The Best Accounting Software Services for Self-Employed and Freelancers in 2024

As a one-person or very small team, you need all the help you can get streamlining your processes and cutting down on manual work. That’s especially true in regard to your finances. In the course of doing business, you’ll need to create invoices, maintain records, claim applicable tax deductions, and pay your quarterly taxes. The best accounting software services do all this and more for freelancers and self-employed people. Without these services, managing your finances might start to feel like its own full-time job.

To help you decide which accounting platform might best serve you as a sole proprietor, we tested several dozen leading services. Among these, we chose the five that we felt best met self-employed and freelance needs. We focused on basic tools such as automated bookkeeping as well as sole proprietor-specific tools including quarterly estimated tax calculation, filing and payment.

Accounting software requires a paid monthly subscription, though fret not — these monthly prices are among the lowest you’ll encounter when pursuing business technology. Plus, if your business income is under $50,000, Zoho Books is entirely free. Otherwise, you might pay as low as $7.50 for the first many months, though the price will eventually increase to between $10 and $15. Although each vendor offers more expensive plans, these include features designed for full-on businesses. Self-employed users, though, generally only need what’s in a vendor’s lowest-priced package.

Additionally, our top picks for the best accounting software for self-employed and freelance people lack implementation and setup fees. You might encounter these with other accounting platforms, but not the five we’ve reviewed here. This further lowers the overall cost of accounting software.

Occasionally, you’ll encounter accounting software for which you’ll pay an extra fee per user per month. Admittedly, this is more common with other types of business software, and if you’re truly a one-person operation, you’ll never pay this added fee. However, if you use FreshBooks and take on employees or contractors who need access to your accounting platform, you’ll pay an additional $11 per user. We recommend watching out for add-on fees as you compare and contrast accounting platforms.

If you plan to receive payment on your invoices directly from your accounting software, you may also need to factor in credit card processing costs. These are typically a small percentage of each transaction plus a tiny flat fee. For example, a processor may charge you 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per transaction. That said, if selling products rather than offering services is key to your self-employment, perhaps you’ve already implemented credit card processing. You can use this setup instead of your accounting software to receive payments.

If you’re self-employed and seeking accounting software, prioritize the following features in any platforms you’re considering.

Bank Feeds and Reconciliation

If you’re a self-employed person, you’re not getting regular paychecks from an employer. Instead, your cash flow is at the mercy of when your clients choose to pay their invoices. This makes bank feeds an important accounting tool — they’re how you quickly review all your cash inflows and outflows.

These feeds, when combined with bank reconciliation tools, automate the alignment of your bank data and financial records. An accounting platform that offers both tools gives you full insight into and control over your money.

Bill Pay

Although some self-employed people operate while paying few to no monthly business expenses, that’s not always the case. The more business products and services you pay for monthly, the more you’ll benefit from accounting software bill pay tools.

You can use these tools to view what you owe and to which vendors you owe it. Plus, with the best accounting platforms, you can make one-click bulk payments. This way, you’re unlikely to be saddled with late payment fees that cut away at your profit and cash flow.

Client and Customer Payment

A big part of being self-employed is, in many cases, working with less infrastructure than a full-on business. This makes offering your customers or clients extra convenience a key competitive advantage.

Enter payment options embedded in invoices — no more clients logging into their bank accounts or peer-to-peer payment platforms (or writing and mailing checks). Instead, everyone who owes you money can pay it right from where they see their charges detailed. This convenience can encourage repeat customer and client transactions while streamlining your cash flow.

Dashboard

As with any platform, great accounting software should be easy to use and navigate from the very moment you log in. Only choose platforms you can intuitively move through from the initial dashboard all the way through sending an invoice.

Expense Tracking

This is a huge one for freelancers — you very well might be missing out on key tax-deductible expenses and thus overpaying your taxes. The best accounting software for self-employed people automates the identification, capture and organization of these expenses via digital records and paper receipts. This way, come tax time, claiming your deductions and lowering your taxable income is a walk in the park.

Financial Analysis

As a freelancer, you might benefit from fundamental financial analyses such as cash flow graphs and charts. It’s worth seeking accounting platforms that include these basic analyses, though you might not need other financial reports — these are often geared toward full-on businesses. However, if you do get other reports with your accounting software, you might have an easier time growing from a one-person operation into a team.

Integrations

Great business software of all kinds integrates seamlessly with other key platforms. Look for accounting platforms that integrate natively or via third-party connections with other tools you use. For example, if you use BILL to generate and track invoices, QuickBooks Self-Employed integrates seamlessly with this service for consistent invoicing records across platforms. Even if you use relatively few business platforms, connecting them substantially streamlines your operations.

Invoicing, Estimating, and Quoting

Sending invoices — and generating them in just seconds from estimates and quotes — are how you start the client payment process as a self-employed person. This makes the invoicing, estimating and quoting tools within accounting software perhaps the most important features within any platforms you’re considering.

