We looked at multiple features, services and ease of use of various accounting programs to determine which ones are the best QuickBooks alternatives. At Forbes Advisor, we break down the cost, features available and the value of each software to ensure they’re best suited for small businesses. We also look at less tangible benefits, such as customer support quality and ease of use. Finally, we consider reviews from users of each platform to see how customers view the pros and cons of each accounting software.

For pricing, our primary concern for an alternative software option to QuickBooks was its starting price. Those that were less expensive or comparably priced to QuickBooks fared better than those with a higher entry-level cost. Many providers are offering discounts for the first few months when purchasing an annual plan, which we also found attractive. The range of prices between plan tiers was also a consideration as was whether a provider offered a free plan or free trial of its software. Pricing accounted for 5% of our weighted scoring.

Accounting software needs to be feature-laden for it to be useful for a small business, and that’s what we looked for when considering QuickBooks alternatives. For general features, which are those that we expected each software company to offer, we put an emphasis those that offered  double-entry bookkeeping, payroll, time tracking, a customer portal and a mobile app as part of its plan, deducting from those providers who only offered these features as an add-on or, worse yet, not at all.

Then, we looked for unique features that not every provider might offer but that we considered to be nice-to-have options for accounting software. These included multicurrency support, invoicing, bill payment, document management and offering training for the software use. Again, these were judged by whether they were included automatically in the plan, as a paid add-on or not at all. We weighted features at 55% of our total score.

We wanted to gauge the opinions of real users of these QuickBooks alternatives and turned to third-party websites to get a gauge of how these customers felt about their experiences with them. Using information gleaned from Capterra, G2 and Trustpilot, we looked for highly scored reviews (those received that were at least 3.5 out of 5) from real users to give us the fullest picture of these providers. These reviews accounted for 5% of the final score.

After looking at all of the data we gathered, our experts ranked additional criteria from customer reviews by looking at key factors that included ease of use, stand-out features, popularity and value for the money to come up with a final rating. These criteria made up 35% of the total score.