6 Accounting Apps for Your Small Business
As humans, we have a tendency to overcomplicate things. I learned this lesson in high school, in an after-school robotics program. We built robots each year for a competition called FIRST, created by Dean Kamen (the guy behind the Segway and many medical devices).
Each year, we’d get a kit of critical parts, like the motor and pneumatic cylinders, and could build the rest as we chose fit. The robot had to be within a certain size and weight. Every year was a different game. Often it was about moving balls around: picking them up, moving them, and depositing them in a goal.
Once we knew the rules, we’d begin by strategizing. Would we go for an offensive strategy? What about defense? What different strategies could we employ? How could we build a robot to do both? This was where I learned a phrase that’s stuck with me: Keep it simple, stupid. KISS.
That was the guiding principle of our robotics team. Whenever we over-engineered a design or strategy, Mr. Shotwell, our teacher/coach, would remind us: KISS. Through my degrees and early corporate career, I saw the complexity of accounting. First in the Big Four accounting firms, then in corporate. At PricewaterhouseCoopers, I saw businesses with all sorts of complicated and shady records (I was in forensics and fraud). One company literally created a new invoice template for every invoice.
In corporate, we used software designed in the early 80s. It looked like we were using C-DOS, and nothing was automated. Even with all the changes in technology, it hadn’t made a huge impact on accounting.
Then I found out it didn’t have to be that way. After leaving corporate behind, I found all sorts of apps that modernized how to do accounting. In fact, these tools were way better than what I used in the corporate world.
Accounting apps today work almost in the background. If you can create good habits around updating your books and tracking things, you won’t have to spend a ton of time retroactively digging through a year’s worth of paperwork or invoices. Also, if you work with a professional, these tools allow us to be more efficient and thus keep our rates lower.
FREE Finance Checklist
Make sure your business finances are buttoned up each week with this checklist to DIYing your numbers.
Here are several of the accounting apps I use for my own company and for clients’ small businesses.
QuickBooks Online
The accounting software that I use in my business and with all my monthly clients is QuickBooks Online (QBO). This is a cloud-based version of the old desktop software you're probably familiar with. “In the cloud” means that it can be accessed anywhere as long as you have an internet connection.
The QBO app is packed full of features and they are constantly adding more. For example, you can pay your bills through it, pay contractor invoices, and more. The app includes a mileage tracker and a receipt capturing feature. You can send invoices and accept electronic payments at competitive rates (less than the fees PayPal and other platforms take).
Most importantly, QBO syncs to your bank and credit card accounts, downloading the data automatically. You can categorize expenses and income as they come in — and it saves so much time. No manual data entry finally.
Why I recommend the QuickBooks platform & app: It’s easy to use, no matter what size business you have.
Hubdoc
While QuickBooks Online has added features like receipt capture and management, I still prefer Hubdoc’s receipt management app.
Hubdoc is like a document hub. To me, it’s a key communication tool. Biz owners can securely send their receipts and documents to their accountant using phone, email, or automation.
Before technology, business owners would collect piles of receipts for their accountant, who would pick them up every few weeks to do the books. It was a slow, manual process. Shockingly, many accountants still do it this way.
With Hubdoc, though, business owners can snap a photo of a receipt using their phone. If they get an emailed receipt, they can forward it to their Hubdoc account. Then their accountant has all the details automatically. Then the biz owner can crumble up that receipt and throw it away! #NoClutter
To make accounting even easier with Hubdoc, you can set up email rules to automatically forward receipts. This app also saves time because it can pull bank statements, check copies, invoices, and more from many of the largest banks in the US.
It’s a great place for sharing information, like contracts and letters. For instance, if a client gets an unexpected letter, they upload it to Hubdoc and I can take a look right away. It’s a fast, easy way to collaborate with an accountant (or just keep track of everything yourself).
Why I recommend the Hubdoc app: It stores all the documents you need to keep your books and makes it easier to communicate with and update any accounting professionals you work with.
