Best Free Accounting Software Programs for 2022
Tim is a Certified QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) Pro, QuickBooks ProAdvisor, and CPA with 25 years of experience. He brings his expertise to Fit Small Business’s accounting content.
Eric is a staff writer at Fit Small Business focusing on accounting content. He spends most of his time researching and studying to give the best answer to everyone.
This article is part of a larger series on Accounting Software.
Sole proprietors and freelancers can often use free accounting software to track income and expenses to file tax returns. The best free accounting software should include the ability to track all income and expenses, import bank account transactions, and produce basic financial reports like profit and loss, balance sheets, and cash flow reports. We’ve identified five great free accounting programs for small businesses.
Here are the software products that made it to our list:
- Sunrise: Best overall free online accounting software
- Zoho Books Free: Best free software for freelancers with less than $50,000 in revenue
- Wave: Best free accounting software for businesses that require multiple users
- GnuCash: Best free open-source accounting software
- NCH Express Accounts: Best free desktop accounting software
- ZipBooks: Best free accounting software to create simple invoices
- QuickBooks Online: Best paid alternative to free accounting software
Best Free Accounting Software Compared
Provider | Pricing for Higher Plans | Rubric Score | Accessibility | Mobile App | Number of Users in the Free Version |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | $19.99 per month | 5.48 out of 10 points | Web only | ✔ | One only |
 | $20 to $70 per month | 5.92 out of 10 points | Web only | ✔ | One only |
 | Totally free | 4.72 out of 10 points | Web only | ✔ | Unlimited |
 | Totally free | 2.86 out of 10 points | Desktop only (Windows, Linux & Mac) | N/A | Unlimited but desktop software is best for one user |
 | $99 or $129 one-time fee | 4.04 out of 10 points | Desktop only (Windows or Mac) | N/A | Unlimited but desktop software is best for one user |
 | $15 to $35 per month | 4.59 out of 10 points | Web only | N/A | One only |
 | $25 to $180 per month | 8.17 out of 10 points | Web only | ✔ | One to 25 |
Best Paid Alternative to Free Software: Visit QuickBooks Online | |||||
Which Free Accounting Software is Best for You?
Rank the following software features from most important to least important for your company. Based on your rankings, we'll provide a customized score for each of the software including in this buyer's guide.
Sunrise: Best Overall Free Accounting Software
Sunrise
Overall Score: 5.48
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Excellent customer support
- Connect to bank and import transactions
- Free version contains most features
- Create and track vendor bills and customer invoices
What's Missing
- Poor bank reconciliation
- Can’t automatically compute cost of goods sold (COGS) and track inventory
- Free version includes only one user
- Expenses paid cannot be assigned and billed to customers
Pricing
- Free Self Service: Free forever and includes almost all accounting features—good for one user only
- Sunrise Plus: $19.99 per month for unlimited users—includes payment integrations and discounts from Sunrise Pay
Features
- Excellent accounts receivable (A/R) features: A/R is Sunrise’s best feature. It makes it easier for businesses to track customer invoices because of its intuitive interface that shows the status of the invoice and due date. It also has a wide range of options for customizing invoices, like changing logos, colors, and adding a personal message.
- Free forever: Almost all of Sunrise’s features are included in the self-service plan. You can get all of Sunrise’s outstanding accounting features in the free self-service plan except for integrations, payment discounts, and automatic classification of transactions from your bank feed.
Our Expert Opinion
Sunrise is an online bookkeeping service that’s ideal for new companies looking for a simple solution to keep track of income and expenses and invoice clients. Most of Sunrise’s accounting features are present in the free version, so there are no advanced features to expect in the paid plan. However, the bank reconciliation feature isn’t streamlined in terms of determining reconciling items. If you process a lot of bank transactions, we recommend choosing a paid plan like QuickBooks Online, our choice for overall best bank reconciliation software.
