The 10 Best Home Accounting Software Apps Reviewed

The best home accounting software can help you manage your household finances without any stress. Freelancers and self-employed entrepreneurs can also use it to keep financial data organized and prepare for tax season. The best personal accounting software helps families manage their finances with features like budgeting, expense tracking, and retirement planning.

However, plenty of accounting software providers don’t provide the tools you need to get the job done. This article will help you find the best accounting software for home use with advanced features, modern dashboards, reliable customer support, and more. Read on to find out why FreshBooks stands out this year as the best home accounting software app and what its closest competition can offer.

The Best Personal Accounting Software for 2023

Finding the best accounting software for home and small business management isn’t easy. To help you make an informed decision, we’ve reviewed and compared the best accounting software providers and created this list:

1. FreshBooks — Overall, the best personal accounting software for 2023 with exceptional features for home users.
2. Zoho Accounting — A comprehensive free plan and a beginner-friendly interface make this tool ideal for managing business and home finances.
3. Xero — An excellent, scalable analytics package with reporting features to provide everything you need to balance your books.
4. Bonsai — All-in-one solution for freelancers, which helps with projects, communications, and financial management.
5. Sage — An exceptional pick for ecommerce store owners and micro businesses, with superb inventory management features.
6. QuickBooks — Thorough record-keeping and hundreds of integrations to streamline your processes.
7. Turbotax — File your personal and business taxes with expert assistance via a highly secure platform.
8. Melio — Simplify invoice payments for you and your contacts and set up approval workflows.
9. Wave — Reliable payroll solution that allows home business owners to pay their staff and contractors.
10. Moxie — Great for time-tracking and collaboration for freelancers working on projects.

How Does Personal Finance Software Work?

A personal finance software app is a digital tool that helps you effectively manage your financial activities. Subscribing to a reliable accounting software provider allows you to streamline the process of budgeting, financial goal planning, and expense tracking.

Personal finance software lets you take control of your spending and saving habits and simplifies finance tracking. Besides limiting your spending, accounting software offers features to help identify overspending, and you can track progress towards goals, such as paying off debt or saving for vacations.

Scalability is another standout benefit of using accounting software to manage personal finances. Advanced features allow you to make changes, such as adding a new family member to your account or adjusting your income without starting from scratch.

Likewise, if you’re running a home business, you can seamlessly upgrade to plans that allow more users or offer better features as your company grows.

Is Home Finance Software Safe to Use?

The best home finance software from reputable providers is generally safe for business and personal finance management. The providers ensure their applications are secure and private and often have multiple layers of protection in place.

For example, the sensitive data you share using this software, such as bank account numbers, credit card details, and personal identifiers, is encrypted with robust encryption algorithms during transmission and storage. These companies also often undergo security audits and updates to address vulnerabilities to cyber threats.

However, users also have a crucial role in ensuring the safety of their financial information. Besides using features like two-factor authentication and updating software, you should exercise caution when sharing personal information or granting access to financial accounts, even when using the best personal finance apps.

Although following the best security practices minimizes the risk of an account breach, consider investing in one of the best password managers for maximum security.

The Best Accounting Software for Personal Use Reviewed

Here, we’ll dive into the details of each accounting software product on our list and explore pricing, features, compatibility, and pros and cons. Read on to find out what makes each tool unique and find the one that suits your needs and preferences.

1. FreshBooks — Overall, the Best Personal Accounting Software

FreshBooks offers a versatile accounting platform that can help manage your personal finances or home business. Its reporting and analytics features actually make it ideal for freelancers, consultants, and entrepreneurs running small home-based businesses.

The software’s easy-to-use interface also simplifies expense tracking, making it suitable for users who want to manage business and personal finances in one place. Its feature set includes various tools that go beyond personal financial management, and it’s a great fit for self-employed professionals.

As well as tracking accounts and helping you file your taxes, FreshBooks offers various time management tools to help track work with clients.

From detailed client profiles and account statements to estimates, proposals, and time-tracking, FreshBooks helps you track everything client-related. These features also allow you to take the guesswork out of planning and start projects without confusion.

In addition, FreshBooks provides versatile invoicing features that ensure you charge for every second and count up any expenses. Its invoice generator lets you add your tracked time and expenses to your invoices, request a deposit, personalize thank-you emails, and more.

All of this makes your home business look professional, ensures your cash flow is stable, and allows you to forecast your upcoming workload and income using the software.

This centralized platform also lets you access real-time financial data for your business and provides powerful insights into its health. Its well-designed dashboards and reports will crunch the numbers – such as profit and loss – for you and save you time as you prepare for tax season.