QuickBooks Time (Formerly T-Sheets)
Time-tracking is an important function for payroll, but also for managing your business and knowing where your time goes. The easiest way to do this is, of course, with an app. I recommend using QuickBooks Time because it integrates really well with all of these other tools.
QuickBooks Time has a ton of features, including a mobile app, the ability to clock in and out of different projects and clients, and even real technical things like geofencing (the ability to track time spent in a location). You can control where somebody can be in order to clock in. too.
For instance, you can set your app so that an employee or contractor has to be in your store in order to be able to clock in the other phone. This app is so easy because it's on your phone, it's on your computer, and everybody on your team can download it.
Especially if you do hourly billing, you need a time-keeping app. If you do your invoicing through QBO, you can also make certain job codes and time-tracking billable through QuickBooks Time. It’s really neat because you can go to invoice a client and these unbilled hours will pop up in the side tray. You can add them to the invoice, ensuring you get paid for all hours worked.
Even better, QuickBooks Time integrates with payroll software in QuickBooks Online. This app can push employees’ timesheets directly into payroll software so that you wouldn't have to key in the data manually. This not only saves time, but also reduces errors. You can also set up controls so that their timesheets have to be improved by their manager or yourself before they will sync over to the payroll software.
Why I recommend the QuickBooks Time app: You can track your time and team members’ time easily — and have that integrated into your invoicing system so you never miss a billable hour.
Gusto
It’s hard to justify doing payroll with a company other than Gusto. For a competitive price, they offer a user-friendly, fully-stocked service. Gusto is easier to use compared to the biggest payroll companies. That’s key because payroll is confusing enough.
The back-end of running payroll is frightening. It’s fraught with complex laws and any errors lead to heavy fines. In 2014, the IRS charged over $2 billion for civil penalties related to employment taxes. Over 40% of small businesses are fined an average of $895 each year. The most common errors are late and missed payments.
Many other payroll companies charge extra to handle all the payments and government filings. Gusto includes these in all of their plans. Beyond payroll, Gusto also offers HR services and lots of integrations. Employers can offer benefits, purchase workers’ compensation insurance, send offer letters, and more.
Why I recommend Gusto: It makes it super easy to pay employees and contractors without worrying about missing a payment, overlooking a tax account, or anything else that could get you fined.
Greenback
Not all financial companies have apps that integrate with the most common software. On top of that, some of the platforms that created apps created really bad ones. When this happens, I turn to Greenback as a workaround. Greenback allows you to automatically fetch sales and expense transactions from top retailers, payment platforms, and seller marketplaces.
Especially with PayPal or Etsy or Stripe, this app helps you get all the data you need in the right form before pushing it over to a tool like QBO.
Why I recommend Greenback: If you use a payment platform or seller’s marketplace, you have to export complicated CSV files of your sales and fees. Greenback collects it for you so you don’t have to manually add anything to your tracking tools.
Fathom
Accounting is not about looking backward. It’s about getting the best information now so you can make wise decisions going forward. To do so, you need to run analytics, forecast multiple outcomes, and focus on improving a little bit every day.
Fathom is a business analytics app. It pulls a company’s financial data from QBO to create detailed analyses, forecasts, and reports.
Why I recommend Fathom: Forecasting cash flow and revenue can be complicated. This tool makes it effortless.
Accounting can be easy — with the right tools
If you’ve ever hesitated to update your books or worried that you’ll mess something up, I hope these tools give you a bit more confidence. While I’ve busted small business finance myths before, I also know that it helps to have tools in place that serve as a “fail-safe” for your finances. These are all platforms and apps that I use with my own clients and in my own business because they work, and they save time.
Whether you plan to DIY your books a little longer or want to hire an accountant, these tools work really well for both. Of course, if you want help setting up your QuickBooks Online account for easier maintenance and tracking, you can also get my DIY QuickBooks Setup for just $79.