7 Best QuickBooks Alternatives Of 2024

One of the obvious reasons to use Zoho Books as an alternative to QuickBooks is that it’s more affordable overall. If you’re already using Zoho products to manage projects, teams or support, there’s even more reason to opt for Zoho Books for your accounting needs: seamless integration.

The free plan is packed with features that are helpful for a solo operation. You can manage up to 1,000 invoices per year, set up recurring invoices and track expenses. There are features to help you manage 1099 contractors and take payments. If you want to add on payroll, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan, which starts at £10 per month (paid annually) and allows up to three users.

As you scale up your business, you can scale up your Zoho Books plan to better suit your needs. Each plan comes with fewer limitations, more advanced features and better support options (free users only get email support).

Who should use it:

Zoho Books is best for those who are already using Zoho products to manage their businesses. However, it’s also a good option for freelancers who need feature-rich accounting software to send invoices and manage expenses.

For small and growing businesses, Xero offers some limited plans at affordable prices, but the Established plan for $78 per month is the better option if you’re looking for a QuickBooks alternative. You get essential features that you would expect of a full-featured accounting software including unlimited customisable quotes and invoices, bill payment and bank reconciliation.

Xero also offers an easy way to add receipts and track expenses via Hubdoc, a proprietary system that lets you add photos, emails, documents and scans to capture data automatically. It’s also at this plan level that you can track projects, including time tracking on those projects. There’s also a section for expenses, so you can track expenses, submit and approve reimbursement claims and view expense analytics.

Additionally, the highest tier lets you create invoices and accept payments in multiple currencies, so this is a viable option for international businesses. The lowest tier is affordable, but the invoice limits are low.

Who should use it:

Xero is one of the best QuickBooks alternatives because it’s rich with features established businesses need to manage finances and projects.

Freelancers and solo-operated businesses need accounting software, but maybe not as robust as QuickBooks—that’s where FreshBooks makes sense. It’s designed for single users to send and manage invoices for a handful of clients. You aren’t limited by the number of invoices you send on any plan, but lower-priced plans limit the clients you can bill and manage.

The Lite plan costs £15 per month and limits you to five clients, but it includes essential features to allow you to invoice and charge those clients. You can also send estimates and payment reminders, take payments and track time and expenses. Upgrading to higher tiers grants you access to advanced features, such as double-entry accounting and bank reconciliation.

Who should use it:

FreshBooks was built with the freelancer in mind with its single-user access. You can add more users to your account, but it costs £8 per user, per month, at which point FreshBooks loses considerable value.

Clear Books offers three core plans ranging from £6.08 to £16.20 per month – providing an affordable option for companies in need of assistance managing their money. 

It offers payroll support for an additional fee starting at £2.70 per month. Clear Books is available for a variety of businesses, including limited companies, self-employed sole traders and partnerships.

The accounting software provider also offers a range of features including Optical Character Recognition (OCR) which allows users to take photos of invoices or receipts and accurately extracts the date, VAT, total and supplier name. 

Who should use it:

Clear Books is ideal for small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) looking for a cost-effective service to manage their finances.

One of the best alternatives to QuickBooks Desktop is QuickBooks Online, especially for accountants and bookkeepers. As we’ve pointed out, QuickBooks is the most popular accounting software, and its cloud-based subscription service offers helpful features at different plan levels. All the plans are extremely expensive compared to other options, though.

Full accounting departments are likely to appreciate the comprehensive features of QuickBooks Online. You can track income and expenses, send invoices and accept payments, handle tax deductions and track receipts and mileage, which are all available on all plans. Other plans include advanced features, such as bill management and time tracking, advanced analytics and workflow automations.

Who should use it:

Given how expensive QuickBooks Online is, it may be best for larger businesses with full accounting departments.

Quicken is a great alternative to QuickBooks if you’re looking for a way to track spending. You won’t find standard business management features, such as payroll and time tracking, however. There are multiple subscription plans available starting at $5.99 per month (if paid annually), but the best option for microbusinesses is the Classic Business & Personal plan at $8.90 per month (paid annually). All of these options are available at discounts thanks to a current promotion available from Quicken.

With Quicken, you can create budgets, track goals and set up “what-if” scenarios for planning. Tracking expenses is easy and you can separate expenses and bills, which is helpful if you handle both your home and business expenses at the same time. This is great accounting software for those who manage rental properties.

