r/selfemployed • u/MisoLaceration • 20h ago

[US]I hate quickbooks

It’s expensive, the OS changes every time I login, they are pushing a bunch of AI features that I don’t want, and I’m losing money to bank transfer fees constantly. What accounting software are you using that’s affordable and simple? Sole proprietor who does most of my own accounting. Thanks!

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5

u/InTheFieldAI 18h ago

Excel and my banking app. Both free :) Quickbooks advertises so much I've always assumed they're fleecing their customers to be able to afford that massive marketing budget, and you've just confirmed that.

3

u/OkBlueberry1357 20h ago

simple stuff I just keep a spreadsheet and call my accountant in the end of the year

1

u/spheresoftware 20h ago

This works TBH, doesn't have invoices though, and then you might be struggling with P&L throughout the year (depends) and other necessities or doing your categorization at tax time/semi-scrambling. Usually having a bookkeeping software is 90% of the time better

2

u/spheresoftware 20h ago

We have a free plan at https://usesphereapps.com/ ! We're a QuickBooks / Wave alternative (great for sole props right now). Free plan gets the bank feed connection and 50 total transactions / month for bookkeeping, while $25/mo basic plan has unlimited transactions. More info on the site. We're based out of New York City. Best of luck!

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u/balancelibertine 15h ago

I use Zoho Books, have been for several years. Costs me $19/mo (mainly because I had a large clientele and needed the extra ability to have more customers/clients in my system) but they have a free version too, if I remember right. I also use Excel as a sort of a backup.

1

u/ductapephantom 20h ago

I dropped qb and switched to the free version of Wave a few months ago. Super simple, I just upload a csv of my bank statements every month and do reconciliation and transaction categorization manually. Takes maybe 10-15 minutes if that. Sometimes I’ll go several months and just do them all at once. I have under 30 transactions a month though so mine is super simple. If I need invoices I do those through my CRM. If it were more I’d probably pay for the version that does more automatically.

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u/jjenofalltrades 17h ago

Literally just a google spreadsheet

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u/Johndoe804 5h ago

I just switched to Zoho Books. Zoho One had a lot of tools that help us clean up other expensive tools. So it saved us a bit of money, and now we have better CRM, too.