Top 11 Best Accounting Tools for Business Coaches
Regardless of the size of your business, getting the right accounting tool(s) goes a long way in ensuring the smooth execution of company policies and plans.
Unless you are some sort of genius with numbers or an actual accountant, every coach would relate to the fact that keeping track of expenses and other finance-related aspects of a business can be a little confusing and time-consuming.
Also, processing employees’ payroll, as well as calculating personal and business taxes can be a herculean task and boring but all these problems come with a silver lining which translates to accounting tools.
As a coach, you are faced with varying issues ranging from keeping track of expenses and income, as well as processing payroll for your employees among other things. This part of running a business is what most coaches shy away from but the truth remains that handling these challenges the right way is the key to grow your business and take it to the next level which is where accounting tools come in to save the day. But it gets tricky.
People are often at crossroads when it comes to picking the right accounting tools. The frightening part is that if your records are in a mess, you can be faced with missing funds or lose other relevant opportunities that could boost your business. Not sure of the accounting tools that will deal with the challenges in the financial aspect of your business? Let’s enlighten you on what some of these tools are capable of.
11 Best Accounting Tools for Business Coaches
There are many accounting tools out there but they are mostly unique in a way that they work best when used for the right purpose. In view of this, we will explore the best options under three categories – The complete package, payroll package, and the time-tracking and expenses package.
The tools under this category can be expensive but they have everything you need to keep track of the accounting part of your business. The following are some of the top accounting tools under this category.
Xero Accounting
As most of us coaches are not accountants ourselves, it makes sense to eliminate the confusion and focus only on the essentials. That’s where Xero.com comes in. Xero offers a variety of products, ranging from accounting and billing to payments and payroll.
It’s a great accounting software designed for small and medium-sized businesses and the good part is that you can use the software for both online and regular businesses. What’s more, you can combine online and offline sales for the ultimate bookkeeping solution.
Sage Accounting
For a one-man business owner, using Sage Accounting Start can be the life-saver you need to keep your income and expenses in check. The tool can be used to record income flow and expenses, as well as take care of bank reconciliation for a token of $10 every month but it also offers a wider reach for higher prices.
Asides Sage Accounting Start, you can opt for Sage Accounting at $25 a month. The latter gives an overview of business cash flow forecasting and bill vendors and works better for small businesses that deal with freelancers and contractors.
FreshBooks
If you are searching for a simple way out of your financial tracking troubles, FreshBooks might be what you are looking for. It goes for as low as $15 every month and can integrate with bank accounts process business payments (including payroll), generate comprehensive financial reports, among many other functions. Also, FreshBooks offer free customer service to users who run into troubles while using the tool.
QuickBooks Online
Whether you are a coach who just wants a solution to accounting issues or you are an accountant who knows his way around balance sheets, profit and loss, as well as invoice records, QuickBooks Online provides the easy way to keep track of everything relating to finance.
This package offers one of the best accounting tools that suits everybody. It comes complete with dashboards to record business financial data/records, financial reports that can be customized, an invoice generator, online payment receipts, payroll processing tools.
What’s more, QuickBooks has the ability to turn pictures of receipts into cataloged business expenses which is a rare feat. These impressive features can be yours for as low as $5 a month for independent contractors and $28 per month for a robust application.
Sighted
This is a simple and efficient accounting tool for coaches to keep a short leash on invoices, track all expenses and manage client and merchant information. It also affords you the opportunity to integrate your online payments system, making it easy to have everything in one place.
There are different prices for Sighted, depending on the subscription you deem affordable. The Premium starts at $4.99 per month and comes with unlimited access to quotes, invoices, receipts and helps keep track of expenses.
Payroll Package
Processing payrolls for employees and tax is no walk in the park for any coach but with the help of the following accounting tools, you can be sure to take care of payroll on time.
WagePoint
This tool saves time and energy when it’s time for payrolls. It allows you to make direct deposits, as well as deal with payroll taxes automatically to avoid late payments. Additionally, you can receive year-end reporting, file for your 1099 and W-2 forms, and give employees their pay stubs online through this tool.
Gusto
Previously known as ZenPayroll, this tool has an edge over most others because it allows you to access your financial information on the go. This simply means that it’s available on mobile phones and comes with additional features that are unrivaled.
Interestingly, it shares similar features with QuickBooks Online and FreshBooks, including automatic tax processing and filling at all levels (local, state, and federal), employee pay stubs, accounting software integrations and more. Additionally, with Gusto, you get easy enrollment for health benefits plans, access and equally manage the part of the human resources of your establishment, as well as retirement plans.
Gusto gives you a one-month free trial after which $39 per month will be required to enjoy this wonderful package. To further explore the Gusto Core, $6 per employee per month is required.
SurePayroll
On the other hand, if you run a small business and are looking for a tool that would take care of just payroll, SurePayroll is your best pick. As the name implies, SurePayroll ensures you don’t miss deadlines on payroll tax and takes care of all payroll schedules and other related parts of your business.
You can equally use SurePayroll on the go like Gusto, though their features are quite different.
The Time-tracking and Expenses Package
Payroll might be burdensome but even more troubling is the time-tracking and verifying expenses part of it. For businesses where employees are paid hourly, keeping track of time is important. Again, taking note of expenses helps a lot, especially for tax purposes.Thus, if your current accounting tool does not take care of time-tracking or record expenses, below are a few options to choose from.
TSheets
Apparently, among the best in time-tracking, TSheets has garnered a lot of good reviews from users. The features which the tool uses to execute tasks speak volumes of its efficiency.
With TSheets, you can monitor employees’ timesheets from anywhere you are, using any device you can log in to. It also integrates with some of the aforementioned tools for easy management of your account software.
Additionally, if you run shifts for your employees, TSheets will make it easy to manage the schedules and also give room to specify the tasks to be carried out during their shifts. The price range depends on the number of employees. Between 2 and 99 users, $16 per month will get you access to TSheets, plus $4 per user per month—for unlimited projects.
Expensify
With Expensify, you only need to hit the ‘Approve’ button and it turns pictures of your receipts into categorized business expenses. It gives business owners the opportunity to set policies for employees to enable certain expenses to be sent to them for easy approval.Expensify is simply a convenient accounting tool to make keeping track of expenses easy and effective.
Neat
With Neat, you can also scan receipts and other financial documents but it gets better with this tool because you can use a Smartphone, PC camera or scanner to carry out the task.
It also integrates with your other accounting tools, making it easy to transfer files to build expenses reports and even share financial data with others. This comes in handy when there are two or more people running a business.
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