Zoho Books Free: Best Free Software for Freelancers With Less Than $50,000 in Revenue
Zoho Books Free
Overall Score: 5.92
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Free plan for businesses with less than $50,000 in annual revenue
- Competitive features for an affordable price
- Excellent customer support
- Full-featured mobile app
What's Missing
- Invoices are limited for Free and Standard Plan
- Billing, inventory, and project accounting is available only for Professional and Premium plans
- Custom reports and budgeting is available only for the Professional Plan
Pricing
For paid plans, the pricing is per organization per month:
- Free: $0 for one user plus one accountant and 1,000 invoices per year
- Standard: $20 monthly for three users and 5,000 invoices per year
- Professional: $50 monthly for five users and unlimited invoices
- Premium: $70 monthly for 10 users and unlimited invoices
Features
- Invoice customization: Zoho Books’ invoice customization feature is commendable. Users can manipulate the look and feel of the invoices—you can add a logo; change the template, colors, and font styles; and add a personalized message after the invoice.
- Excellent mobile app: Zoho Books’ mobile app is the best among all the software programs we’ve reviewed. The app is helpful for doing regular tasks like sending invoices, entering bills, and receiving payments. Users can also view reports, track time, and categorize bank feed expenses on the mobile app.
- Accessible customer support: If you’re looking for a software service with accessible customer support, you can contact Zoho Books in many different ways. First, you can either call them or ask them to call you. Also, Zoho has a chatbot that can provide easy information access, or you can chat with a live representative for personalized assistance. If you need information about how to use certain features, you can check out Zoho’s self-help resources, where you can find tutorial videos, articles, and FAQs.
Our Expert Opinion
Zoho Books is one of the top-performing accounting software programs in our case study. Its free plan is suitable for small businesses or freelancers with revenues less than $50,000 annually. We like Zoho Books because it’s great software for scaling businesses. Though it has limited invoicing for Starter and Standard plans, there’s always an option to scale up to the Professional plan as your business grows.
Wave: Best Free Accounting Software for Businesses That Require Multiple Users
Wave
Overall Score: 4.72
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Free accounting and invoicing
- Easy to set up
- Vendor bills and customer invoices can be created and tracked easily
- Offers bookkeeping assistance
What's Missing
- Bank reconciliations don't work if there are checks written that have not cleared the bank
- No mobile app with full accounting feature
- Cannot track project profitability
Pricing
Wave is 100% free for accounting and invoicing. It doesn’t have higher paid plans.
Features
- Managing unpaid bills: Accounts payable (A/P) is Wave’s strongest feature. It makes it easy for users to track bills, purchases, and vendors. You can also enter bills and expenses without paying.
- Payroll tax assistance: For users doing business in tax service states (Florida, New York, Georgia, Indiana, Virginia, Washington, Minnesota, North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, and Wisconsin), Wave can assist with calculating and filing taxes. For the rest of the states, Wave only assists in calculating payroll tax, and users have to file the returns themselves.
Our Expert Opinion
Wave is a totally free accounting application with competent invoicing and billing functions. It’s perfect for small businesses with multiple users who need to stay on top of their receivables and payables. You can easily track income and expenses by connecting an unlimited number of bank accounts and automatically importing transactions.
GnuCash: Best Free Open-source Accounting Software
GnuCash
Overall Score: 2.86
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Outstanding cash management and amortization features
- Free and customizable
- No internet connection required
What's Missing
- Requires programming expertise to modify or enhance the source code
- No option to remotely share data with another user
- Very hard to use
- Customer support is software manual only
Pricing
GnuCash is a free download from the GnuCash website. No credit card is required, and there are no hidden charges.
Features
- Open source: Because it’s open-source software, programmers can modify or enhance the source code to strengthen security or improve functionality. Since the source code is readily available, GnuCash can be redesigned to be a powerful accounting system that’s customized to your needs.
- Excellent cash and amortization features: With GnuCash, you can track your cash flow easily and reconcile your accounts. You can even connect your bank account. GnuCash’s amortization features help you segregate your long-term loan payments into interest and principal so you can see how much is deducted from the principal and how much interest you have paid.
