Are you constantly overwhelmed by stacks of receipts, invoices, and financial statements? As a business owner, managing several tasks can be challenging, especially when handling finances. But, worry no more. There’s a solution that can streamline your financial workflow: affordable bookkeeping apps.

Regardless of your business’s size or industry, maintaining an organized financial workflow is crucial for ensuring accurate financial records. These online bookkeeping apps facilitate the timely payment of money-related obligations and offer an overview of your organization’s financial performance. This allows you to monitor business progress and identify potential issues before they become major concerns.

Here are five affordable bookkeeping apps to improve your workflow:

Wave Accounting comes with a free plan, making it an ideal choice for start-ups and solo-preneurs looking to manage their finances on a budget. It has a clean and organized dashboard that simplifies financial transaction management, including income and expense tracking, and invoicing.

Among its advantages are easy invoicing, basic reports, and VAT tracking. However, as with free plans, it also has limitations, including a lack of inventory support, limited accounting features, no audit trails, and restricted reporting capabilities. Access to live support is only available if you have a paid add-on feature.

Wave has a paid plan at $16 a month where you can get all the features of the starter plan and additional features such as the capability to auto-import bank transactions, auto-merge and categorize transactions, and add users to your account.

ZipBooks provides a user-friendly interface and basic accounting tools like invoicing, expense tracking, and financial reporting. The bookkeeping app offers a free starter plan, but you will have to choose whether you, your executive assistant, or virtual bookkeeper will use it – as it accommodates only one user. This plan allows unlimited invoicing, vendor and customer management, basic reporting, and payment integration with digital processors like PayPal. Additionally, it permits connection to one bank account.

ZipBooks also offers an affordable paid plan starting at $15 per month, designed for businesses requiring more than just unlimited invoicing. The Smarter plan gives you all the features of the Starter plan, with added functionality such as the ability to generate and send invoice reminders, automatically bill customers, and collect payments by integrating with Stripe and Lawpay.  It also includes a recurring invoice creation feature enabling you to create profiles for customers billed regularly.

ZipBooks Smarter plan accommodates up to five users. It also features a built-in time tracker for monitoring project durations.

This cloud-based platform caters to businesses of all sizes— small, medium, and large— since additional users incur no extra charge. You can also assign permission levels to individual users such as your administrative assistant or virtual bookkeeper. Subscription plans for this app start at $13 per month.

Xero provides convenient access from anywhere with an internet connection. It features a customizable dashboard and a user-friendly interface suitable for users of all skill levels. You can customize reports, adjust formats, or add formulas as needed. It also offers easy bill payment, contact management, file storage, and comprehensive invoicing capabilities. Additionally, it accepts payments and has real-time bank feeds for easy reconciliation.

However, one drawback of this app is its limited support. It doesn’t list a phone number to call for assistance, instead, users must raise a case through the Xero Central support site.

FreshBooks subscription plans start at $19 per month with 75% off for the first three months. This app is attractive to small business owners, startups, and solopreneurs because of its affordability. It boasts a user-friendly dashboard that includes features like time tracking, invoicing, expense management, and even proposal creation for your clients.

It’s particularly suitable for businesses such as digital marketing companies, which regularly send several invoices to clients. One of its best features is its ability to create a new invoice on a single screen, a capability lacking in some software options. It also allows you to generate recurring invoices and automate their delivery, eliminating the need to recreate them every month.

FreshBooks also allows you to grant permission to your virtual bookkeeper or accountant to access your dashboard, reports, invoices, and expenses.
One drawback of FreshBooks is, it doesn’t allow you to view reports from the app.

This cloud-based app is particularly suited for small businesses. It offers flexible pricing on its plans starting at $30 per month but you’ll pay only $9 for the first three months. It provides free upgrades to subscribers. Features include an intuitive user interface and customizable reports. It also allows you to send invoices, accept payments, monitor and manage cash flow, and track income and expenses.

However, QuickBooks Online cannot restore previous versions easily and may require additional fees for multiple users on certain plans. Another drawback of this app is its limited support. Users may also encounter challenges in collecting payments as clients are obliged to create their own accounts to pay an invoice.