10 Best QuickBooks Alternatives in 2021 (Free & Paid)

The best QuickBooks alternative has all the necessary bookkeeping features small businesses need but is often easier to use and comes at a lower cost. Whether you’ve become frustrated with your current QuickBooks subscription or you’re looking for accounting software for your new business, there are plenty of software for you to consider, including some free QuickBooks alternatives.

• Xero: Best overall QuickBooks alternative for small business accounting software
• FreshBooks: Best alternative for invoicing and ecommerce software
• Zoho Books: Best alternative for freelancer accounting software
• Sage 50Cloud: Best alternative for multicompany accounting software including consolidations
• Quicken: Best alternative for individuals with rental property
• Wave: Best alternative for free accounting software
• Sage Business Cloud Accounting: Best alternative for a great mobile accounting app
• Sage 100 Contractor: Best alternative for construction accounting software
• Buildium: Best alternative for property management companies
• EasyFarm: Best alternative for farm accounting software

Answer a few simple questions to receive a customized suggestion for your QuickBooks Alternative.

How We Evaluated QuickBooks Alternatives

We first evaluated QuickBooks alternatives based on how well they solve common complaints about QuickBooks, such as:

• Customer service: QuickBooks doesn’t provide a direct customer service phone number. Instead, users must request customer service to call them.
• Price: Some users feel that QuickBooks is overpriced compared to similar software.
• Ease of use: QuickBooks is packed with features that inevitably make it more difficult to set up and use. Bookkeeping software with only the necessary features for a given user might be easier to use.

Next, we evaluated whether QuickBooks alternatives contains the essential functions of good bookkeeping software:

• Bank account: The software should transfer transactions automatically from your bank account and ease the reconciliation process
• Invoices: Invoices should be easily created, emailed, and tracked until paid
• Bills: Bills should be entered when received and tracked until paid
• Reports: The software should provide reports for the balance sheet and income statement
• Integrations: The software should have integrations for online payments and payroll

Finally, we considered industry-specific software for industries where QuickBooks lacks certain features that will help with the accounting and overall management of companies.

Xero: Best Overall QuickBooks Alternative

Xero is included in our list of best small business accounting software and has similar features to QuickBooks at a lower price with unlimited users, making it our best overall alternative to QuickBooks. If your primary complaint about QuickBooks is the price or the limited number of users, then Xero is likely your best choice for alternative software. You can try Xero free for 30 days with no credit card required.

Features

Xero includes many of the same features you’ll find in QuickBooks, like solid invoicing capability, bank reconciliation, and expense management. Xero is as customizable as QuickBooks Online, but if you’re a startup or a small business, you might find Xero a more affordable option.

• Bank reconciliation: Xero automatically imports your bank statements, eliminating the need for manual data entry
• Expense tracking: Scan and track expenses receipts with the Xero mobile app
• Invoicing: Create, customize, and send invoices and estimates
• Integrated payroll: Xero integrates with Gusto to run your payroll duties
• Inventory management: Track simple and complex inventory items, and create reports on what products are trending

Our Expert Opinion

While Xero has comparable features to QuickBooks Online, it’s priced less and includes an unlimited number of users with any subscription. If your primary concern with QuickBooks is ease of use or customer service, I’m not sure you’ll be happier with Xero. I don’t find Xero any easier to use and, like QuickBooks, you can’t pick up the phone and call customer service. However, if you need more than five users, Xero is a great alternative as QuickBooks requires an upgrade to its expensive Advanced plan. If you’re still not sure if Xero is your best QuickBooks alternative, read Xero vs QuickBooks.

FreshBooks: Best QuickBooks Alternative for Invoicing and Ecommerce

FreshBooks is a complete bookkeeping system that emphasizes great-looking invoices. Like QuickBooks, FreshBooks allows you to track hours and expenses and add them to invoices automatically. For a complete comparison with QuickBooks, read FreshBooks vs Quickbooks. FreshBooks is good for ecommerce businesses with integrations for Squarespace, Shopify, eBay, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce. New subscribers have the choice between a 30-day free trial and 50% off for three months.

Features

While FreshBooks contains many typical accounting features, its biggest strength is its invoicing capability. Not only is it affordably priced, but it also has strong automation and customization features in terms of invoicing. If you need to send a lot of invoices, FreshBooks is a good QuickBooks Online alternative.