Our Expert Opinion
GnuCash is a unique, open-source accounting program. While we’re impressed with GnuCash’s cash management features, its other features are pretty hard to use. However, businesses who want a customized accounting software program can use GnuCash’s open-source code to modify the software. If you’re looking for software that you can use out-of-the-box, you’d be better off going with Sunrise, our choice for best overall free software in this guide.
NCH Express Accounts: Best Free Desktop Accounting Software
NCH Express Accounts
Overall Score: 4.04
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Reconcile bank and credit card accounts
- Free for companies with fewer than five users
- Easy to use considering it’s a traditional accounting software program
What's Missing
- Cannot establish a live connection with your bank or credit card account
- Remote access to your program requires configuration of your firewall and router
- No mobile app
- Steep learning curve for non-accountants
Pricing
- Free for companies with less than five employees
- Express Accounts Basic: $99 one-time fee
- Express Accounts Plus: $129 one-time fee or $16.50 quarterly
Features
- Outstanding bank reconciliation: NCH Express Accounts offers a convenient bank reconciliation feature—users can easily add or edit transactions without leaving the reconciliation. NCH Express Accounts is one of our picks for best bank reconciliation software.
- Intuitive workflow diagram: NCH Express Accounts provides a workflow diagram within each accounting function that helps users understand the accounting cycle within the area and shows them where they should enter transactions.
- Free software for companies with less than five employees: It’s easy to download NCH Express Accounts. Before using the software, a pop-up window will ask you to confirm that your organization has less than five employees. After that, you can use all of NCH’s features.
Our Expert Opinion
For a desktop application, NCH Express Accounts is surprisingly easy to use. We’ve reviewed several desktop accounting software programs in our case study, and we can say that NCH Express Accounts is the easiest among them all. However, users with no accounting or bookkeeping experience might find NCH Express Accounts difficult to use. Many of the features require accounting knowledge and use technical accounting terms.
ZipBooks: Best Free Accounting Software to Create Simple Invoices
ZipBooks
Overall Score: 4.59
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Unlimited invoices are very easy to create and track
- Easy to use, even for nonaccountants
- Able to attach receipts to transactions
- Unlimited customers and vendors
What's Missing
- No mobile app
- Can only connect one bank or credit card account
- Cannot import transactions from comma-separated values (CSV) or spreadsheet files
- No inventory tracking features
ZipBooks Pricing
ZipBooks has three plans for business use and one plan for accountants:
- Starter: Free for one user
- Smarter: $15 for five users
- Sophisticated: $35 for unlimited users
- Accountant: Custom priced for unlimited users
Features
- Easy-to-use interface: ZipBooks’ interface is very user-friendly, even for non-accountants. Users without accounting knowledge can easily learn the software and become familiar with how it works.
- Assisted bookkeeping option: If you want a personal bookkeeper to handle bookkeeping and assist in preparing tax filings, ZipBooks offers a bookkeeping plan that includes the ZipBooks software for free.
- Affordable paid plans: The Sophisticated plan is only $35 per month for unlimited users. If you’re looking for a budget accounting software product, ZipBooks offers the minimum accounting software features that match its price point. Though ZipBooks misses on some advanced accounting features, we think that the pricing is reasonable.
Our Expert Opinion
ZipBooks offers accounting software features similar to Wave, making it a worthy Wave alternative. You can read our ZipBooks vs Wave review to see the comparison. It can be used to track invoices, bills, and expenses. Users can also tag expenses to departments or projects for proper tracking, which is an unusual feature in free software.
What we love about Zipbooks is the ease with which you can create and track invoices. You can essentially type exactly what you want to show on the invoice. There is no need to create complicated “items” and then add them to the invoice as you do in other programs. After sending invoices, ZipBooks will help you monitor them until paid.
Microsoft Excel is a helpful tool to supplement your free accounting software by providing some of the missing accounting functions. Read our article on how to use Excel for accounting to find out how to track invoices, bills, COGS, and inventory costs. Plus, you get a free downloadable template.
