Best Cloud-Based Accounting Software in 2023 | Top 7 Reviewed and Compared

The best cloud-based accounting software organizes your financial and accounting data without the need for physical software installations. With the best online accounting software, you can automate and streamline several business functions, such as invoicing, payment follow-ups, contract creation, expense tracking, and end-to-end double-entry accounting.

That said, finding the best cloud-based accounting software can be tricky, given the truckload of options out there. To round up the market’s best cloud-based small business accounting software, we focused on criteria like pricing, templates, how easy it is to use, mobile accessibility, integration support, and others. Read our in-depth reviews below to learn how industry leaders like Zoho Books, Oracle NetSuite, and QuickBooks can help you.

Best Cloud-Based Accounting Software | Top 7 Shortlist

In our testing, we found Zoho Books to be the best cloud-based accounting software by a fair distance, thanks to its free forever plan and features like automatic reminders, budgeting capabilities, time tracking, and detailed financial and cash flow statements. However, these are strong competitors:

1. Zoho Books — Overall, the Best Cloud-based Accounting Software in 2023 | Put it to the Test with the Free Plan.
2. FreshBooks — Quality Cloud-based Accounting Software for Tracking Billable Hours | Try it Now with the 30-Day Free Trial.
3. Patriot — One of the Best Accounting Software for Small Businesses | See For Yourself With a 30-day Free Trial.
4. Oracle NetSuite — The Best Cloud-based Accounting Software with Native Payment Processing | Get a Custom Quote Now.
5. QuickBooks — The Best Cloud Accounting Software for Custom Reports | Try the 30-Day Free Trial Before Committing.
6. Sage Accounting — The Best Accounting Software Cloud-based for Expense Management | Test it with the Month-Long Trial.
7. Xero — Leading Cloud-based Accounting Software for Small Businesses to Get Paid Faster | Offers a Solid 30-Day Trial.
8. Bonsai — Popular Online Accounting Software for Sailing Through the Tax Season | Put it to the Test with a 14-Day Free Trial.

The Top 7 Cloud Accounting Software | Reviewed

Here, we’ll dive deeper into the details of the top 7 cloud-based accounting software, including their best features, pricing, pros, and cons to help you get an excellent overview of what these tools can do for you.

1. Zoho Books — The Best Overall Cloud-based Accounting Software in 2023

Zoho Books is probably the most powerful cloud-based accounting software with a wide range of features that’ll automate much of the mundane and even critical accounting operations for you.

For starters, being a cloud-based accounting software, its dedicated client portal automatically notifies you any time a customer makes a payment, declines or accepts your quotes, and makes a comment on your estimates.

These instant alerts save you the trouble of cluelessly wondering about your payment status and instead help you take timely actions to prevent your client from considering other quotes.

Speaking of its automation features, Zoho Books speeds up the payment process by:

1. 1. Automatically creating recurring invoices for repeat customers
   2. Sending payment reminders to your clients in case they’re late with their payments

With auto-generating invoices and reminders, these features help you get paid faster with minimal manual supervision.

For regular customers, Zoho Books will save their credit card details and auto-charge their card every month after the recurring invoice is generated. While automated invoices save your time, auto-charging saves your customer’s time and also helps you get paid faster.

Zoho Books is equally remarkable in managing your bills for the payments you owe to your vendors. To reduce the chances of incorrect transactions, it lets you set up transaction approval systems so that you can verify the bill before it’s processed — no more accidental or unauthorized payments.

Pricing

With a free forever plan, Zoho Books is easily the best small business accounting software on the market right now. Here’s the plans:

The free plan supports small businesses and self-employed individuals with a revenue of less than $50k per annum. Features include support for up to 1,000 invoices, multi-lingual invoicing, expense tracking, and support over email.

For more support channels — including phone and chat, plus a number of integrations — you’ll need to opt for one of Zoho Books’ 5 premium plans. Integrations include Zendesk, Zoho People, Zoho Projects, Avalara, and more.

Try Zoho Books risk-free today with the 14-day free trial and experience first-hand why this tool tops lists like these time and time again.

2. FreshBooks — Quality Cloud-based Accounting Software for Tracking Billable Hours

FreshBooks will suit you well if you’re looking for a tool with an easy learning curve. Its navigable interface and beginner-friendly tools ensure that you and your team get the hang of it with ease.

Project time tracking is one of FreshBooks’s standout features. If you’re paying your employees or charging your clients based on hours, you surely need a tool that keeps track of every billable minute — that’s where FreshBooks steps in.

Being cloud-based, it stays online 24/7 and records every minute your employees invest in a project.