Pricing

FreshBooks offers plans tailored for freelancers, self-employed professionals, and small businesses. Each plan lets you send unlimited estimates, track expenses, and generate tax reports.

Depending on the complexity of your accounts, you might opt for its more expensive plans with in-depth business health reports and custom email signatures, among other features.

You can try FreshBooks risk-free today, thanks to its 30-day money-back guarantee.

2. Zoho Accounting — Comprehensive Free Plan

Zoho Accounting offers the best free accounting software for personal use for one user and one accountant. Its free plan lets you add multiple bank and credit card accounts, create a customer portal, manage clients and invoices, and more.

Although this plan can meet the needs of some freelancers and help with personal finance management, self-employed professionals and home business owners may need one of its premium plans.

You’ll find it easy to manage and browse through your transactions using its beginner-friendly interface. Zoho Accounting automatically categorizes transactions and lets you filter using bank rules so nothing slips through the cracks.

Opting for its more expensive plans lets you set up payment gateway integrations, including Stripe, PayPal, Square, and others. This allows you to take payments directly from the customer portal and eliminates worry with automated reminders.

In addition, Zoho Accounting will automatically track your invoices and mark them as paid as soon as the money comes in.

Zoho Accounting also makes project management a breeze. It offers mobile apps to track your project hours, lets you collect advance payments for projects, and helps with expense management. In addition, integrating with Zoho Projects grants you access to some of the best project management software features.

Zoho Accounting stands out as one of the best platforms for automating business workflows and payments. It helps you eliminate repetitive tasks by providing advanced features like recurring invoices and profiles, which let Zoho Accounting automatically send out transactions for you.

Pricing

Zoho Accounting offers feature-rich solutions, from its freelance and personal finance software free plan to tools for small-to-midsize businesses. It’s also one of the most generous accounting solutions since it imposes almost no service limits, even for free users.

In addition, Zoho Accounting lets you add additional users to your plan for just $2.50 per user per month, which is cheaper than most of its competitors.

You can start with Zoho Accounting for free today without committing to a subscription. We rate it as the best free home accounting software.

3. Xero — Excellent, Scalable Analytics and Reporting

Xero offers the best home business accounting software for growing startups. It provides exceptional cash flow analysis and reporting features that give you an in-depth insight into your financial health and help you track metrics.

In addition, it helps you quickly get an idea of your short-term cash flow and provides in-depth profit and loss statements and balance sheets.

This analytical depth assists decision-making for small business owners, while its bank reconciliation features help you keep your account balances and financials up to date.

Unlike most of its competition, Xero lets you reconcile your transactions in bulk. In addition, the software will automatically match items from your bank statements to invoice or bill payments.

Xero also makes interactions with third parties simple, as you can create and save quotes online or turn them into invoices with a single click, and it lets you use saved contacts, pricing, and inventory info to create quotes in seconds.

That means you’ll spend less time doing repetitive work, which makes it ideal for smaller teams without a dedicated accountant.

Xero’s multi-currency accounting can process transactions in over 160 countries and allows you to use various currencies in your invoices, quotes, and purchase orders. Thanks to its exceptional analytics and reporting features, Xero will also show you how fluctuations in exchange rates affect your cash flow and profits.

In addition, Xero can help calculate sales taxes on transactions and prepare reports for tax season. It also allows you to add or amend the default sales tax rates with its software and set up as many rates and components as required.

Pricing

Xero offers a budget-friendly plan for sole traders and freelancers starting at $9.75/month. It includes data capture, business snapshots, bank reconciliation, and other features but limits your online invoicing and bill payment scheduling capabilities.

Its more expensive plans impose no limits on its customers and are ideal for growing businesses that require more advanced features.

Xero offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, allowing you to start using its services risk-free today.

4. Bonsai — All-in-One Solution for Freelancers

Bonsai is the best home and business accounting software for freelancers looking to improve their client relations, projects, and financial management.

One of its standout features is its massive invoice, contract, proposal, and quote templates library. These templates allow you to look professional, set up global payments, and get paid faster, even if you’re a beginner.

It allows you to streamline invoicing from the ground up, minimizing the need for payment chasing. For example, setting up an automatic recurring invoice that delivers read receipts can be done in seconds with Bonsai.

In addition, you can make it easy for your clients to pay using various international payment options, including PayPal, ACH payments, and credit cards.

Unlike its competition, Bonsai delivers an all-in-one solution for freelancers and self-employed professionals. That means you’ll have a unified platform for diverse business tools, including some of the best CRM software for small businesses and an exceptional project management program.

The centralized nature of Bonsai and its ability to integrate all your business processes into a single platform allows freelancers to gain unmatched control over their finances.