• Invoicing: Create professional invoices in seconds even on the go with its mobile app
• Expense billing: Assign expenses to customers and add to invoices
• Time Tracking: Track time spent on projects and record it in FreshBooks for invoicing

Our Expert Opinion

Unlike QuickBooks, FreshBooks’ customer support is available by calling its toll-free number. Beyond good customer service, FreshBooks is known for its terrific-looking invoices and has an impressive array of integrations with ecommerce platforms. If you need multiple users, FreshBooks isn’t a great choice since all users in excess of the one included with each plan are $10 per month. You can read our guide to the best invoicing software and the best ecommerce accounting software to find other good QuickBooks alternatives for your company.

Zoho Books: Best QuickBooks Alternative for Freelancers

As your business grows, Zoho Books grows with you via integration with Zoho’s other apps, providing a complete solution to your unique needs along your path to success. Ideal for freelancers, Zoho Books offers a free plan and paid subscriptions with prices that start at $12 per month. You can try the paid plans for free for 14 days.

Features

If you are a freelancer needing a full-featured accounting app, Zoho Books is a great alternative to QuickBooks Online. Zoho Books serves businesses, but it also has the features you need as a freelancer, including expense tracking, invoicing, and online payments.

• Invoice and estimates: Create and send invoices and estimates in seconds and send them in any currency
• Expense tracking: Sort your expenses into groups, and scan receipts on your mobile for an additional fee
• Project management: Create and track projects, assign tasks to members, and monitor billable time
• Vendor portal: Give your vendors a secure place to view and track all their transactions
• Inventory management: Capture product details, including product costs, product details, and stock on hand

Our Expert Opinion

At $12 per month, Zoho Books’ Standard plan is a great value for very small businesses and freelancers. It has all the features most freelancers will need, although you might consider upgrading to Standard to help track your unpaid bills. If you need to track inventory, you’ll need to upgrade to Professional. Even so, many users find Zoho Books a better value compared to QuickBooks Online. As with FreshBooks, Zoho Books provides a telephone number that you can call to contact customer support directly. If Zoho Books isn’t right for you, you can explore other options in our guide to freelancer accounting software.

Sage 50Cloud: Best QuickBooks Alternative for Multicompany Accounting

Sage 50Cloud is great compared to QuickBooks Online if you need to keep the books for multiple companies. QuickBooks Online requires separate subscriptions for each company, which can become very expensive. Not only can Sage 50Cloud account for multiple companies, but it can consolidate the companies into a single entity and prepare consolidated financial statements. You can evaluate Sage 50Cloud by clicking “Take a test drive” from its website, which will allow you to access a hosted version of 50Cloud with sample data.

Features

QuickBooks Online users with multiple businesses need separate logins for each company. With Sage 50Cloud, you can manage all your businesses on a single platform. Its highest plan includes advanced budgeting tools and multicompany support that allows you to create consolidated financial statements for multiple entities.

• Domestic consolidation: Consolidate reports for subsidiaries that are in the same base currency
• Global consolidation: Manage multiple currencies for customer or supplier accounts across the globe
• Multidimensional consolidation: Use multiple dimensions, like customer, supplier, or project, to consolidate your reports
• ASC 830/FAS-52 compliance: This feature is useful for companies operating in foreign countries

Our Expert Opinion

Despite its name, Sage 50Cloud is desktop software that allows some functions to be performed online with a subsequent synchronization with the desktop file. While this introduces some complexity, it can perform some tasks on the go, which QuickBooks Desktop doesn’t offer. QuickBooks Desktop Premier Plus offers similar features to Sage 50Cloud Premium and costs $499.99 per year, per user. The big difference is that Sage 50Cloud Premium can consolidate parent and subsidiary companies while QuickBooks Desktop cannot. Like QuickBooks Desktop, 50Cloud is very sophisticated and powerful software that will take some time to learn. If Sage 50Cloud isn’t right for your needs, explore other software to account for multiple companies.

Quicken: Best QuickBooks Alternative for Individuals With Rental Property

Quicken allows you to manage and track tenants, which isn’t possible with QuickBooks Online. That’s why individuals owning rental properties might be served better with Quicken compared to QuickBooks, a full-fledged bookkeeping software. Unlike double-entry bookkeeping software, Quicken keeps things simple by focusing on only your income and expenses instead of tracking assets and liabilities. Quicken can also be used to track your personal finances, including your retirement accounts, which provide much value beyond simply accounting for rental income. You’ll need the Home & Business edition to manage your rental property, which costs $103.99 per year.