This is a more convenient way to keep track of billable hours compared to a manual clock-in and out system. Not to mention that it’s also more accurate, and there’s a lower chance of any discrepancy.

If your business has field workers that spend time traveling, FreshBooks’s mileage tracking feature will record the fuel expense to help you clear employee claims or add to your project estimates.

To manage your client payments better, FreshBooks also offers a dedicated client portal with a history of:

• • Estimates
  • Invoices
  • Past payments

The client portal will also allow you to share project files, keep them in the loop about work progress, and get valuable feedback.

In short, it’s as good a communication channel as any between your team and your clients, enriched with transparency, which in turn, will make your clients happier.

Pricing

With FreshBooks’ Lite plan, you can send unlimited invoices to up to 5 clients, track unlimited expenses, and send unlimited estimates at just $6/month.

That said, you won’t be able to get your accountant on board with the Lite plan.

Add your accountant and unlock more advanced features like mobile mileage tracking, automatic expense tracking, getting paid with checkout links, and removing FreshBooks’ branding from client emails with a premium FreshBooks plan.

Try FreshBooks for a full month without paying a single cent, thanks to the generous 30-day free trial.

3. Patriot — One of the Best Accounting Software for Small Businesses

Patriot offers a centralized accounting platform to manage both day-to-day finances and taxes, all from one place.

It lets you create unlimited invoices for all your customers. If your small team is struggling to track invoices, Patriot is what you need. Each invoice comes with a dedicated dashboard where you can choose to have it printed or emailed directly to your client. 

To simplify tracking the invoice, Patriot lets you separately mark the ones that have already been sent. If you’re worried you might forget to send the invoice on time, you can set up recurring invoices that go out on a selected date every month. This way, your payments will never be delayed, even if you’re too busy to send the bill to your client yourself. 

Our favorite thing about Patriot is it keeps an audit trail. Sure, you can make mistakes — Patriot will let you easily edit, delete or change transactions to correct them, but that also leaves room for fraudulent employees to tamper with the accounts sheet. That’s why Patriot keeps a track of every change you make. Even if an employee tries to snoop in and make unauthorized changes, they’ll be easily detected.

What’s more, Patriot doesn’t believe in bot support. If you need any help from their team, you’ll find human customer support associates available between 9 AM and 7 PM EST every Monday to Friday via call, email, or phone. Even if you’re on the basic plan, quality expert support is just a click away.

Pricing

Patriot starts at an affordable $20 per month with its “Accounting Basic” plan. Here, you’ll be able to create and track unlimited customers and invoices and enjoy easy data imports, free expert support, the ability to bring unlimited users on board, and whatnot.

That said, if you’d also like user-based payments, account reconciliation, custom invoice templates, and more such premium features, consider getting the “Accounting Premium” plan at just $30 per month. 

Unsure about Patriot? Try it risk-free for a full month, thanks to its 30-day free trial.

4. Oracle NetSuite — The Best Cloud-based Accounting Software with Native Payment Processing Software

Oracle Netsuite’s accounting services extend beyond regular day-to-day accounting — it’ll also act as the perfect breeding platform for your bigger financial goals for your business.

For example, NetSuite gives you complete control over your assets. You get to manage every aspect of your depreciating and non-depreciating assets throughout their lifecycle.

This helps you file your taxes properly, manage your company’s total worth, and understand your business’s total liquidity for future investments.

Besides this, NetSuite also helps you accelerate your financial closing for any given quarter by automating tedious processes like journal entries, variance analysis, account reconciliation, and others.

It’s important to match your transactions and balance the numbers before the completion of every quarter so that every time you make a financial decision, you have the most relevant numbers in hand.

For your simpler accounting needs, NetSuite offers an intuitive cash management feature that keeps you updated about your daily transactions and gives you an updated view of your cash flow and position so that your financial team can make strategic budgeting plans beforehand.

Pricing

Oracle NetSuite believes in providing custom solutions to match the needs of a user to the T. You’ll pay for only what you need and nothing more. The subscription starts at $99, but the total price is arrived at by adding the following:

Contact NetSuite’s team, design your own plan, and get a custom quote.

5. QuickBooks — The Best Cloud Accounting Software for Custom Reports

QuickBooks will be the ideal accounting software for companies trying to manage a big accounting team.

As a cloud-based software, QuickBooks lets you invite multiple people onboard and assign each of them a specific role and set of permissions so that you can control what data they have access to.

For example, if you have two junior accountants on the team, you can use the Roles and Permission feature to limit their access to day-to-day transactions only and hide all the money that comes from your high-paying clients and information about your company assets.

