No matter if you are running a multi-billion dollar business or a freelancer, having account software would help you run your business smoothly. Accounting software will not only help you to calculate your profit and losses. But it also helps in keeping a record of your clients, taxes, pending payments and expenses, and much more.
Also, there are a bunch of accounting softwares available out there such as Akounto, Zoho, etc. But the question is, as a freelancer, what account software should you choose? And how to choose the best accounting software For Freelancers?
Well, this is what we will be discussing further in this article. So here we go:
How to choose the best accounting software For Freelancers?
While choosing accounting software, there are two parts you need to look at. First, the accounting software must meet all your requirements. Secondly, it should be affordable.
Keeping these two factors in mind, here are some key factors you must consider while selecting an accounting software:
Multi-device support
Your accounting software should support multiple devices. A cloud-based application would be useful, as you can use different devices like your computer or phone to manage your business.
So you can monitor the pending payments, invoice creations, send payment reminders, and manage other tasks on the go without always being on your computer.
Basic Accounting Features
Basic accounting features are something that all accounting software has by default. Features like income and expense management, customer management, invoice creation, and others. So make sure the accounting software you are choosing has these basic features.
However, some accounting software might also come with additional features like inventory management, managing vendors, tracking orders, and more. But as a freelancer, you might not need these features.
And the accounting software provider might charge you extra for offering these features which you are not going to use. In short, the software must meet all your needs.
Features
Apart from the basic accounting features, you would also need a bunch of other features. For instance, the accounting software should be able to manage your taxes, give you the option to customize the look of your invoices, add additional team members to the accounting software if you have a small team, access control for all your teammates, support for multi-currency transactions, and more.
Tax Preparation
Tax preparation is another important feature that you cannot miss. Make sure to go with software that takes care of the tax calculations part. So while you sit down to calculate taxes, you don’t have to go through the whole year’s account reports.
Plus, the software should also allow you to easily download and share the tax report. So you can share it with your accountant for an easy tax filing process.
Easy integration
You might also want to integrate your accounting software with other services. For instance, you might want to integrate a payment gateway with your accounting software. So it will be easier for your clients to pay you. Also, your accounting software will automatically account for the transaction and save you from manually entering the data and managing your accounts.
Depending on your needs, you might want to integrate your accounting software into different services. So make sure the software you are choosing offers you integration options.
Exit options
You should also check how easy it would be if you had to move your accounts from the software to another accounting software.
In case, after a few months of using the accounting software, you don’t like it, you find out that it does not have the features you need, or the software has bugs.
Then you would have to move your accounts to new software and make sure that the process goes easy.
The accounting software should have a data export facility in the form of excel or CSV format. So you can import the same data to another accounting software and continue to work ahead.
However, if your accounting software does not let you export your data, then it will be pretty tough to manually move your data from one account to another.
On top of that, the accounting software should also make it easy to take backup of your data. So in case the software crashes, you can always get back your data.
Data Security
If you are picking up cloud-based accounting software, make sure it is secured. Online services are prone to hacks, and you surely don’t want to lose your private and confidential data to hacks.
To know about how secure a company is, you can check its privacy policy and other details. Also, you can ask the accounting software vendor about how they manage the data.
Scalability
You also need to consider the scalability part. As you grow your freelancing business, you will start needing a lot more features than you would need right now. So make sure to go for accounting software that gives you the space to scale up. So when your business grows, you don’t have to move to some other accounting software.
Moving to another accounting software will not only be a challenging process of moving data. But new software would also require you to learn new software.
Pricing
As a freelancer, you want to keep your expenses low. Hence, you want to avoid paying a hefty subscription fee. So while buying accounting software, see how much it costs and what features you are getting for a specific subscription plan and compare it with multiple options.
Also, ensure that the software does not have any hidden costs. For instance, some software might ask you to pay extra for integrating third-party services, charges you for exporting your data, and so on.
Conclusion
So those were a few points that you must keep in mind while choosing accounting software as a freelancer. Additionally, you also want to ensure that the software is easy to learn. Since accounting software can be pretty complicated to learn and use.
Anyway, if there is anything else you wish to ask, feel free to let us know in the comments.
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