How to choose online accounting software for a small business

What online accounting software does, and what it doesn’t

Accounting software keeps your books. It pulls in bank and card transactions through automatic imports, often called bank feeds, and sorts them into income and expense categories. It tracks who owes you and whom you owe. It also produces the reports your accountant needs, like profit and loss and the balance sheet. The IRS lets you choose any recordkeeping system that suits your business, as long as it clearly shows your income and expenses.

It doesn’t run your jobs. Scheduling, work orders, job photos and a café’s order screen live in other tools. That could be a job app, a point-of-sale system like Square, a Shopify store or a spreadsheet. So you may end up with two kinds of software. The real choice is how they share the work.

It also looks backward. It tells you what already happened, not what cash is coming next month. For that, see our guide to cash flow forecasting options.

For a new business, the choice is mostly online software. Intuit stopped selling new QuickBooks Desktop Pro Plus, Premier Plus and Mac Plus subscriptions to new US customers after September 30, 2024. When we checked in October 2026, its help page said Desktop Enterprise was still sold. Online software can let your accountant log in from their own office and pull in bank transactions on its own. Some free plans leave one of those out.

References: IRS: Recordkeeping (opens in a new tab) · Intuit: Can’t buy QuickBooks Desktop as a new US subscriber (opens in a new tab)

Start with how money moves through your business

Before you compare any plans, follow one ordinary job or sale from start to finish. Who writes the quote? Where is the invoice made? How does the customer pay: card on site, bank transfer, check, or at a counter? When the money lands in the bank, who matches it to the invoice?

The answer to “where is the invoice made?” shapes most of what you need from accounting software. If invoices are your main headache, read how to choose invoicing software alongside this guide. Here are three common patterns:

• Invoices made in the accounting software. Common for a small contractor or consultant with a few jobs a week. Invoice features, payment links and estimates matter most, and a monthly limit on invoices can bite.
• Invoices made in a job app, then sent to the books. Common for trades with crews. The accounting software mostly needs a solid connection and good bank matching. The crew never logs in to it.
• Sales rung up at a counter or online. Cafés, shops and showrooms usually send daily sales totals from the point-of-sale system or Shopify into the books, not every ticket.

What it costs: users, limits and the price after the promo

Accounting software prices look simple until you read the limits. Three things change the real cost: how many people log in, monthly caps on invoices or bills, and the price once an opening discount ends.

Price the plan you’ll need in two years, not today. Count only the people who truly need to log in to the books. If your crew works in a job app that sends invoices across, they don’t need accounting logins at all.

For example, take a 6-truck HVAC company where the owner, office manager and bookkeeper log in. The techs work in a job app, so three or four logins cover it. If it wants per-job profit, it needs QuickBooks Online Plus or higher. At $140 a month, Plus comes to $5,040 over three years at the regular price. Add payroll, card fees and the job app to get the real number.

Here is what five common choices listed on their own pages, at the regular monthly price, when we checked in October 2026. Most also offered an opening discount, so check how long it lasts:

• QuickBooks Online. A Free plan at $0: one user, one bank connection, no accountant access, and two invoices a month unless you qualify for and turn on QuickBooks Payments. Then Simple Start at $38 a month for one user and Essentials at $85 for three users. Plus is $140 for five users, and Advanced is $340 for 25 users.
• Xero. Early at $27 a month, limited to 20 invoices and 5 bills. Growing at $59, without the Early plan’s invoice and bill caps. Established at $97, which adds project tracking and multiple currencies. No plan charges per-user license fees.
• Wave. A free Starter plan with unlimited invoices and bookkeeping records, but no automatic bank import. Pro is $19 a month or $190 a year, and adds automatic bank import. If Wave approves you for online payments, card payments on Starter cost 2.9% + $0.60 each, or 3.4% + $0.60 for Amex.
• Zoho Books. A Free plan while yearly revenue stays at or under $50,000, with up to 1,000 invoices a year but no bank feeds. Standard is $20 a month, or $15 a month billed yearly, and adds bank feeds.
• FreshBooks. Plans limit how many clients you can bill. Lite is $23 a month for 5 clients, Plus is $43 for 50, and Premium is $70 for unlimited clients. Each extra team member is $11 a month.