Plus, to give you a better insight into your business’s performance, QuickBooks creates custom reports and dashboard summaries.

At any given time, you can check your latest expenses, income, profit percentage, and much other information that’ll help you gauge your company’s growth. The more you know about your company’s financial standing, the better decisions you’ll be able to make for it.

One of the best things about QuickBooks is that it directly connects with your bank account. This means that all your bank statements are automatically imported to QuickBooks — you’ll have all your transaction data in one place without the need for manual entry.

Conversely, all your recorded transactions are reconciled with your bank, meaning you’ll have no missing entries or payment errors in the final finance reports. After all, the last thing you want while closing a quarter is a balance sheet that doesn’t match.

Pricing

At just $17/month (on offer for $5.10/month), you’ll get detailed insights and reports of your expenses, a GST and VAT tracker, and custom invoices with QuickBooks’s Simple Start plan.

If you’d also like QuickBooks to manage your bills and payments, track employee time and inventory, and allow up to 5 users + your accountant, get a premium plan.

Put QuickBooks to the test today with the 30-day free trial.

6. Sage Accounting — The Best Accounting Software Cloud-based for Expense Management & Spending Analyzer

Sage Accounting will be perfect for companies with a global customer base, thanks to its seamless multi-currency transactions.

To keep your business up and running, you need to maintain cordial relationships with your vendors and pay them on time.

Sage Accounting helps you clear your bills on time with its Account Payable feature. With it, you’ll be able to keep an accurate record of your expenses and analyze your total spending across multiple vendors using its intelligent reporting tool.

This feature benefits you in two ways:

Besides tracking expenses separately on the Account Payable tab, Sage Accounting also reconciles them with your bank in real-time.

Automating this process not only spares you from boring admin work but also minimizes the chances of human error and helps you spot fraudulent activity.

If you’re trying to look up and match a particular entry, you’ll be glad to know that Sage Accounting lets you set up smart filters based on invoice numbers, amounts, and contact references.

You can also directly import files from the records with ‘AutoEntry’ into your bank feed to save even more time matching a particular transaction. Plus, the connection between your bank account and Sage is completely secure.

This means that only the Sage team can access your personal financial records, so you never have to worry about data leaks during transmission.

Pricing

For just $10/month (get the first 6 months of the starter plan for 70% off with Sage’s current offer), you’ll have support for one user, automatic bank reconciliation, and a tracker to track what you’re owed.

Bump your plan up by opting for the higher-tier plan if you want things like advanced reports, multi-currency banking and invoicing, cash flow forecast, and automatic purchase invoice management.

With a 30-day free trial, you can test Sage Accounting’s suitability for your needs completely free of cost. No risk.

7. Xero — Leading Cloud-based Accounting Software for Small Businesses to Get Paid Faster

Xero is one of the most versatile cloud-based accounting solutions on the market right now. No matter how big or small your needs are, it’ll always find a way to fit them.

One of our favorite features of Xero is how efficiently it lets you manage your bills. You can create separate folders based on payment type or vendor name to categorize the bills.

This simplifies the search for a particular bill in case you need to revisit it again in the future. Plus, as a cloud-based software that Xero is, it allows you to access these bills anytime, and from anywhere you want.

To further simplify payments for you and your clients, you have the liberty to add a “Pay Now” button on your invoices so that your clients can pay you directly from there.

Payment options include Stripe, GoCardless, credit cards, direct bank deposits, and more. Together, these features make payments a breeze for your customers, which encourages them to clear your dues on time and boosts client satisfaction.

The only thing we don’t like about Xero is how it doesn’t allow you to claim expenses under any of its plans — you can unlock this feature only as an add-on at an additional cost.

On the brighter side, the cost of Xero add-ons is quite nominal, and you have plenty of features to enjoy on the main plans, including regular bank reconciliations and short-term cash flow, plus business snapshots to manage your day-to-day accounting processes.

Pricing

You can get started with Xero for as little as $13/month. With the Early plan, you can send up to 20 invoices and have Xero automatically reconcile your bank transactions.

Need Xero to do more for you, like bulk reconciliation, in-depth analytics, and the ability to track projects? Sign up for a higher-end plan.

Unsure? Try any of Xero’s plans free for a full month, completely risk-free.

8. Bonsai — Popular Online Accounting Software for Sailing Through the Tax Season

Bonsai is a great pick for companies on the hunt for beginner-friendly accounting software that simplifies payments and helps see them through the tax season.