Features

While most of its Quickens features are for personal finance tracking, its most expensive edition, Quicken Home & Business, includes specialized features to manage rental properties. Quicken Home and Business includes the following features:

• Tenant management: Track tenants’ details, like personal information, rent collection, and lease terms
• Rental dashboard: Monitor the status of your properties, occupants, and rents in one place
• Market value tracker: Analyze your portfolio of mutual funds using its integrated Morningstar’s X-ray tool (Windows only)
• PayPal payment: Easily collect rental payment by adding a PayPal payment link to your email

Our Expert Opinion

Despite their similar names, Quicken and QuickBooks are entirely different products owned by different companies. Individuals needing to track income and expenses for a personally owned rental property will find that Quicken does a great job while also providing much value by tracking their personal finances. In addition, Quicken will help you manage your rental activity by creating invoices, accepting online payments, and managing lease terms, rental rates, and security deposits. The biggest downside of Quicken is that it cannot produce a balance sheet, so it’s not appropriate if your rental activity is required to file a business return like Form 1120, Form 1120S, or Form 1065.

Wave: Best Free QuickBooks Alternative

Wave is very good bookkeeping software that’s absolutely free for an unlimited number of users. While it doesn’t have many features compared to QuickBooks, it’s easier to use. Like QuickBooks, Wave has integrated credit card processing and payroll that can be added for an additional fee. The bookkeeping software is always free, so you can connect your bank account and explore Wave’s features to see if it’s right for you.

Features

Despite being free software, Wave has some of the features you’ll find in QuickBooks Online, including invoicing, reporting, and income and expense tracking. Wave’s biggest advantage over QuickBooks Online is the lack of limitations on the number of users.

• Invoicing: Create customizable invoices that you can send on a recurring basis
• Receipt scanning: Upload your receipt to Wave for mobile expense tracking
• Payroll: Wave includes a paid payroll service to help you with your payroll runs
• Wave advisors: Get professional bookkeeping assistance from a paid Wave advisor

Our Expert Opinion

Wave is easier to use than QuickBooks and absolutely free. On the downside, there are some QuickBooks Online features not available in Wave, including tracking inventory and assigning income and expenses to classes, locations, and projects. If you don’t need advanced features, Wave might be a great QuickBooks alternative for you. You can explore other free alternatives in our guide to the best free accounting software.

Sage Business Cloud Accounting: Best QuickBooks Alternative for a Mobile App

Sage Business Cloud Accounting is a cloud-based accounting system with all the features you need to keep your books easily without many advanced features that inevitably make software harder to use. Best of all, Sage Accounting has a simpler and more comprehensive mobile app compared to QuickBooks. After your free trial, monthly subscriptions start at just $10 per month.

Features

Businesses wanting to send invoices and manage their expenses and inventory on the go can benefit from Sage Accounting. It has a capable mobile accounting application that allows you to perform the following functions:

• Invoicing: Create and send online invoices from your phone
• Receipt management: Snap and upload receipts on your mobile to make expense tracking easy
• Contact management: Add a new contact or view contact details anytime in the app
• Quotes and estimates: Generate sales quotes and estimates on the go

Our Expert Opinion

Sage Accounting (formerly known as Sage One) is a good alternative to QuickBooks Online if you’re looking for an affordable program with a mobile app that performs all the basic bookkeeping functions. Sage Accounting has no integrated payroll available, even from third-party vendors. Therefore, your payroll provider will need to provide you a journal entry to record your payroll manually. The journal entry is easy to learn and input, but you won’t be able to access any detailed payroll information within the program. There are other great mobile accounting apps you can learn about in Best Mobile Accounting Apps.

Sage 100 Contractor: Best QuickBooks Alternative for Contractors

Sage 100 Contractor is a sophisticated accounting system especially designed for contractors not only to perform bookkeeping but to monitor the profitability of jobs in real-time as well. The program will take time to learn but will provide you the information to manage your business even if you can’t personally oversee every project. It’s more expensive than QuickBooks Online and will work the best if you have an experienced bookkeeper. Visit the Sage website to take a test drive of Sage 100 Contractor in a sample company.

Features

QuickBooks Online can be customized to fit the needs of a construction company, but Sage 100 Contractor is a more suitable fit for larger firms. It has a more extensive list of construction management and automation features compared to QuickBooks Online. Some of its core features include the following:

• Job costing: Track job cost information, including job cost journals, job cost summaries, and labor totals
• Estimates: Sage 100 Contractor allows you to easily export estimates, budgets, subcontracts, and purchase orders
• Project management: Manage the different aspects of your projects, such as tasks, operation status, and daily field reports
• Equipment management: Manage your machinery, heavy equipment, and other construction assets

Our Expert Opinion

Sage 100 Contractor is a sophisticated ERP system for contractors, but not so sophisticated that it takes a team of analysts to run, nor a hefty bank account to finance. It’s more of an entry-level ERP system that’s ideal for contractors that have grown beyond personally supervising each project. However, it will still take some time to learn, and everyone on the team, including salespeople, estimators, project managers, and forepersons, will need to be dedicated to doing so. You can explore other contractor accounting software in Best Construction Accounting Software.