References: Intuit: QuickBooks Online pricing (opens in a new tab) · Xero: US pricing plans (opens in a new tab) · Wave: Pricing (opens in a new tab) · Zoho Books: US pricing (opens in a new tab) · FreshBooks: Pricing (opens in a new tab)

Ask your accountant before you sign up

Your accountant or bookkeeper may spend more time in this software than anyone else. Some work mostly in one or two products, and setup and reviews go faster in one they know. Ask them before any free trial, not after.

Check that they can get in with their own login, not your password. When we checked in October 2026, each paid QuickBooks Online plan included access for two or three accountants, and its Free plan had none.

This isn’t tax advice. These are questions for your accountant, and their answers decide which plan you need:

• Which software do you work in, and will you set up our categories (the chart of accounts)?
• Should our reports use cash basis (when money moves) or accrual basis (when we invoice or get billed)?
• How should we handle sales tax on what we sell, and in which states?
• Do we pay subcontractors who need a Form 1099-NEC each year, and how should we track those payments?
• Should payroll run inside the accounting software or in a separate payroll app?
• How often do you want to see our books, and which reports should we send you?

References: Intuit: QuickBooks Online pricing (opens in a new tab) · IRS: About Form 1099-NEC, Nonemployee Compensation (opens in a new tab)

What to look for in your kind of business

Most paid plans cover the basics: bank feeds, invoices, bills and reports. Some free plans leave out the bank import or accountant access. The differences that matter show up in a few trade-specific jobs. These are examples, not rules. Plan details are from each vendor’s page when we checked in October 2026.

• Contractors and trades. You want profit per job: what you billed against what you spent on materials, labor and subs. QuickBooks Online includes project profitability from its Plus plan up, and Xero’s Established plan tracks time and costs for projects. For example, a 6-truck HVAC company may only need per-job profit on installs, not on every repair call.
• Service plans. If customers pay monthly or yearly for maintenance visits, decide where those charges start. That could be the accounting software, or the system that runs the visits. Our guide to recurring billing for service plans covers that choice.
• Cafés and restaurants. The point-of-sale system holds every ticket. The books usually need only daily totals: sales, tips, card fees and sales tax. Check that your POS can send those totals in, and ask your accountant how tips should be recorded.
• Shops and showrooms. Stock and customer deposits matter here. QuickBooks Online includes inventory tracking from its Plus plan, and Xero lists an Inventory Plus add-on. If you also sell on Shopify, check how online and in-store sales each reach the books.
• Property managers. Rent and deposits you hold for owners and tenants usually aren’t your income, and state rules may control how you hold them. This isn’t legal advice: ask your accountant or a lawyer how that money must be kept before you choose. Check, too, whether your property management app should keep that part instead.

References: Intuit: QuickBooks Online pricing (opens in a new tab) · Xero: US pricing plans (opens in a new tab)

Check what has to flow into your books

Accounting software earns its keep when transactions arrive on their own. Every manual import is a chance for a mistake. When we checked in October 2026, Xero’s site said it connects with more than 1,000 apps. But an app list only tells you a connection exists, not what it sends.

Start with the bank. Check that each business bank and card account connects, including a second account at a smaller bank or credit union. Then look at how card money lands. It often reaches your bank as one deposit covering several sales, minus fees, and the books have to split it back into invoices and fees.

For example, a landscaper with 4 crews might find their job app sends invoices but not the card fees taken from each payment. Then deposits never match invoices, and someone fixes it by hand every week. If finished jobs get retyped into the books, read stop retyping jobs into QuickBooks.

