The Best Accounting Software for Freelancers

FreshBooks allows you to keep track of your expenses, mark them as billable, invoice your customers, and receive payments from them. It also has a fantastic customer support team that responds to users’ questions via phone and email on time. You will usually get an answer to your question within an hour if you send your request via email.

FreshBooks is available for $15 a month, but you will need to upgrade to the $25 per month package. Any additional apps you require will increase your monthly expenditure. When new customers miss the 30-day free trial period and opt to purchase now, FreshBooks offers 60 percent off for six months on the Lite, Plus, and Premium plans for a limited time.

QuickBooks Self Employed: QuickBooks Online is a household name in small-business accounting, with over 4.5 million users worldwide. Since its debut in 2014, Intuit’s QuickBooks Self-Employed product has gradually gained traction as a straightforward accounting solution for freelancers and other tiny businesses. Many practical features are included in QuickBooks Self-Employed, including:

• An app that is easy to use.
• The app’s ability to distinguish between business and personal expenditures.
• Automatic mileage tracking is available.
• Simple invoicing, with the option to allow online payments.
• A receipt capture function that eliminates the need for paper receipts.
• Estimated tax calculations for each quarter.
• The opportunity to work with the accountant collaboratively.

There are three pricing choices for QuickBooks Self Employed. The basic plan, which contains all of the above items, costs $10 a month. You can add the TurboTax bundle for an extra fee. This package enables you to pay your projected quarterly taxes online, export your Schedule C data to TurboTax, and file one state and one federal tax return per year using TurboTax. Live assistance from certified public accountants is included in the most expensive subscription tier. 

QuickBooks Self Employed is fantastic, but it has one big flaw: you can’t quickly upgrade to QuickBooks Online if your company expands beyond the freelance model. If you need to upgrade to a more powerful QuickBooks solution, you’ll need to start a new QuickBooks subscription and import or manually transfer your files.

QuickBooks Online Simple Start: It was previously stated that freelancers do not need a balance sheet, which is correct in terms of business management and taxation. Accountants and bookkeepers, on the other hand, would disagree, and with good reason. Even if you don’t have many fixed assets or liabilities and aren’t building equity in your business, a balance sheet is essential for keeping track of your finances. It’s more challenging to keep track of your books if you don’t have one. However, QuickBooks Online Simple Start, which includes a balance sheet, has you covered. 

For a low monthly fee of $25, freelancers will get the simplicity of QuickBooks Self Employed and the power of QuickBooks Online with this tech selection. Although QuickBooks Online Simple Start does not have the tax package option that QuickBooks Self Employed does, it more than makes up for it in overall flexibility and scalability. 

Freelancers can get a complete bookkeeping and accounting solution with QuickBooks Online Simple Start, which includes a bank reconciliation feature missing in QuickBooks Self Employed.