Having your project data, including their expenses and deductions, in one place lets you track your profit and loss without juggling between different business apps.

While most of its competition relies on integrations to help its users streamline business processes, Bonsai lets you connect it to less than twenty third-party apps. However, its native support for Zapier means you can integrate Bonsai with hundreds of other business tools.

Pricing

Bonsai splits its service into three tiers, with the cheapest plan catering to freelancers and contractors. However, if you’d like to remove Bonsai branding from invoices and other templates, you’ll need one of its two more expensive plans, which focus on growing businesses.

You can try Bonsai risk-free today, thanks to its 7-day free trial.

5. Sage — Superb Inventory Management Features

Sage offers a low-cost solution for freelancers and self-employed professionals, which focuses on tracking accounts receivable, accounts payable, and inventory. Sage offers invoicing, billing, and reporting features and is an ideal time management tool to reduce admin hours.

Managing your inventory is a breeze with Sage, as it lets you adjust your stock and pricing and helps you set up minimum re-order levels, stock warnings, and best-selling product reports. That means you’ll avoid time-consuming manual stock setup tasks and can act on real-time stock data at all times.

It also provides detailed reports regarding your accounts receivable. Knowing how much your customers or suppliers owe you is imperative for small businesses, and Sage helps you keep track of invoices and payment due dates accurately.

Tracking your accounts payable is another area in which Sage excels. It helps you keep your business in good standing with vendors, as it’ll provide timely reports and payment notifications. That means you’ll always know what you owe to each vendor and when you need to pay.

Besides giving you better visibility of your business’s financial information, automating business transactions and reporting can help you avoid hours of admin work.

Sage also helps provide a convenient service to your online customers by offering a superb billing experience. Its online software can handle recurring bills, refunds, and payments and allows custom billing services for individuals or customer groups.

Pricing

Sage offers two plans for freelancers, self-employed professionals, and small businesses. Its cheaper plan offers entry-level accounting features such as invoicing, bank reconciliation, and accounts receivable.

Although this is enough for most freelancers, we suggest opting for a more expensive plan if you’d like to add more users to your account and forecast cash flow.

Sage offers a 30-day free trial, meaning you can try its services risk-free today.

6. QuickBooks — Thorough Record-Keeping

QuickBooks is one of the most versatile home finance software providers, and it offers industry-specific features and subscription plans for businesses of varying sizes. Thanks to its versatility, QuickBooks can effectively streamline financial management for entrepreneurs operating from home as their business grows.

Although it has a slight learning curve, QuickBooks offers a free guided setup for its first-time users. That means you’ll quickly get used to its modern interface capabilities, from connecting and tracking your bank transactions to automating repetitive tasks.

It’s worth mentioning that most accountants and bookkeepers in the US use QuickBooks, which makes it an excellent long-term investment for growing businesses.

Unlike most of its competition, QuickBooks offers numerous advanced features with its cheapest plan, including receipt capture.

This feature lets you snap photos to add receipts on the go using its dedicated mobile apps. QuickBooks will automatically store and categorize the receipts to help you with file management and tax preparation.

QuickBooks also helps you avoid surprises with its automatic quarterly tax calculations. You can also use its default categories or set up your system to track and categorize expenses automatically. That means you’ll always have the relevant documents on standby to help find deductions and stay on top of your sales tax.

This type of centralized record-keeping allows you to run in-depth reports that show where you make and spend the most money. That can help you notice cost-cutting opportunities or sales trends that can improve your business’s performance, allowing you to organize your finances better.

Pricing

QuickBooks offers four subscription tiers for everyone from freelancers to small-to-midsize companies. Although more expensive than most of its competition, the numerous features offered with each plan justify its pricing.

In addition, you can schedule a free consultation with one of its bookkeeping experts to close your books for tax time, categorize transactions, and more.

You can try QuickBooks risk-free today by signing up for a 30-day free trial.

7. Turbotax — File your Personal and Business Taxes 

Turbotax is a popular tax preparation software tool with comprehensive solutions for individuals managing personal and business tax filings. That makes it an ideal two-in-one tool for users with combined tax obligations since it ensures you can accurately address both aspects of your financial life without overlap.

Filing personal income tax returns is easy with Turbotax as its experts can help you understand every step of the process, simplifying complex tax codes and forms for users. The software covers various tax situations, from standard deductions to specific scenarios, allowing you to maximize refunds and minimize liability.

Home business owners will appreciate how robust its business tax filing feature is. It supports various business types, from sole proprietorships to corporations and partnerships. Turbotax will identify eligible deductions related to home office equipment, expenses, and other business-related costs.

