Choosing the Right Accounting Software for Your Business

There is a vast array of options available to business owners when choosing accounting software. Choosing the right software for you and the business is an important decision, how well you work with and understand your chosen software can make bookkeeping a chore or a simple task.

What should you be looking for when choosing software?

There are 4 keys areas to consider to ensure you find the right solution:

1. Features
2. Ease-of-use
3. Price
4. Support

We will look at each key area below and consider what might be important to business owners in each instance.

Features

Firstly business owners should consider if there are any niche requirements that will lead them to a specific software. Some external applications will only directly integrate with certain accounting software so it is worth checking any existing software used by the business and whether they have direct integrations established with accounting software.

If there are no niche requirements then consideration should be given to other business requirements, such as the use of foreign currencies, tracking different cost centres and whether a payroll solution is required.

Business owners should also consider future plans, if rapid growth is anticipated then it would be worth choosing appropriate software to support this growth rather than switching after a short period of time.

Ease-of-use

Every business owner will use and understand software differently and the software available to business owners all work and look different to each other. Therefore, it can be worth using demos to understand how different software looks and feels when using it to complete tasks. If you complete your own bookkeeping then you will likely be in this software almost every day so it is important that you feel comfortable using it.

Price

Whilst the larger accounting software providers all currently charge similar prices across their packages, they do have differences in what is available under each package. Identifying any limitations in the appropriate package will help narrow down the right software, for the business, at the right price point.

Some smaller software providers may charge lower prices, it is worth reviewing their features to understand if there is anything missing compared to other software packages.

Support

You may wish to contact the software provider when facing issues or uncertainties, how this support is delivered may influence your decision. For example, QuickBooks can offer telephone support, whilst Xero have a ticketing system for support requests. Resources will usually be available to assist with most queries, usually in the form of knowledge base articles.

Whitings does offer support with bookkeeping software to our clients, so if you are unable to find a solution, then your point of contact within the firm will likely be able to assist.

Conclusion

With so many options available today to business owners, it can be overwhelming when trying to consider the above points.

At Whitings we tend to see clients using the following software with more regularity than others in the market:

• Xero
• QuickBooks Online
• Sage Accounting
• FreeAgent

Get In Touch

It is likely that one of the above will be suitable for most businesses, but if you are unsure which is most suitable, or are unable to find a solution then please reach out to your local office and we’ll be happy to help you.

Disclaimer - All information in this post was correct at time of writing.