During your free trials of several platforms, compare each vendor’s invoicing suite in particular. Place whichever one you found most intuitive, helpful and feature-rich toward the top of your list. Then, compare your best picks across the other factors on this list while still prioritizing invoicing. Your ideal choice of platform should be pretty clear thereafter.

Mileage Tracking

This feature goes hand in hand with expense tracking — it’s how you turn work-related trips into tax-deductible expenses. Look for accounting platforms with mobile apps that automatically track your miles traveled and convert them to expenses. This is among the most hassle-free ways to lower your tax burden.

Mobile Apps

Accounting software mobile apps are good for more than just tracking miles. The best apps also include tools for snapping photos of receipts, invoicing clients on the go and more. The more a platform’s mobile features overlap with those of its desktop suite, the better.

Quarterly and Annual Tax Payments

Although this feature isn’t common among even the very best accounting software platforms, it’s key for freelancers and self-employed people. Since your clients don’t withhold taxes from your payments, you’re responsible for quarterly, not just annual, tax payments.

Several accounting platforms calculate your quarterly taxes while generating and filing the corresponding tax reports and returns. This ensures you never incur late fees or no-payment penalties while removing tedious tax work from your task list.

You might be itching to get started on organizing your finances and streamlining your client payments, but we suggest never rushing into any business decision. Instead, make your way through the following steps as you choose the right accounting software.

1. Decide what you’re looking for from your accounting software.

Maybe you’re already happy with your invoicing process and just need a place to track and store earnings and payments. Or maybe you need a way to accurately pay quarterly taxes and expedite the whole process. Whatever you need, look for platforms with the best tools for addressing these pain points. Other features, even if they seem super impressive, just might not be necessary for you. Avoiding these features can lower your costs.

2. Compare your choices and look at customer reviews.

After getting a sense of which accounting platforms best serve your precise needs, review each vendor’s pricing table. These charts are typically quite clear on what you do and don’t get with the platform and at what prices. This way, you can compare features and prices across several appealing vendors.

Tools and costs, though, don’t tell the whole story — real reviews from real customers complete the picture. Look at what actual users have said about the platform on websites such as TrustPilot and the Better Business Bureau. Does their praise make you feel reassured, or do their complaints automatically eliminate any platforms for you? Although each review speaks to only one person’s experience, horror stories and effusive praise are both worth keeping in mind.

3. Accept free trial offers.

It’s much easier to make smart decisions about accounting platforms once you’ve actually tried several of them for yourself. Go ahead and, one by one, use the trial version of all the platforms you’re considering. During each trial, fully implement the platform into your workflows as though you’ve already committed to using it. With the platform integrated into your everyday processes, you’ll really see whether it works for you.

We always recommend pursuing free trial offers. Sure, you might be tempted to just dive right into using a platform that sounds appealing. However, that requires paying for it — and if you wind up not liking it, you can’t take your payments back. Test things out first so that you only put money toward technology you like and find useful.

4. Make one final comparison.

Go over all the platforms you’ve tried hands-on and enjoyed. How do their prices and features compare? Which ones are the easiest to use? The best platform for your precise business finance needs balances all these scales. Plus, since you’ve taken this longer-term approach to choosing a platform, chances are you’ll be happy with your choice from the get-go.

As a freelancer or self-employed person, you might feel that requesting client payment and chasing overdue payments is a second job in and of itself. That stops being the case when you implement accounting software, which is advantageous for the following reasons:

• It automates client payment reminders. Set it and forget it — once you’ve sent an invoice, many accounting platforms automatically send client payment reminders at recurring intervals. This increases the likelihood of timely client payment without any additional work on your end.
• It makes invoices easier to create, send and track. It’s one thing to generate an invoice in Word or Excel and email a PDF to a client. It’s another to create and send invoices through a dedicated accounting platform that also shows the client’s payment status. Chances are that this platform will also give you tools for following up on payments and automatically adding late fees. With these extra tools, on-time full client payments become more realistic.
• It streamlines all things tax. Instead of manually logging your tax-deductible expenses and spending a ton on hiring an accountant, let your accounting software handle your quarterly and annual taxes. Some platforms handle the entirety of tax calculation, filing and payment both quarterly and annually, automating an especially arduous part of self-employment.
• It minimizes human error. It’s pretty embarrassing to track all that time on a project only to bill a client for $200 instead of the $2,000 you intended. It’s also uncomfortable to send a revised invoice and dramatically shift the client’s expectations. This is much less likely, if not impossible, with accounting software. Since this software is automated, data errors and corresponding mistakes border on nonexistent.
• It organizes all your recordkeeping and paperwork. Nobody likes shuffling through a messy file cabinet full of haphazardly stored paper records. Accounting software is exactly the opposite. It creates a clear, logical, 100 percent digital record of all your cash inflows and outflows, not to mention your invoices and tax-deductible expenses. Whether you’re paying taxes or checking on client payment status, accounting software nearly perfects it all.