Turbotax prioritizes data security with various security measures, including data encryption, secure data centers, multi-factor authentication, regular security audits, and more. These measures ensure nobody except you has access to your data, making it difficult for unauthorized parties to intercept or access the information.

However, Turbotax focuses solely on tax filing, and you shouldn’t expect other advanced features our top picks offer. With that said, it seamlessly integrates with hundreds of third-party apps, which means you can add it to your set of business tools to ensure accuracy during the tax preparation process.

Pricing

Turbotax is a free tool that charges you only once you’re ready to file your taxes or need assistance from its experts. Although freelancers, self-employed professionals, and contractors can start for free, Turbotax starts charging from $129/year when you file your taxes.

Sign up and start preparing for tax season using Turbotax today.

8. Melio — Simplify Invoice Payments

Melio is an excellent personal budgeting software provider, as its user-friendly interface allows you to pay bills, split expenses among family members or roommates, and keep track of financial obligations.

Its other features make it suitable for managing the finances of your home business, with a streamlined approach to managing payments, invoicing, and expenses.

It simplifies invoicing by allowing you to create professional-looking invoices, customize their branding, and send them to clients. You can also set up automated reminders for payment deadlines that minimize delays in receiving funds, improving your cash flow.

Managing expenses is also simple with Melio, as it allows you to schedule recurring payments, ensuring you meet your financial obligations. You can apply this feature to your personal and business needs to pay for various services, including rent, subscriptions, or bills.

One standout feature of Melio is that it lets you pay your vendors with bank transfers for free or pay them by card, even where cards aren’t accepted. Since Melio doesn’t have a monthly subscription fee, you can cooperate with your vendors using Melio at no additional cost, and they don’t need to sign up.

While most of its competition hides this feature behind expensive subscription plans, Melio lets use its bill capture feature for free. Taking or uploading photos of bills is all you need to do for Melio to automatically read, store, and categorize the information on it.

From there, you can set up approval workflows that allow your employees or accountant to pay the bills shown on Melio, reducing your admin hours and helping you stay on top of your cash flow.

Pricing

Melio lets you use its comprehensive set of payment-based features for free, and its transaction fees are transparent. That makes it an excellent addition to other accounting software it integrates with, such as Xero or QuickBooks.

You can try Melio free today and connect with your customers and vendors to make, receive, and track payments stress-free.

9. Wave — Reliable Payroll Solution

Wave lets you use its accounting features for free and charges you for optional add-ons, such as payroll, mobile receipts, and expert advice. Its payroll add-on lets you deposit payments quickly and directly to your employees’ accounts. Wave will also keep records of payments, reducing time spent on manual bookkeeping.

An accounting solution with built-in payroll features means all the data will be centralized, simplifying annual audits and tax filing. In addition, your employees can securely log in to access their pay stubs and W2s and manage their banking and contact information.

Wave also helps you speed up cash flow with online payment options built into the invoices you send to your customers. You can add a “Pay Now” button when you enable invoice payments, and your customers can click the button to instantly pay by credit card, secure bank payment, or Apple Pay.

Wave offers an easy-to-use interface that helps you visualize your profit and loss, balance, and the overall financial performance of your business.

However, unlike most of its competition, it provides expert coaching sessions for accounting, tax filing, and payroll. That means even a beginner can learn how to perform these crucial tasks for business in just a few hours.

Although it’s not as feature-rich as our top picks and wouldn’t suit complex businesses, Wave is ideal for beginners running a small business from home. It’s worth mentioning that it has some of the best home business accounting software mobile apps, making it an excellent pick for professionals who work on the go.

Pricing

Wave is a freemium accounting software provider that lets you use its accounting and invoicing features for free while charging for its other services. It will also charge you 2.9% + $0.60 per credit card transaction (3.4% + $0.60 for AMEX) and 1% for bank payments.

Start using Wave for your invoicing and accounting needs for free today, and you can add its premium services whenever you need them.

10. Moxie — Great for Time-Tracking 

Moxie is an excellent all-in-one tool for freelancers and contractors, which makes time-tracking easy. You can start and stop its time-tracking feature without having to think twice and incorporate the recorded time into invoices.

In addition, you can review how you spend your time via its time-tracking dashboard that sorts it by client, project, month, or other filters.

Unlike most of its competition, Moxie also helps you track time spent on projects when collaborating. That means your invoices can reflect the total time spent on a project, making it easier for clients to understand and account for every minute of your work.

Moxie lets you add various payment options to these invoices, including PayPal, credit or debit cards, or ACH in 81+ currencies.