It’s one of the few accounting platforms that provide native banking services. Create a Bonsai bank account without having to pay an initial setup or maintenance fee, and get the loftiest possible flexibility and control over your funds.

Since Bonsai doesn’t demand any maintenance fee, aka minimum balance — you can use it for daily petty cash expenses without worrying about your Bonsai account closing due to insufficient balance.

What’s more, you’ll also be able to link your invoices directly to your Bonsai bank account so that any payment made through your invoices goes straight to your account with zero delays.

Another amazing benefit of Bonsai is it helps you identify potential tax write-offs in your expenses so that during the taxing season, you can apply for tax reduction and save extra money.

Its unique “Envelope” feature lets you set aside some extra money for taxes, crises, and payroll so that you always have enough funds to keep the business afloat in case a contingency neutralizes.

This, paired with built-in time and task tracking, make Bonsai a popular solution for freelancers and small businesses that need help streamlining their processes.

Pricing

For $24/month, you’ll get expense tracking, support for unlimited clients and projects, permission to admit up to 5 project collaborators, and more.

Need more from Bonsai? How about accountant access, subtractor onboarding plus management, Calendly and Zapier integration, and more advanced features? Get a premium Bonsai plan.

Bonsai is also one of the few accounting software companies to provide a money-back guarantee (14 days) on top of a free trial. Try it today without risking any money and see if it’s your cup of tea.

Accounting Cloud-Based Software | Top 7 Compared

Need an overview for easy comparison? Here’s a table highlighting only the key differences between the top cloud-based accounting software:

Why You Need a Cloud-Based Accounting Solution

Cloud-based accounting software will save you a lot of installation and setup hassles. Here are other key reasons you need a cloud-based accounting solution:

Real-time Updates

A cloud-based accounting software connected to the internet gives you real-time updates.

For example, suppose you make a bank transaction. In that case, a cloud-based accounting platform will immediately log it in your expense sheet and adjust the amount in your current balance so that you always have updated numbers for crucial business decisions.

No Storage Hassle

One of the biggest problems of maintaining offline accounting software is the huge amount of data that takes up half your system storage. At any given point, you should always have the financial data for the current year.

In some cases, companies also store years’ worth of financial data just to chart their progress. Imagine if you dump all these numbers on your system. What will be left of its hard drive?

That’s why it’s always better to go for a cloud-based accounting tool and store the data online.

Remote Access

With cloud-based accounting software, your team doesn’t have to be on the office premises to access the financial files.

This drives up job flexibility and gives your team the freedom to work wherever they are. More flexibility at work not only makes your employees happy but also improves work productivity.

Perfect for Team Collaboration 

Since the accounting files exist on the cloud and not on a particular system, your team can access them anytime they want from their personal systems, even if they’re working remotely.

This simplifies accounting collaboration for companies with remote teams and ensures that no single person has 100% autonomy over the accounting files.

How to Choose the Best Cloud Accounting Software for Your Business

Making it on our list of the best cloud-based accounting software is no easy task. Here are things to keep in mind when choosing the perfect cloud accounting software for your business:

Automation Features 

One of the first things you need to check when selecting a cloud-based accounting software is whether it provides automation. The whole point of having an accounting tool is to take the burden off your team.

That’s why we’ve only picked platforms that can take care of your accounting needs even without your supervision. For example, Zoho Books will automatically send out reminders and follow-ups on your invoices if the client doesn’t clear the bill on time.

Similarly, almost every tool will automatically reconcile your transactions with the bank to ensure every entry is in place. With these features in hand, you won’t have to supervise every part of the process.

Team Collaboration 

The accounting software should be a part of the team, just like any other member. That means it has to work together in harmony with everybody else. And for that to happen, you need to pick a tool that allows team collaboration.

For example, QuickBooks allows you to bring multiple team members on board and prepares role-specific dashboards for everyone. This way, everyone on the accounting team gets to know how the funds are managed and contribute to their best ability.

Auto Updates 

The entire point of having a cloud-based system is to get real-time updates. If you have to make manual entries and adjustments to the expense sheet after each transaction, what’s the point of investing in an accounting tool?

That’s why all the platforms we’ve picked automatically log all your transactions and reconcile them with the bank. Any changes or edits made to the expense or revenue sheet are immediately updated across all platforms and the company.

Payment Integrations 

Accounting software shouldn’t only handle your finances, but it should also help you handle your payments. For example, with Zoho Books, your clients can check their transactions and pay through their preferred method — whether through the bank or online.

Similarly, FreshBooks also integrates with Paypal and Stripe to simplify payments — both client and vendor payments.

Cloud Accounting Software FAQs