Small businesses need to be vigilant in their accounting practices. A minor misstep can have major repercussions. Accounting software makes doing things like expense tracking, invoicing and billing, and maintaining a general ledger much more manageable. More importantly, most small business owners can manage their accounting needs with a simple software program.
However, choosing an accounting package for your business can be difficult. At Software Advice, I put together a list of my five favorite accounting solutions for small businesses: Sage Simply Accounting, NetSuite Financials, Sage Peachtree, CMS Professional 2011, and (naturally) QuickBooks.
One of the best ways to determine which system is right for your business is to look at a side-by-side table comparison. I built the one below to provide a snapshot of the functionality offered in each.
Beyond the functionality, each product has some features that makes the solution unique. Here's a quick rundown of three of the five systems included in the table.
QuickBooks
QuickBooks is Intuit's flagship product and is the most well-known small business accounting program out there. QuickBooks is available in five versions - Online, Pro, Mac, Premier, and Enterprise. The price tag will range from $12.95/mo. for Online to $600/user for the Enterprise version.
Sage Peachtree
Closely trailing QuickBooks is Peachtree. Over 3.2 million users in the US & Canada use this system. Like QuickBooks, Peachtree is offered in 5 versions - First, Pro, Complete, Premium, and Quantum. First and Pro support only one user and are good for mom and pop type operations. If you need more than that, look to other versions.
NetSuite
NetSuite is a web-based system that currently has 10,000 users. NetSuite packs in the most functionality of the five solutions. Because it's web-based, users can access it from anywhere that has an Internet connection which makes it cheap and easy to use.
So there's three of the five solutions featured in my guide to small business accounting software. To see more detailed reviews of CMS 2011 and Simply Accounting, visit my article at: Small Business Accounting Systems | 5 Affordable Solutions.