Thanks to its centralized platform, which unifies project management with invoicing and accounting, Moxie will always show you if you need to send an invoice to a client. In addition, Moxie can easily match some of the best task management software because of its advanced features and flexibility with customization.

One standout feature of Moxie is its set of features for collaboration. Whether you opt for its cheaper or more expensive plan, you’ll always be able to invite unlimited project collaborators and improve your scheduling and communications with them.

This means you’ll have a team-wide scope of your billable hours and work distribution while working on a project.

Thanks to its intuitive interface and excellent automation, you’ll spend less time on administrative finance tasks. Moxie makes it a breeze to categorize expenses, assign costs back to clients, and attach receipts.

Pricing

Moxie offers two plans, with the cheaper plan being ideal for freelancers and contractors looking to simplify their finance and project management. No matter which Moxie plan you opt for, you’ll have access to all of its features, which makes it one of the most affordable and feature-rich tools for freelancers.

Try Moxie risk-free today, thanks to its 14-day free trial.

Cons

• Lacks tax filing solutions

The Best Accounting Software for Home Use Compared

Here's a quick overview of the best accounting software for home use. In this master table, you'll see a head-to-head comparison of the best software for personal finances based on the products' pricing, features, integrations, and more.

What's the Best Free Accounting Software for Personal Use?

There are four free accounting tools on our list you can use for personal or home business needs. Depending on your preferences and requirements, they can provide a comprehensive service, but we're confident Zoho Accounting offers the most complete free plan.

However, free accounting programs have numerous limitations compared to their subscription-based counterparts. For example, Zoho Accounting's free plan doesn't incorporate tax services, while Wave doesn't offer mobile receipt capture for free.

In addition, Melio and Turbotax are freemium services that offer a few features for free and charge for the rest of their services.

While these tools may be ideal for freelancers and home business owners working on small projects or families wanting more comprehensive solutions for budget planning, you'll benefit more from their premium versions when working on complex projects or with numerous vendors and clients.

Here's a table summarizing the key differences between the free accounting software options on our list:

Key Details to Consider When Looking for the Best Personal Finance Software

Establishing control over your finances can reduce the stress that money-related problems cause at a business or household level. However, it takes more than a notepad or Excel sheet to track your expenses and income, analyze trends, forecast your budget, or prepare for tax season.

That's why using reliable home budget software can help you stay on top of your finances and improve your cash flow.

To help you make an informed decision, we've listed crucial factors to consider while choosing an accounting tool that fits your needs:

Features

The best personal finance software should have numerous features to help you address financial management needs for your household. Look for features that allow you to track your expenses, monitor spending patterns, and prepare for tax filing.

In addition, it should have an intuitive platform and the flexibility to let you create and modify customizable categories tailored to your needs.

Ensure your future accounting software has business-related features if you have a home office or freelance. These features include invoicing, receipt reading, reports, analytics, and more.

Cost 

While free tools may be an attractive choice for households and micro businesses on a budget, investing in a premium accounting solution is essential if you require advanced functionalities.

Subscription-based tools may prove more valuable in the long run, as they can provide beneficial insights into your business and help you make better decisions.

Integrations

Seamless integration with financial institutions such as banks, credit card companies, and online payment platforms is imperative. Look for business and personal financial management solutions that effortlessly sync transactions and data, ensuring real-time accuracy and reducing manual data entry.

In addition, you should opt for an accounting solution that integrates with other popular business software.

Scalability

Scalability is crucial for freelancers, self-employed professionals, and home business owners. If you expect sudden business growth and prefer using a single solution long-term, look for accounting apps with numerous pricing plans that offer advanced features and have no usage limits.

Conclusion – What is the Best Accounting Software for Personal Use in 2023?

After a thorough comparison of the best home and business accounting software solutions, we're confident that FreshBooks provides the most comprehensive features for personal and home business use.

It offers four well-priced plans that guarantee scalability and flexibility and an intuitive interface that lets you access real-time financial data for your business and household. Besides providing traditional accounting tools, FreshBooks can help with project management, time-tracking, team collaboration, and more.

FreshBooks offers a generous 30-day free trial to its first-time customers, which means you can try its services risk-free today.

Best Personal Budget Software FAQs

Ilijia Miljkovac

Ilijia Miljkovac

Ilija Miljkovac is a Technopedia writer with 7 years of experience covering all things tech. He writes about everything from cybersecurity to ISPs, ensuring businesses and customers are educated about the latest products and services. He's written for publications such as Business2Community, TheTechReport, Comparitech, and more. When he's not maniacally hacking away at his keyboard, Ilija spends his time either hiking in nature or holed up in his apartment gaming.

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