How To Choose Accounting Software For Your Business ?

correct software for your businessIf you have a business, you require accounting software to record all the incomes and expenses and also require essential bookkeeping tips for small businesses. Ideally, it is the first piece of software you need to purchase before starting the business. However, most business owners get this to pay taxes and apply for loans.

Hence, how will you choose the correct software for your business? It can be confusing as there are plenty of products in the market. We are trying to make your work easy by researching well and letting you need to know before purchasing the accounting software.

This is a short step-by-step process guide to helping you make correct decisions.

Online or offline

The first question to be answered is whether you need to have online software or offline software. Why does it matter? Most businesses in modern times are adopting cloud-based software due to its advantages over the traditional offline ones. However, some retail stores even require speed and are not always connected to the internet. For them, offline software can be a better choice.

Data security

You can skip this step if you have opted for offline accounting software. If you are thinking forward and opting for online accounting software, data security is a crucial aspect to check. A few of the essential things to be checked are:

Check the ways of storing the data in the application. If the software provider is hosting the application on his own server, ask him regarding the security measure to safeguard your data.
Check if they are using an HTTPS connection which can be known through the URL in the address bar. If it starts with HTTPS://, it is secure. Basically, it will be highlighted in green color and can be clicked to see the security certificates. HTTPS ensures that the data transferred from your computer to the server is encrypted and cannot be viewed by hackers.

Features

Ensure to make a list of essential features you need to have in your accounting software. Here are a few essential features are must be a part of good accounting software:

Creating invoice and customizations Tracking expenses according to categories
Managing inventory, inward-outward stock wastage, and movements.
Performing bank reconciliation through importing transactions
Creating purchase orders (PO) and recording inventory purchases.
Creating and managing tax invoices
Recording journal voucher entries
Managing the list of customers and vendors
Viewing the payables and receivables
Viewing balance sheet, profit and loss, and trial balances, For-profit and loss management, can you use this P&L template?
Adding additional team members.
Supporting multi-currency transactions
Managing the employees and process payrolls
Categorizing the transactions as per the projects
Access control to each team member

User interface and complexity

Most business owners don’t have an accounting background. Even if you have an accountant for running the application, you as an owner should be able to log in and browse things. Also, the software should be easy enough for your employees to learn. Investment should be avoided to be made in training.

If the software is full of features that you can imagine, it will get difficult for your team to understand. Hence opt for the software that has a simple user interface and not loaded with unnecessary features. A clean and clear interface allows easy focus on important tasks and also helps to reduce the learning curve.

Scalability

A lot of businesses tend to make a mistake with buying applications that suits their needs at the time of purchase. Later, as the business grows, such software fails to cope up with the growth and meet the requirements and hence the owners have to migrate to another software too soon. Migrating data from one system to a completely new system can be difficult.

Hence opt for the accounting software that can scale with your requirements. A few of the software only offers one version of the product and some have progressive versions depending on the size or type of business. Hence opt for the ones having entry-level versions as well as feature-rich versions that might be needed in the future.

Exit options

Imagine if the software-providing company shuts down its operations or you discover a lot of bugs at the later date after purchase. To save your business from such situations, you must make sure that the accounting software has an export data facility.

You must be able to export ledger or other transactions in the form of excel as other accounting software might import excel files. In fact, it is a good idea to always keep a backup of data at regular intervals.

Hidden costs

Some of the providers might charge for other support or upgrades. Sometimes, basic software is sold at a lower cost and later the customers are forced to purchase the add-ons or pay the maintenance fee. Hence check if your software has any hidden costs associated with it.

The best way to check such hidden costs is to check the pricing page of the accounting software provider. If they sell any additional services, they will be mentioned.

Post sale support

It is the most important but most ignored part while opting for accounting software. No matter how good or easy the software is, but you will need support at some point. And if you have no one to solve your problems when you are stuck, the entire investment will go in vain.

Lack of support is even a major reason behind some of the accounting software being cheap. As such, the support cost is not included in the offering and hence such software must be avoided.

You can even check the support by posting a message or call the support number to check their response. Based on the response time and quality of response you can understand their working.

Conclusion

These were a few of the checkpoints if you are new to accounting software and need to opt for the one for yourself.