Top 10 Accounting Software For Self Employed In 2025

TrulySmall Accounting is designed for very small businesses, especially those that handle fewer than 500 transactions a year. It focuses on basic features like invoicing and expense tracking, making it easy for new users to navigate. The right accounting software for your sole proprietorship depends on your business’s needs and budget. For instance, FreshBooks might work best for you if you depend on frequent invoicing. If your business sells products rather than services, you might prefer Xero, which includes inventory tracking at no additional cost.

• The best accounting software for self-employed individuals should fall in your budget, help you stay organized, and make tax season less painful.
• Popular options include QuickBooks, FreshBooks, and Xero, which offer features tailored to self-employed individuals and freelancers.
• We like how accessible this makes Zoho Books for new freelancers, whose annual income may initially fall under this cap.
• QuickBooks’ Solopreneur plan should be able to meet the needs of most self-employed workers.
• Accounting software is a big step up from an invoice generator, a spreadsheet, or using a document template.
• You can also help your clients pay by integrating an online payment portal with FreshBooks.

Features of Accounting Software for Self-Employed and Freelancers

We’re never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog. If you want to take a detailed tour of the best accounting software for small business owners, take a look at this comprehensive accounting software comparison chart we prepared for you. The Client Portal is another neat feature that lets your clients view and manage all their transactions.

• QuickBooks Online and Zoho Books are two great places to start if managing contractor payments is a top priority for you.
• This focus on simplicity and user-friendliness positions TrulySmall as a top player among the best accounting software for self-employed individuals.
• It was particularly easy to edit aspects with FreshBooks too, with one member of our user testing team mentioning that once you customized items like invoices, you “always knew where to look next time”.
• Choosing the best accounting software for self-employed freelancers, solopreneurs, or independent consultants is critical to effectively managing your finances.
• 64.4% of small business owners use accounting software to simplify their bookkeeping1.

Create ShipStation order from QuickBooks invoices

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. 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.

QuickBooks Self-Employed

I signed up for each freelance accounting software and created a series of invoices, expenses, projects, and time sheets to test how they work. I also downloaded the mobile apps to get a sense of how easy they were to use and to try out receipt capture. Accounting for freelancers is a really specific task, and I wanted to be sure I got a real sense of how it would feel. After all of that testing, I landed on these eight apps as the best accounting software for freelancers. Choosing the right bookkeeping software is essential for self-employed individuals to stay on top of their finances. The software solutions listed above are among the best options available, each catering to different needs and business types.

When you’re self-employed or running a small business (whether it’s just you or a tiny team), bookkeeping tasks that keep your books up to date often become “that thing you’ll get to later” on your list. 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.

Xero: Best for Growing Businesses and Collaboration

These tools allow you to seamlessly handle financial workflows such as invoicing clients, managing expenses, processing payments, and estimating taxes at tax time. Xero’s most basic software, the Early plan, is $9 per month (although there are often introductory offers that can lower their prices for a period). With this program, users can create and send up to 5 invoices per month, enter and pay up to 5 bills per month, and reconcile up to 20 bank transactions per month.

What’s more, when we did encounter issues with the software, we were able to smooth out any bumps in the road quickly with the provider’s reliable 24/7 help desk. If you make a purchase through the links on our site, we may earn a commission from the retailers of the products we have reviewed. It has no additional cost to you, and never affects the editorial independence of our reviews. Each of these was then given an appropriate weighting that related to how crucial they are for freelancers, sole-traders and self-employed. At Startups, it’s imperative to us that the product recommendations we give to you are useful, accurate, and based on thorough product testing.

Which QuickBooks is best for self-employed people and freelancers?

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. 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.

What are the disadvantages of QuickBooks?

All of the self-employed accounting software we’ve recommended here have fairly straightforward user interfaces. For example, QuickBooks Online’s dashboard is simple, straightforward, and easy to navigate. Its app is similarly easy to use and offers the same features as the cloud-based software.

Track Expenses

This compensation may impact best bookkeeping software for self employed how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). As you can see, there’s a wide range of self employment accounting software on the market, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. The Lite plan, which costs only $15 per month, is best suited for self-employed individuals. Here are some important pointers to consider when shopping for self-employed-friendly accounting software. We did feel there was quite a steep learning curve when getting to grips with Clear Books – more so than more user-friendly options like QuickBooks and Zoho Books, and even more so than Xero. There’s a reasonable time investment to master all of QuickBooks’ quirks and complexities.

It offers robust features like tax compliance, expense tracking, and invoice management, perfect for entrepreneurs and freelancers. Its affordability and scalability make it one of the best accounting software for self-employed individuals who need more than just basic accounting tools. If you’re self-employed, you know how tricky managing your finances can get—juggling invoices, tracking expenses, and staying on top of taxes. It’s designed to make your life easier by automating the tough stuff, so you can focus on growing your business.