The Best Accounting Software for Multiple Businesses in 2024

Whether you own more than one business in the same industry or different ones, you must keep detailed financial books, with proper accounting, for all your companies. This daunting task becomes much easier with accounting software for multiple businesses. You’ll use this software to record and reconcile transactions; create, send and track invoices; review key financial data; and manage each of your businesses’ taxes.

To help you choose the best accounting software for multiple businesses, we researched and tested dozens of options. We narrowed these platforms down to five best picks based on criteria including usability, features and tools, cost, integrations, multi-currency support, and mobile app availability. Although you can add an unlimited number of businesses to these accounting platforms, each business must pay its own monthly subscription fee.

Most accounting software platforms charge solely a flat monthly subscription fee. For the best multibusiness accounting software, these fees start at $15 per month. However, accounting software add-ons that cost extra may be helpful or, less commonly, fully necessary. For example, QuickBooks offers a helpful live-assisted bookkeeping add-on for $50 per month. Additionally, FreshBooks requires an additional per-user payment of $11 per month after your first user. These additional per-person fees, though, are rare with accounting software.

Notably, the starting rate for any multibusiness accounting software is per business you own, not for all your businesses together. For example, let’s say you’ve decided that Xero is your best bet for managing your two businesses. In this case, your starting price isn’t the platform’s lowest rate of $15 per month. It’s two businesses * $15 per month per business = $30 per month. Consider the potential ballooning of costs when assessing costs for multibusiness accounting software.

Unlike some other types of business technology, accounting software vendors rarely charge you for anything related to the implementation process. In fact, these platforms are among the easiest types of business software to set up yourself. Should you need help, customer service will be available immediately via phone or several hours later via an online support ticket.

The key features you should look for in the best accounting software for multiple businesses are mostly the same as those for single-business accounting. These features include the below.

Bank Feed and Reconciliation

Your accounting software should give you access to a full record of all money moving in and out of your business bank accounts. It should also reconcile each transaction with an expense, invoice, bill or another document indicating a transaction.

Bill Pay

Great accounting software allows you to pay vendor bills directly from the platform or, at the very least, record payments. Managing multiple businesses may be especially easy with software through which you can quickly pay bills in bulk across vendors.

Dashboard

When you log in to your accounting software, you should see your key financial data in visualizations that are easy to understand. You should also have no trouble customizing your dashboard to suit your exact needs.

Expense Management

The best accounting software for multiple businesses automatically captures key spending data from receipts you snap photos of via the platform’s mobile app. It then stores, tags and categorizes this data as expenses and reconciles them with your bank transactions.

Another expense management must-have is GPS mileage tracking within the platform’s mobile app. This feature converts distances driven for business purposes into reimbursable or billable mileage expenses.

Financial Reports

Especially for multibusiness users, accounting software must excel at generating both basic and advanced financial reports. This way, you can quickly see financial snapshots of all your companies and lay the groundwork for business decisions that improve your bottom line.

Inventory Management

With some accounting software platforms, you can create purchase orders and track your stock. Additionally, with a small number of platforms, you get highly advanced inventory management features such as multisite stock management and two-step warehouse transfer. These advanced features are ideal for multibusiness accounting, but you’ll still fare plenty well with standard accounting software inventory tools.

Invoices, Estimates and Quotes

The ability to create invoices, then send and track them, is among the most important accounting software features. Many platforms also include tools for reminding clients to pay their invoices and adding late fees for overdue invoices.

Additionally, with most accounting software platforms, you can convert client-approved estimates or quotes into invoices in just a few clicks. In many cases, you can also set recurring invoices to generate and send automatically while including payment links directly in your invoices.

Mobile App

Most of the best accounting software platforms for multiple businesses offer robust mobile apps for dedicated on-the-go usage. This feature is among the most important to look for since, as someone who owns multiple businesses, you’re likely on the move pretty often. Accounting software mobile apps keep you connected to, and in control of, all your companies’ accounting while you’re in transit or working remotely.

Multicurrency support

Often, someone who owns multiple businesses operates a core domestic business alongside separate subsidiaries in other countries. That’s why you stand to benefit greatly from accounting software that you can use in more currencies than just U.S. dollars. Look for platforms with dozens of available currencies, particularly those of the territories in which your businesses operate.

