6 Best Mobile Accounting Apps in 2021

A quality mobile accounting and bookkeeping app is essential to today’s small business owner. Luckily, most online accounting programs offer an app, but the functions and quality of the apps vary, so you should consider your mobile app needs before deciding on an accounting or bookkeeping software. We’ve researched the apps from many of the top names in bookkeeping software to help you find the one that’s best for your small business.

Best Accounting and Bookkeeping Apps

• QuickBooks Online: Best overall mobile accounting app
• QuickBooks Self-Employed: Best for mobile bookkeeping app for freelancers
• Sage Accounting: Best bookkeeping app for a large mobile sales force using apple devices
• Zoho Invoice: Best free mobile invoicing app
• Sunrise: Best free mobile accounting app
• Rydoo Expense: Best for mobile app for expense management and approval

QuickBooks Online: Best Overall Mobile Accounting App

QuickBooks Online, our pick for best small business accounting software, offers an outstanding mobile app to harness their industry-leading power. The layout is similar to the online dashboard with most transactions easily initiated with the click of the plus button. Access to the app is included with your QuickBooks Online subscription, including during your 30-day free trial.

Our Expert Opinion

The QuickBooks Mobile App provides nearly every function available in the online interface. You can issue invoices, receive payments, categorize bank transactions, review reports, record expenses, deposit checks, and more. The dashboard provides an instant look at your profit and loss, outstanding invoices, breakdown of recent expenses, and bank account balances. In addition, the app provides functions not available in the online interface such as receipt scanning and GPS mileage tracking. Employees can report their time through a mobile website, but not through the app itself.

QuickBooks Self-Employed: Best Mobile App for Freelancers

QuickBooks Self-Employed is a unique version of QuickBooks Online tailored specifically to freelancers and other self-employed taxpayers that report their income on Schedule C of their personal tax return. QuickBooks Self-Employed isn’t compatible with other versions of QuickBooks Online and has its own mobile app that allows invoicing, mileage tracking, receipt scanning, and more. You can evaluate the app with a 30-day free trial.

Our Expert Opinion

QuickBooks Self-Employed is a scaled-down version of QuickBooks Online that focuses on income and expenses instead of tracking assets and liabilities. The QuickBooks Self-Employed mobile app is very straightforward, delivering features needed by freelancers including issuing invoices, tracking mileage, scanning receipts, and categorizing transactions imported from bank accounts. Perhaps best of all, with the Self-Employed Tax Bundle your data can automatically be transferred to your tax return at the end of the year.

Sage Accounting: Best for a Large Mobile Sales Force Using Apple Devices

Sage (formerly Peachtree Accounting) has been in the bookkeeping industry for a long time and has developed Sage Accounting as a great accounting alternative for small businesses looking for a more affordable alternative to QuickBooks. Its mobile app is similar to the program itself in that it provides an easy way to perform basic bookkeeping tasks but lacks the more advanced features of some competitors. Unfortunately, the Android app is poorly rated with users reporting many technical issues that don’t seem to affect the Apple version. You can evaluate the app during a free 30-day trial of Sage Accounting.

Our Expert Opinion

With unlimited users, Sage Accounting is ideal for companies with a large sales force that need to be able to issue invoices, quotes, estimates, and receipts in the field. The app also allows users to manage vendors, enter bills, and make payments. While the app is simple to use, it lacks more advanced features like GPS tracking and report viewing. Users can attach images of receipts to transactions, which is great for recordkeeping, but the receipt data isn’t extracted and can’t be used to create transactions.

Zoho Invoice: Best Free Mobile Invoicing App

Zoho Invoice provides an app for your mobile labor force to track and assign their hours to clients and projects while on the go. Zoho Invoice integrates with an entire suite of apps from Zoho that can be used to manage your entire business, including Zoho Books, which is a comprehensive bookkeeping system. Zoho Invoice is now totally free with no hidden charges or in-app fees.

