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Comparing Top Online Accounting Software Packages
Oct 25th
Accounting and bookkeeping are two important aspects of running any type of business, whether its a small retail store or a large corporation. Any business owner knows that these tasks can become a painful experience and if not managed correctly the tax man may end up knocking on your door.
We recently were advised by our accountant that we should invest in an accounting software tool so we can better track our expenses and project future financial growth of the company. There are many off the shelf accounting software products on the market. If you walk down to Office Works or search online, you will find software packages that could either be affordable or just too expensive. Some are easy to use whilst others are just too complex but to be honest with you, there isn’t a perfect product out there that does exactly what you want. Every user and business has different processes so a one size fits all approach to accounting software cannot be used here, but what I can say is that if you have basic accounting requirements then you may be in luck. What I’ve done is compared and detailed some of these software packages so we could make a suitable decision of which product we should be using and hopefully at the same time we can also help our readers find a solution that meets their needs. We decided that using a SaaS (Software as a Service) online package would be the most cost effective solution since you are not required to pay extra for software upgrades – everything is done online. Here’s our list, it’s not the most comprehensive but it’s a start (keep in mind we compared product versions that had similar benefits and costed roughly the same):
| Software Package | 
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Zoho Invoicing (premium) |
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| Price | AU$25 per month (includes GST) +11c for each bank transaction over 100 | US$29 | AU$25 per month (min 3 months) 12 months gets 1 month free | US$29.95 per month | US$25 per month | US$20 per month |
| Number of accounts | Unlimited | 5 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Number of users | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | N/A – 1 for each additional account | 3 + US$5 per additional users | Unlimited |
| Contacts | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Number of Invoices and expenses | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | 500 | Unlimited |
| Link Bank accounts | Yes – unlimited | 20 reconciled bank statements per month | Yes – beta test | Don’t think so | No | No |
| Support | Yes – unlimited | Yes – unlimited | Email only | Customer Support Mon-Fri / 9am-6pm ET | Yes | Yes – unlimited |
| Backup | Yes – data is safe and backed up | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Free Trial | Yes – 30 days | Yes – lets you raise a maximum of five new invoices and reconcile 50 bank statement lines. The trial is also limited to a maximum period of 180 days. | Yes – 20 Transactions per month | No – 30 day money back guarantee | Yes – 5 invoices per month, 2 users | Yes – 30 days |
| Mobile access | Not sure | iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile | Not sure | Yes, iphone | Not sure | No |
| Payroll | No | No | 25 employees | No | No | No |
| Other Features | accept credit card payment, invoice workflow status, resend invoices, API support, multi-currency | multi-currency, point of sale hardware + software, items and inventory, connectors, CRM/Activities, time based timesheet, inventory, ebay connector | access online payments, Timesheets, Document Sharing, Support Ticketing | Remove Zoho logo from outgoing emails | UK Based company (not ideal for Australia), timesheet, |
| Number of accounts | Unlimited |
Now based on the above comparison we decided to trial the SaaSu (pro) package.
