Accounting Tools to Keep Track of Finances
One of the biggest challenges of being a freelancer is finding a sustainable way to keep track of your finances. As a self-employed individual, you may not have the budget for an accountant, nor do you have the time to keep track of your finances yourself. This can be stressful and can have negative impacts in the long term.
Thankfully, there are plenty of great accounting tools to help you manage your accounts with relative ease. In this article, we will list out our recommended accounting tools, along with their benefits and why we choose to use and recommend them.
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Why Accounting Software Can Be Useful to Freelancers
It is essential to keep track of your business expenses, manage client invoices, and record business income. Unfortunately, this can be difficult to do as a freelancer, especially as you are solely responsible for all aspects of your business.
Using accounting tools to keep track of your finances can be beneficial in many ways, including:
- Generating accurate invoices
- Keeping track of cash flow
- Keeping track of accounts receivable
- Keeping track of accounts payable
- Automating your tax filings
- Making payments easier
- Freeing your schedule to focus on more important work
- Leaving less room for human error
- Reducing stress
As you can see, the advantages of utilizing accounting tools are plenty. Good accounting software can make a world of difference as a freelancer, as long as you choose quality software and use it well.
The Best Accounting Software for Freelancers
Xero
Xero is especially popular with small businesses, freelancers, and entrepreneurs. With its simple, user-friendly interface, Xero allows you to create invoices, track expenses, and record business income, all on one platform. It also gives you the option to connect your bank account, so that all of your transactions are automatically recorded. Furthermore, Xero stays up-to-date with the latest tax laws, so you can be sure that you’re meeting all your legal obligations.
Additional benefits of using Xero’s accounting tool include inventory tracking, multi-currency support, automatic VAT return calculations, and other nifty reporting features.
Plans start at $22/month, but you can try it out for free for 30 days.
Quickbooks Online
Quickbooks is one of the most popular cloud-based accounting tools available today. It offers a wide range of features that make it ideal for freelancers and other self-employed professionals, including the tracking of payments and overdue invoices, the generation of online quotes, and the automatic calculation of Estimated Tax Payments.
Additionally, Quickbooks also offers a wide range of customization options, so you can tailor the software to meet your specific needs. Additionally, it can help you to create and manage employee profiles, track vacation days and sick days, and even generate pay stubs.
The freelancer plan starts at $7.50/month but there is a range of other options depending on your needs.
Freshbooks
Not only is Freshbooks incredibly easy to use, but it’s also an excellent and affordable accounting tool for freelancers or small businesses. Some of its features include customizable invoices, reminders for overdue invoices, and automatically-applied late fees.
Another excellent feature of Freshbooks is that you can create project estimates and proposals directly on the platform, and easily convert them into invoices with a click of a button. Freshbooks also allows you to track time across clients, projects, and your team. This makes billing and invoicing quick and pain-free.
Freshbooks also integrates with a ton of other great apps, such as PayPal, Google Drive and DropBox. Plans start at $6.80/month, and differ depending on your intended use.
Zoho Books
Zoho Books is an accounting tool designed specifically with freelancers and small businesses in mind. It helps you to keep track of your income and expenses and can be used to create invoices and track payments.
More apps can be added to your Zoho Books account as your business grows, which will give you access to more features and functionality, and allow you to automatically connect your banking and credit card accounts. This makes tracking your income and expenses nearly effortless.
Some useful features of Zoho Books include time tracking and inventory management. Time tracking can help you keep track of the time you spend on different tasks, and inventory management will help you keep track of the products and services you offer.
Unbelievably, Zoho Books is free for businesses with revenue below $50K per annum.
Conclusion
Keeping up to date with your accounts is crucial as a self-employed individual, as it can help you to stay organized and keep track of your finances.
By utilizing the accounting tools detailed in this article, you can stay organized and on top of your finances easily and at the touch of a button. This can not only alleviate stress but also liberate your time, allowing you to concentrate on your clients and their needs.
Investing in accounting tools is an essential step in automating your workflow, and with plenty of affordable (and free) tools available, you can tackle high-priority tasks instead of fretting over your accounts.
