Brian Tankersley

Our review of SaaS accounting solutions has focused on tools to help manage a general ledger and create financial reports, but many self-employed individuals and micro-businesses need a more basic day-to-day solution to help them bill customers, track receivables, and manage projects. While many applications can meet the needs of this segment, including the lower tier versions of QuickBooks Online, Xero, and Kashoo, two popular applications which are designed for non-accountants who need to accumulate transaction data are FreshBooks and Sage One.

These applications are low cost or free, and are supported with in-application ads and other special offers provided based on the user’s personal profile. Since they are stored online, the data can be shared with outside advisors, including the individual’s accounting firm.

Xero is a micro-business SaaS accounting platform which is well established in Australia and New Zealand, and was launched in the U.S. in 2012. The company has made significant investments in personnel to compete with other small business accounting software providers in the U.S. market, and has hired a long list of industry veterans to manage its U.S. operations, including Peter Karpas (U.S. CEO), Jamie Sutherland (U.S. President), Ian Vaicin (U.S. VP- Marketing and Product) and many more.

Wave Accounting is part of Wave Apps, which is a suite of free or low-cost apps for self-employed individuals and micro-businesses to accomplish traditional accounting tasks like billing customers, recording payments, writing checks, and downloading transactions from financial institutions.

Intuit QuickBooks Online was one of the first online small business financial management applications when it was launched in 2000. The application has expanded to include many new features over the years, and it is now available in more than 10 languages and 100 countries.

Intuit’s QuickBooks is a product most accounting professionals encounter during their careers, and there are a wide range of available versions of this solution.

Acclivity’s AccountEdge Pro 2014 is a U.S. small business accounting software application for both Windows and MacOS which originated as the U.S. version of global small business management system MYOB. AccountEdge is now available in three versions (AccountEdge Basic, AccountEdge Pro, and AccountEdge Cloud) with three localizations (U.S., Canada, and a generic international version). Acclivity also offers solutions for point of sale, a free mobile version of AccountEdge (AccountEdge Mobile for iOS), a web store service, and a time tracking application

Sage 50 Premium Accounting (U.S. Edition) is one of the most well developed accounting products included in this review. The application is more debit and credit oriented than some competitors, but retains forms for simple, quick data entry. Templated charts of accounts are available for more than 50 different industries, users can create their own chart of accounts, or settings can be copied from an existing Sage 50 company.

When I look back on my time in practice, some of the biggest lies I ever told myself related to shoebox clients ever getting more organized on their own. I always wanted to believe that the client wanted to have a more structured organization system for their finances.

As the space for practice management applications has changed over the last year, we have changed the applications which we cover as part of this review to reflect the desire of many mid-sized and large firms to implement staff scheduling tools.

Unlike traditional applications where it is very clear where one module begins and another ends, CCH Axcess users can perform many tasks from a wide range of menus throughout the solution. This flexibility may be confusing to new users, as the time capture functions are accessed from the user’s dashboard and not from within the Axcess Practice application.