Who should use it:

Quicken is more for home use than business use, but it can be helpful for tracking expenses, especially when your expenses are mixed, such as for those who own and manage rental properties.

In a way, NetSuite is similar to Zoho in that it offers an ecosystem of apps that connect seamlessly to let you manage your finances and operations easily. The best reason to use NetSuite for accounting is to automate your processes to save you time and effort. Create an invoice and set up NetSuite to send it and collect payment automatically.

Technically, NetSuite competes more with enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools than QuickBooks. In addition to automatic invoicing and collection, you can set up automatic bill payments. There are also features to help you manage tax codes, journal entries and fixed assets.

Who should use it:

NetSuite is more suited for large businesses that can make use of all of its features, but most importantly, it’s a great solution for automating everything from bill payment to collecting payments from clients.

Sage Business Cloud Accounting is a stripped-down set of accounting tools for small businesses that need an affordable and simple solution. You won’t find project or time-tracking tools and there aren’t advanced analytics or automated workflows. For these sorts of features you’ll need to find apps to integrate.

What you can do with Sage Business Cloud Accounting is create and send invoices and track your payments. You can set up automatic bank reconciliation and record receipts with AutoEntry (though this is a paid add-on after your first three months). The plans are affordable for individuals and small businesses—the lowest-priced plan is £15 per month, but you’re limited to one user; the advanced plan costs £30 per month and allows unlimited users.

Who should use it:

Sage Business Cloud Accounting is best for those who only need accounting software for simple needs, such as for invoicing and bank reconciliations.

Square Invoices is an affordable alternative to QuickBooks that gives you precisely what you need for payment processing. There’s also Square’s team management app that you can add on for free to track time for invoicing. The cloud-based solution lets you run your business wherever you are, as long as you have an internet connection.

With the paid plan, you can create custom invoices for clients and then save them as templates to access later. Square Invoices lets you create invoices for milestone payments or in full, and then you simply process the payment according to the schedule you create. Processing rates are standard for Square: 2.9% plus 30 cents for each online card payment and 2.6% plus 10 cents for card-present transactions. Online ACH payments cost 1% of the total, with a minimum of a £0 fee per transaction.

Square Invoices doesn’t limit the number of invoices you send or the number of customers or users you have on your system. If you have a team working for you, track their hours worked for invoicing purposes using Square’s free team management add-on. The only caveat with using Square Invoices is that you’ll have to pay the monthly fee to create custom invoices, save templates and set up milestone-based pay schedules.

Who should use it:

Square Invoices is a great choice for almost any small business—from freelancers to small teams that need time cards to track hours.

One of the top reasons to pick FreshBooks as a QuickBooks alternative is its user-friendly interface. It’s intuitive and lacks the accounting industry terms you may not know as a business owner. FreshBooks doesn’t limit the number of invoices you can send, so even the low-tier plan is a viable and affordable option.

Plans range from £15 to £52.50 per month (minus an introductory discount for the first several months), and if you accept bank transfers for payment, you’re only charged a 1% ACH fee. There’s a free trial available, so you can test FreshBooks before you commit to an annual subscription for the app. It’s also a good choice for businesses with employees who need to track billable hours—it includes time tracking on all plans.

There are some features missing from FreshBooks that you might want, such as inventory tracking and line-item accounting. Plus, the lower-priced plans limit you on the number of clients you can invoice, so for growing companies, you’ll have to choose one of the costlier plans.

Who should use it:

New or small businesses would do well to pick FreshBooks for billing and tracking expenses. It’s a simple program that lets you create an unlimited number of invoices, including recurring invoices, at an affordable price.

Zoho Invoice makes it easy for small businesses to go from estimate to project to invoice to payment without having to pay for the software to make it possible. Zoho Invoice is 100% free to use. The only cost to you is for transaction fees when a client pays you, and that cost comes from whichever payment processor you choose to integrate with Zoho Invoice.

The client portal makes it easy for you to communicate with your customers about custom estimates, timesheets and invoices you create. You can also set up recurring invoices for regular work or even retainer invoices for ongoing work on long-term projects. Time tracking is an included feature in Zoho Invoice, and you can turn billable hours on a project into an invoice. Perhaps the biggest downside to using this free product is that it isn’t scalable on its own. You’re limited to one user on the software and five clients total.

Who should use it:

Zoho Invoice is most suitable for freelancers and small service-based businesses, mostly because it doesn’t include inventory tracking or full accounting features. For example, there are no balance sheets or bank reconciliation features.