Buildium: Best QuickBooks Alternative for Property Management Companies

Buildium is a much better fit for property managers than QuickBooks. In addition to standard bookkeeping features, it helps manage your tenants with tenant screening, electronic leases, and a resident portal where tenants can pay their rent and submit maintenance requests. The price starts at just $50 per month for up to 20 units after your free 15-day trial.

Features

Property management companies can benefit from special industry-specific features not offered by QuickBooks. Buildium has the features you need to reconcile bank transactions, collect payments from tenants, file 1099 tax forms, and track maintenance.

• Leasing Management: Manage lease applications, maintenance issues, and payment information
• Tenant Screening: Evaluate potential renters with TransUnion, a consumer credit reporting agency
• 1099 e-Filing: File 1099 forms, and then email them to owners and vendors for tracking
• Financial Reporting: Create reports on balance sheets, cash flow statements, rental owner ending balances, and more
• Board Communication Portal: Communicate with board members and homeowners through mail, email, or text

Our Expert Opinion

Buildium is a reasonably priced solution for small companies that want help managing tenants and service calls while also tracking their profit and loss by property. Larger companies can upgrade to Growth or Premium to unlock even more features such as additional performance analytics and an open application programming interface (API). If you are a real estate professional but not sure that Buildium is right for you, read our Best Real Estate Accounting Software guide.

EasyFarm: Best QuickBooks Alternative for Farmers and Ranchers

While QuickBooks is generally a pretty good choice for farmers and ranchers, EasyFarm offers an alternative that works well for self-employed farmers that do their own bookkeeping. EasyFarm has unique input screens that use common farm terminology instead of accounting terms. It also has a feature to help separate personal and farming activity that’s included in the same bank account. EasyFarm is a desktop program that starts at a one-time fee of $509.

Features

EasyFarm contains farm-specific features which you won’t find in QuickBooks Online. Farmers can benefit from its crop and financial management modules and asset account ledger for managing multiple books. Below is a list of some of its top features.

• Inventory Tracking: Track both the quantity and weight of your stock and make automatic adjustments, if needed
• Cost Centers: Track income and expenses by fields, herds, and other units
• Payroll: Use the check writer to create paychecks
• Mobile App: Enter crop and field records anytime and anywhere

Our Expert Opinion

EasyFarm is a very inexpensive option since a one-time purchase can be used for many years. Farmers that want to do their own bookkeeping will appreciate the common language used in the input screens, and adding the Crop and Field Manager or Livestock Manager will extend the usefulness beyond mere bookkeeping. Customer support is available by telephone and has a small company feel and friendly representatives. EasyFarm is great for self-employed farmers, but if you have a larger farm business, you might want to read our guide to the Best Farm Accounting Software for other options.

When to Use a QuickBooks Alternative

QuickBooks Online is a great bookkeeping software that dominates the market for small business accounting software. However, there are three instances in which you might consider using a bookkeeping program other than QuickBooks.

1. QuickBooks Is Too Expensive

QuickBooks Online Plus is the most popular version of QuickBooks and costs $80 per month, which seems pretty high to many very small businesses. However, I encourage you to look at how much value you receive from QuickBooks before deciding you can’t afford it. It’s powerful software and, if you’re using a majority of its features, it’s probably worth the price. However, as discussed next, QuickBooks sometimes offers far more features than you need.

2. QuickBooks Has Unnecessary Features

To make QuickBooks worth the cost, you need to use a majority of its features. For example, QuickBooks allows you to track inventory costs, allocate income and expenses to both classes and locations, create custom tags to group transactions in any way imaginable, and determine sales tax rates automatically based on customer addresses. If all you want is to issue invoices and pay bills, there are far cheaper and simpler bookkeeping options available.

3. Companies in Specialized Industries

QuickBooks is incredibly flexible and can be adapted to the accounting needs of virtually any industry. However, some industries are unique, and it can be helpful to have specialized software that does the accounting and helps manage the company and meet other regulatory requirements. Examples of some specialized industries where QuickBooks might not be the best option are churches, nonprofits, trucking, restaurants, and law firms.

Bottom Line

QuickBooks dominates the market for small business accounting, but it isn’t always the best answer, and there are many alternatives to QuickBooks to consider. Depending on your budget, features desired, and industry, you might find an alternative software that will meet your needs better.