You’re a successful WordPress Developer. Hopefully this means you have a fair number of clients and several jobs lined up to keep you busy. The downside to this is, you need to figure out a way to keep track of what clients owe you and how much for which project. It can be quite daunting to juggle all the bookkeeping, and at the same time, trying to run your business and focus on website development.
This post will discuss a few apps that may help address your accounting needs without taking your focus off of your core strength of website development.
QuickBooks Online
Any accountant will tell you that QuickBooks has been around for a long, long time. As an established industry player they offer a wide range of services including full-service accounting. That means you plug them in, sit back, and let them handle all the accounting stuff.
This app is competitively priced, especially for all the features that are available. Having said that there is a drawback: If a client uses a “pay now” button to pay their invoice, QuickBooks routes the payment through their in-house processing, which means you get to pay their transaction rates. While these rates are comparable to other companies’ rates the absence of a choice about which payment processor to use may irritate some users.
Freshbooks
Freshbooks is very easy to use and includes a number of features. Further, it carries a pretty low price tag and allows you to use a variety of payment gateways.
In spite of these advantages Freshbooks may not be the best choice. It is not actually an accounting app: it does not allow you to reconcile your bank account. This means you will have to export your data and then use some other program, which means you’ll be paying for two services.
Xero
Xero’s software is easy to use in spite of being a “full-featured” app. Unfortunately, you will have to pay for this convenience, as Xero is slightly more expensive than some comparable apps. Nevertheless, some people will find this worthwhile as Xero offers unlimited users. Further, Xero allows you to carry out a full bank reconciliation when you need to, which is a nice feature.
One thing some are not a fan of is Xero’s invoicing system. It does not automatically record payments made through your gateway, so you’ll have to manually enter those payments. This inconvenience could be significant if you have a high number of payments each month.
Harvest
Harvest is very competitively priced and includes invoicing as well as expense tracking. However, like Freshbooks, it is not a true accounting app and you will need to find some way to fill the gap left by the features it does not offer.
Conclusion
Remember that not all apps have the same features and depending on your needs and abilities you may find some of them more useful than others. If your only concern is low price, you may want to consider Harvest or Freshbooks; if, however, you need more accounting features in your software you would probably want to look more closely at Xero or QuickBooks Online.