Our Expert Opinion

Zoho Invoice is a totally free invoicing app. Users can assign their hours and expenses to a customer or project. App admin users are allowed to record hours for other employees, which allows a foreman or supervisor to record the hours for an entire crew. In addition to recording time, Zoho Invoice is a great app for customizing, sending, and tracking invoices. However, it’s not a complete bookkeeping system unless you integrate it with Zoho Books, which requires an additional subscription.

Sunrise: Best Free Mobile Invoicing and Bookkeeping

Sunrise is a great software solution for small businesses who are looking for invoicing and bookkeeping services. Aside from its free self-service plan, which made our list of best free accounting software, Sunrise also offers paid bookkeeping services which assigns you a dedicated bookkeeper from Sunrise.

Our Expert Opinion

Sunrise is a free accounting software solution that offers bookkeeping services for a fee. We see Sunrise as the accounting software for freelancers and self-employed service providers. Given that Sunrise doesn’t have inventory management features, it’s not suitable for businesses that need to track inventories and the cost of goods sold. Hence, Sunrise is best suited for service providers rather than merchandisers or retailers. At that same point, Sunrise did well on the user interface design. Even non-CPAs or people with a little accounting background can easily learn the app.

Rydoo Expense: Best for Expense Management and Approval

Rydoo Expense Management can help you process and reimburse expenses. It’s also one of our best business expense tracker apps. With its approval flow features, you can accept and reject submitted expense reports before processing them for reimbursement. Rydoo lessens excessive paperwork and integrates the whole expense and approval process within the app.

Our Expert Opinion

Rydoo’s user interface is clean and simple. It’s easy to understand and learn for first-time users. Moreover, Rydoo’s expense approval feature helps managers and team leaders filter out unallowed expenses submitted by employees. With its web dashboard and mobile app, users can easily manage their submissions whether by mobile or web. More so, approvers can approve submitted reports via phone, making the approval process faster and time-efficient.

How to Choose Your Accounting or Bookkeeping App

Most accounting programs don’t allow you to do all of the bookkeeping functions from the mobile app. Things like bank reconciliations and general journal entries are done infrequently and are much easier on a bigger screen. However, when choosing your app think about the types of things you do on a daily basis that the app should allow. A good mobile accounting app should allow you to:

• Issue invoices: You should be able to quickly generate and email invoices to customers
• Receive payments: You can record payments received from customers and apply them against outstanding invoices
• Pay bills: Inputting bills received may be easier on your PC, but you should be able to pay the bills through the mobile app
• Track mileage: A good app will automatically track your mileage using the GPS from your mobile device
• Scan receipts: Many apps will allow you to scan receipts and then extract the data to create new accounting transactions; for more information read our guide, Best Receipt Scanner Apps
• Categorize transactions: Good bookkeeping programs will transfer transactions automatically from your checking account; the mobile app should allow you to categorize these transactions
• View reports: A good app will allow you to view financial reports without the need to print them

Bottom Line

We’ve provided a list of the best mobile accounting apps to help your small business succeed. Before choosing your bookkeeping software, be sure to consider what functions, such as invoicing, you’ll want to do directly from the app. If you want to perform most accounting functions on the go, QuickBooks Online might be your best choice.

SOURCES:

1. App Store, QuickBooks Accounting, Accessed August 26, 2021
2. Google Play, QuickBooks Online Accounting, Invoicing & Expenses, Accessed August 26, 2021
3. App Store, QuickBooks Self-Employed, Accessed August 26, 2021
4. Google Play, QuickBooks Self-Employed: Mileage Tracker and Taxes, Accessed August 26, 2021
5. App Store, Sage Accounting, Accessed August 26, 2021
6. Google Play, Sage – Accounting: invoicing & expenses, Accessed August 26, 2021
7. App Store, Zoho Invoice, Accessed August 26, 2021
8. Google Play, Zoho Invoice – Free Online Invoicing & Billing App, Accessed August 26, 2021
9. App Store, Sunrise Bookkeeping & Invoices, Accessed August 26, 2021
10. Google Play, Sunrise Bookkeeping & Invoices Accessed August 26, 2021
11. App Store, Rydoo, Accessed August 26, 2021
12. Google Play, Rydoo – Travel & Expense, Accessed August 26, 2021