How I Test Accounting Software

So, how do I decide that one product suits you and another doesn’t? Here’s the honest version: the steps I follow, what I check myself, and where I rely on the software company’s own information.

By Janak Uparkoti, accountant. I write and check everything on this site myself.

What I look at

A product can have a hundred features and still be wrong for you. So I judge every one on the same seven things:

  1. Accounting depth: invoicing, expenses, bills, bank reconciliation and reports.
  2. Real cost: the intro offer, the full price after it, and the cost over two years.
  3. Users and accountant access: do you pay per login, and can your accountant get in for free?
  4. Payroll: built in, an add-on, or missing, and what it costs.
  5. Inventory, if you sell physical products.
  6. Plan limits: invoice caps, client caps and user caps that force an upgrade.
  7. Fit: who it’s genuinely for, and who should skip it.

What I do hands-on

For the products I use (Xero, QuickBooks Online, FreshBooks, Zoho Books and Wave), I work through the same tasks in my own account:

  1. Set up the business and connect a bank feed, or import a statement.
  2. Create, send and record payment on invoices.
  3. Reconcile the bank account.
  4. Run a profit and loss and a balance sheet, and check they agree with what I entered.

Screenshots on the site come from these accounts, and the captions say so.

What I take from the vendor, and how I label it

Some things I can’t test from one account: country-specific tax features, every bank integration, payroll in every state. For those I use the company’s official documentation and pricing pages, and I write it that way (“Xero says…”, “according to Zoho’s pricing page…”).

For products I haven’t used, currently Sage, the whole page says so near the top.

How I check prices

  • Prices come from the official pricing page for one named country, usually the US, and I state which.
  • I show the intro price and the price after it, because the second one is what you’ll actually pay.
  • Each product has one pricing guide on this site that holds the numbers. Other pages link to it rather than repeating figures that could drift.
  • Each pricing guide shows the date the prices were last checked.

Keeping pages current

I re-check prices when a vendor announces a change, and regularly for the main pricing guides. I only change the “updated” date when the content really changes. More detail is in the editorial policy.

Independence

Some links on this site are affiliate links. They never decide a ranking, and I’ll recommend a free product or a competitor whenever it suits you better. See the affiliate disclosure.

Spotted something wrong? Please tell me. I’d much rather fix it than leave it.