The excitement to buy Best small business accounting software and just run with it can be tempting. But you need to consider whether the account software meets your business need and includes all your requirements. The accounting software should have all the modules you need in order to manage a small business and include tools such as time tracking and employee management, reporting, and can accommodate business growth.
Some of the Feature of best small business accounting software are:
Table of Contents
Basic Accounting tools
Almost all accounting software have basic accounting tools such as accounts receivable, accounts payable, invoicing, billing and general ledger capabilities. The distinction comes in how much you can customize these functions to fit in your requirements. For example, some software provides accounts receivable ageing only up to 90 days and other applications provide you an option to generate ageing in the desired age brackets.
Reporting
The ability to generate require reports in desired format for investors, tax preparer, accountants, board of directors and managers. The best accounting software will have wide range of preconfigured and also provides an option to customize reports to help users.
Analytics
Accounting software provides small businesses with analytics features including budget and sales forecasting tools. It should also be considered how easy it is to share reports, flexibility to change formats and create forecasted budget reports using the software.
Employees’ management and Payroll
Businesses into construction and service sectors need accounting software which has Human resource and payroll management tools such as time sheet management, vacation and sick-time tracking, commission management and the ability to print payroll slips and ability to calculate payroll tax, pay into accounts and track hours worked.
Services and Inventory management
It includes sellable items such as physical stock for resale or production, services and projects. Depending on the accounting system you choose, you may have to procure inventory, time-billing or job-costing modules separately.
Inventory modules track a variety of items in addition to inventory, including vendor information, stock locations, barcodes and costs. Some accounting software limit the number of inventory items you can manage.
With job- and time-billing modules, you can bill and track services by time or by job (including a mix of time-billed services and physical products).
Productivity and efficiency featuresÂ
Accounting software should make your life easy by managing tedious work and to help you increase your productivity and efficiency. Routine tasks are made simpler or even automatic. Other feature may include
- Remote access
- Automatic backup
- Search tools
- Batch processing
- Mobile apps for time and expense tracking
Integration FeaturesÂ
The software should also have the ability to integrate work with payroll services, add POS workstations, bank payment function and process credit cards. The best accounting software also can facilitate bill and vendor payments as well as print traditional paper checks. These banking integrations can help you keep your books more accurately and bills paid on time.
Scalability
How simple it is to add modules or users, whether the software makes it easy to migrate data to an upgraded version, and whether the product can support multiple currencies. With the growth of companies, their small business accounting software should be able to incorporate new modules, adjust to more and different types of users, and accommodate a company’s dispersion over multiple locations.
These are some of the features which may help you choose accounting software.