QuickBooks Online: Best Paid Alternative to Free Accounting Software
QuickBooks Online
Overall Score: 8.17
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Efficient and full-featured bank reconciliation
- Includes inventory tracking
- Track by class, location, or project
- Popular among CPAs and bookkeepers
What's Missing
- Higher plans are expensive
- Not ideal for tracking multiple companies
- Limited mobile app functionality
QuickBooks Online Pricing
- Simple Start: $25 per month for one user
- Essentials: $50 per month for three users
- Plus: $80 per month for five users
- Advanced: $180 per month for 25 users
Features
- Inventory tracking: QuickBooks Online Plus automatically calculates your COGS and cost of remaining inventory every time inventory is sold. If you choose a free accounting program, you’ll need to track these costs in a spreadsheet.
- Ecommerce accounting: Unlike free accounting software, QuickBooks Online can integrate with popular ecommerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce. QuickBooks Online is also our choice for overall best ecommerce accounting software.
- Extensive reporting: QuickBooks Online generates different kinds of reports for your needs. It can generate basic financial statements by class and location along with specialized reports like aging schedules, transactions by customer, and more. You can also create reports by class or location.
Our Expert Opinion
QuickBooks Online is our choice for the best overall small business accounting software. It comes with all the necessary features you need for small business accounting, especially if you choose QuickBooks Online Plus. Though QuickBooks Online Plus is priced at $80 per month, we think that it’s a great investment for keeping your accounting process smooth and efficient. There’s no need to maintain separate spreadsheets for inventories or other transactions. If you’re willing to pay more for convenience, we highly recommend QuickBooks Online Plus.
How We Evaluated Free Accounting Software
We considered an array of accounting software for small businesses that offer plans that are free forever. We evaluated the free programs in terms of general features we’d expect to find in paid software, but also evaluated them based on whether they had the basic features we take for granted in paid software, such as bank feeds and bank reconciliations. Finally, we assessed the software based on pricing, ease of use, and our own expert evaluation.
40%
General Features
10%
Inventory
10%
Project Accounting
30%
Ease of Use
10%
Mobile App
40% of Overall Score
We considered the software’s general accounting features, banking, accounts payable, accounts receivable, tax, and reporting features. Since we were evaluating free accounting applications, we gave higher points to software products that offered premium accounting features. Moreover, we evaluated whether or not they contained at least the basic features needed in small business accounting.
10% of Overall Score
Inventory accounting appears to be an elusive feature in most free accounting software products. Hence, we gave inventory a heavier weight in our scores. We evaluated the software’s ability to track inventory costs and stock levels. More importantly, we took into consideration whether the software could automatically track cost of goods sold and compute cost of ending inventory.
10% of Overall Score
Just like inventory accounting, project accounting is another elusive feature. Project accounting is essential for service-based businesses looking for a free accounting software product. That’s why we evaluated the software’s ability to do more than just bill clients and create estimates.
30% of Overall Score
Most users looking for a free accounting software service intend to self-manage the books. For ease of use, we gave higher scores to software products that are easy for non-accountants to use. We also considered accessible customer service and support networks.
10% of Overall Score
A mobile app should help on-the-go users keep their books organized. The app should let users send invoices, send payments, receive payments, and enter bills. We also like to see advanced features, like viewing reports and recording time worked.
*Percentages of overall score
Bottom Line
Sunrise is the overall best free accounting software because of its extensive list of accounting features; its only limitation is that it’s for a single user. If you need additional users with your free software, we recommend Wave. Zoho Books has even better features than Sunrise but can only be used by companies with less than $50,000 in annual revenue.
If you’re not satisfied with the range of features available in free accounting software, consider a paid plan like QuickBooks Online Plus. Free accounting software comes with sacrifices in features. But if you choose QuickBooks Online Plus at $80 per month, we’re sure that you’ll have all the necessary small business accounting features at your fingertips.
