transactions • Capture bills and receipts with Hubdoc • Short-term cash flow and business snapshot • Bulk reconcile transactions • Use multiple currencies |
With this powerful combination of features and ease of use, Xero is set to become the top accounting solution for small businesses in 2023!
Benefits of Accounting SaaS Solutions
You may be asking, why should I use Accounting SaaS Solutions?
Well, accounting SaaS solutions can provide major benefits to any business, such as increased efficiency, improved data security, and scalability.
Here are just some of the benefits your business can attain when using accounting software as a SaaS solution:
1. Cost Savings
Many traditional accounting systems require additional software purchases for each user or additional equipment for installation.
However, with a SaaS solution, you pay one down payment and then have access to all its features from anywhere with just your login credentials.
This generally results in less time spent on accounting tasks, and therefore reduce your labor costs over time.
2. Increased Security
With a SaaS solution, your data is stored offsite on secure cloud data servers instead of your local devices or PCs, meaning you get more robust security for your financial transactions.
Also, since these cloud services can detect unusual activity quite accurately and block it accordingly, they minimize the risk of fraud.
3. Scalability
Since you pay only for what you use as opposed to having a fixed cost regardless of usage level, growing organizations that use accounting SaaS solutions benefit greatly when it comes to budgeting efforts while being able to scale without worrying about capacities upfront before committing to any long-term commitments or resource acquisitions.
🔦 Are you a small business on a budget? See how you can get access to free SaaS solutions in 2023.
Wrapping up
The five options listed above are some of the best accounting SaaS options available for your business to try in 2023.
Each tool offers its own features and perks that can facilitate your financial management and more importantly, save you time. But eventually, there is no perfect solution.
What counts is the solution that meets your business's needs, and choosing the best one depends on a number of factors, such as your budget, company size, expertise, etc.
FAQs
How does SaaS work in accounting?
SaaS works in accounting by being the service provider on its own platform as a "cloud accounting software".
Cloud accounting means that software does not have to be installed locally and can be securely accessed through mobile or computer devices.
What does "accounting software" for a small business do?
What is the simplest accounting software?
Is accounting software secure?
Can SaaS be capitalized?