List every place where money or sales records start today, and what each one should send:

• Bank and credit card accounts. Each one should feed in on its own, including any second business account.
• Card payments: QuickBooks Payments, Stripe, Square or your job app’s own payments. Fees and refunds should land as their own lines.
• A point-of-sale system or Shopify store. Usually a daily summary, with sales, tips, tax and fees split out.
• Your job, scheduling or property management app. Finished invoices and payments, with the customer attached.
• Payroll. Each pay run should reach the books without retyping. Xero, for example, sells payroll as an add-on, powered by Gusto.
• Supplier bills and receipts, and how they arrive: paper, email or a supplier’s website.

Reference: Xero: US pricing plans (opens in a new tab)

Try it for a month: real numbers, phone app and support

A trial full of sample data proves very little. Use last month’s real numbers instead. When we checked in October 2026, QuickBooks Online listed a 30-day free trial for its paid plans. Its pricing page showed the trial and the three-month discount as separate options, so check which one you’re signing up for. Set a reminder before any trial turns into a paid plan.

Feature lists rarely show what you’ll notice every week, so check those things during the trial too. When you’re done, give your accountant 15 minutes in it. If they can’t read your reports, the setup needs work, whichever product you pick. Do these before you pay:

• Connect your main bank account, pull in last month’s transactions and reconcile them: match the books to your bank statement, line by line.
• Make three real invoices: one paid in full, one with a deposit, and one paid in two parts.
• Enter two supplier bills and pay one.
• Send one real job or sale through each connection, and check what lands in the books.
• Export your customer list, invoices and one report to a spreadsheet, and open them.
• The phone app. Can you snap a receipt, send an invoice and see who owes you from your phone?
• Who sees what. Can the office manager send invoices without seeing payroll or bank balances? Look for logins you can limit by area.
• Safe sign-in. Give each person their own login, never a shared one, and turn on two-step sign-in for all of them.
• Help when you’re stuck. Check how your plan reaches support (chat, email or phone) and during which hours. Send one real question and see how long the answer takes.
• Sales tax. If you charge sales tax, check the software can work it out for each place you sell. Then ask your accountant to check the setup.

Reference: Intuit: QuickBooks Online pricing (opens in a new tab)

Plan your way out before you start

Your records have to outlast the software. The IRS says to keep records for 3 years in most cases, at least 4 years for employment tax records, and longer in some situations. This isn’t tax advice, so ask your accountant how long to keep yours.

Vendors treat cancelled accounts differently. When we checked in October 2026, QuickBooks Online gave read-only access for one year after you cancel. If you cancel during a free trial or the trial ends, it’s 90 days. It recommended exporting or printing your data first. Xero archived a cancelled subscription. Nobody can open it unless you reactivate it, which you can do for up to seven years. Xero says you can export your data any time.

So build the exit into your routine. At each year-end, and before any switch, save your main reports and lists as files. Keep the profit and loss, balance sheet, general ledger (every entry, line by line), customers, vendors and invoices. If you switch partway through a year, ask your accountant to pick the start date and check the opening balances.

References: IRS: How long should I keep records? (opens in a new tab) · Intuit: What happens to my QuickBooks Online data after I cancel? (opens in a new tab) · Xero: Frequently asked questions (opens in a new tab)

When the gap is between your apps, not in your books

For the books themselves, buy accounting software rather than build it. Off-the-shelf accounting software does the bookkeeping job, and your accountant already knows how to read it. We don’t replace it.

The trouble usually starts before an invoice reaches the books. Jobs live in one app, quotes in another, and someone retypes each finished job into QuickBooks. If an off-the-shelf job app fits your work, use it and connect it. If none does, we build the job system that sends finished jobs, invoices and payments straight into QuickBooks Online.

Connecting two apps you already use is a focused fix: $750–$3,000 over 1–⁠2 weeks. One business system, like scheduling and invoicing connected to QuickBooks Online, is $6,000–$18,000 over 6–⁠10 weeks. These are our prices as of October 4, 2026. We connect to QuickBooks Online, Square, Stripe, Shopify, Google Calendar, Gmail and Outlook. For Xero or anything else, we check it can connect before we quote.

Bring your money-flow notes and the list of what has to reach your books to a free first call. You get a fixed price in writing within 48 hours. Once the project is paid in full, you own the code we write, and every launch includes 30 days of fixes.