Third-Party Integrations

The more businesses you run, the busier and more disorganized your work can get. Accounting software platforms’ integrations with third-party platforms largely solve this problem. Connect your accounting software with your payroll service, POS system, and other technology to sync your information across these platforms. You’ll unify and organize your information while saving invaluable time on manual data entry.

Time Tracking and Billable Hours

Some accounting software platforms include tools for tracking the time your team spends on billable and non-billable work. This way, you can compare your team’s input to your revenue and add billable hours to your client invoices.

Sales Tax

If you own multiple restaurants or retail businesses, sales tax accounting software features are paramount. Through these features, you can record the sales tax you charge on top of the items you sell. You’ll likely still need to manually remit these taxes to city and state authorities, but merely recording them can be a major help. In fact, nearly all the best accounting software platforms for restaurants emphasize sales tax management.

Here’s how to find exactly the right multibusiness accounting software for your companies’ needs.

1. Know exactly what you’re seeking from accounting software.

Determine whether your businesses need just accounting fundamentals, such as invoicing, or more advanced features, such as the in-depth reports available with higher-end pricing packages. Move vendors that offer high-quality tools for your most important needs to the top of your list.

2. Compare and contrast vendors, including their customer reviews.

In addition to professional accounting software reviews like this article, vendors’ pricing tables and customer reviews offer a wealth of valuable information. Browse these tables and reviews to identify exactly what you get and pinpoint any red flags (or praise) from actual customers. With pricing tables, assess how much value you get per dollar you spend, and with reviews, look for commentary about customer service and usability.

Your best bet for customer reviews are Trustpilot and the Better Business Bureau (BBB) website. That said, angry customers are more likely to leave reviews than happy ones, so take negative commentary with a grain of salt. An abundance of positive commentary, on the other hand, is something you can take at face value and as a major vendor advantage.

3. Accept free trial offers.

All the best accounting software platforms for multiple businesses offer free trials of 14 to 30 days, and you should absolutely accept these offers. A free trial is the most in-depth, hands-on way to assess a platform’s fit, and it typically requires no commitment on your end. Move the platforms you enjoy using the most toward the top of your list.

There’s one case in which you might feel hesitant to pursue a free trial. Namely, an exceedingly small number of vendors eliminate your initial discount if you sign up for their trial. However, we still recommend pursuing the trial in this case. It’s better to spend more money upfront than lock yourself into a long-term contract with an ill-fitting platform you never got to test.

4. Go over your notes on features, usability and price, then make your final decision.

You now have all the information you need to make your decision, so go for it. Additionally, consider both the value you get per dollar spent and whether you can really afford what you’re paying for without excessively stretching your budget. As you evaluate all of this, the right choice of multibusiness accounting software will become clear as day.

Multibusiness accounting software benefits each of your companies in ways including, but not limited to, the below.

1. Minimized human error

Accounting software automatically captures your businesses’ bank transactions and matches them to the right invoices, vendor bills, expense receipts and other key documentation. This substantially reduces the likelihood of recording an erroneous payment amount or pairing cash inflows or outflows with the wrong transactions.

2. Streamlined quoting and invoicing

Most accounting software platforms make it easy for each of your businesses to create quotes or estimates and convert them to invoices. These documents will also include each of your companies’ full branding. You’ll look highly professional while fully managing your accounts receivable.

3. Organized recordkeeping

Between your invoice management and bank reconciliation features, your multibusiness accounting software will get your companies well organized. When you have multiple businesses’ books to worry about, this top-notch organization is beyond invaluable.

4. Straightforward tax calculation, reporting, filing and compliance

Many multibusiness accounting software platforms automatically calculate the taxes resulting from your transactions. Often, the platform will file the corresponding tax forms and make the necessary payments as well. These platforms’ built-in rules engines, which their teams regularly update to reflect the newest regulations, keep you compliant with authorities.

5. Seamless time tracking

When accounting platforms include time tracking, you improve your labor management and build out the capacity to bill your clients per hour of work. Your invoicing and accounts receivable improve as much as your team’s productivity.