Running an e-commerce business entails a lot: you have to stand out from the rest of online businesses with a constantly updated product range, friendly marketing and many more. Therefore you want to spend as much time managing your business as possible; too bad accounting is actually taking your precious time. However, there is a solution for your problem, with which you can concentrate on your business and get the accounting done within minutes. The solution is called online accounting software.
With these cloud-based software you can see your incomes and expenses at a glance, create invoices in seconds, easily manage your expenses, keep your inventory in sync with your e-commerce software, get auto-generated reports for tax purposes, connect with thousands of different banks and payment processors, and get unlimited access from anytime, anywhere. Furthermore, you can integrate with many third-party software and services to further automate your bookkeeping and administration. And this is just the beginning…
Online accounting solutions have countless features, so without further ado, here’s a run-through of the features an e-commerce business should look for in accounting software:
An online accounting solution always has some sort of a dashboard where all the necessary data is displayed. So you can see your cashflow at a glance: your incomes and expenses, profit & loss, the state of your inventory, who owes you and who do you owe, and your banking.
Creating multi currency and/or recurring invoices is very easy with accounting software: just pick you customer, add the item you are selling and send the invoice via email or even snail mail. Furthermore, if you use a payment processing service like PayPal, your clients can instantly pay you with credit/debit card or an e-wallet.
With inventory management tools baked into the online accounting software or through a third-party integration, you can keep track of the items you are selling and you can add new ones or remove those you ran out of. Some software are even capable of displaying the profitability of each of your item, therefore you can decide which one you should sell more of.
Tracking expenses is an easy job: just grab your mobile device, snap a photo of a receipt and let the software take care of the rest for you. Once uploaded, you can attach expenses to invoices to get reimbursed by your client.
Connect to any kind of bank account, and the online accounting software will not only display data from your account in real time, but will organize said data too. So you will always know when you were paid and when your money is sent to your suppliers.
With this usually extra feature your employees can enter their own work time to the software, you can write their checks or direct deposit them and you can prepare and print your 1099s.
Integration with third-party services, especially those that engage in e-commerce activities, is very crucial. Thankfully almost all of the online accounting software offering and supporting an API are capable of integrating with hundreds of different applications and services; from the aforementioned e-commerce platforms to POS software, inventory and expense reporting tools, invoicing solutions and even time tracking add-ons. Just give permission to your accounting software to get the data from the other software and you don’t have to use separate solutions anymore.
Many of the best known e-commerce solutions, such as eBay, Etsy, Amazon and Shopify can be integrated into your accounting software, so you can manage their respective inventory, customer list and many more from one account. Similar solutions include BigCommerce, Zen Cart, and Squarespace. You can also integrate online payment options like PayPal to your software thus allowing your customers to pay instantly using an e-wallet and even adding your PayPal account as a bank account that could be displayed on the dashboard. You can also integrate other types of software: POS services such as Square or Vend, inventories such as TradeGecko and Stitch Labs, and even Google Apps like Docs and Gmail.
The online accounting market is flooded with solutions, each with similar and different features. Which one will be the winner is up to you, but before you make your decision, let us recommend you two solutions that focus on catering to e-commerce businesses: Xero and QuickBooks Online.
Xero is a progressive and innovative online accounting solution that enables you to manage your accounts more effectively and make your accounting hassle-free. Some of its features include invoicing and quotes, bank reconciliation, inventory, mobile capability, third-party apps, purchase orders and payroll. The mobile version of the software, Xero Touch, makes it possible to access all your accounting data instantly from wherever you may be. Xero integrates and works well with many other third-party applications (such as advanced solutions for CRM, point-of-sale, e-commerce and more). You have a choice of three pricing plans – Starter, Standard and Premium – all of which have slightly different features and a reduced price for the first six months. Xero also provides a 30-day free trial. Customers enjoy efficient and reliable support from Xero online teams. Xero’s US headquarters is in San Francisco, but this publicly listed company’s products are used in over 180 countries. The company has garnered impressive experience in the area of cloud computing and accounting and has continued to innovate and create new products for the market.
It is quite unbelievable that U.S.-based online accounting company Intuit Inc. has already been on the market since 1983. But the success of its main product, QuickBooks shows that they aren’t just simply lucky. The software exists as downloadable software for desktops, and a cloud-based accounting solution dubbed QuickBooks Online, which the company quite aggressively promotes. This latter version, of which we will be talking about, is ideal for everybody from simple sole-proprietors to bigger companies. Regardless of the chosen subscription, you can create invoices, expenses, and estimates with a few clicks, quickly manage sales receipts, create and print checks, payrolls, have multiple tax rates, real-time banking and reports. You can integrate the software with over 300 third-party solutions, and be entitled to full customer support. You also have the option to try out the software completely free of charge for 30 days. Skipping this trial period you get a discount from the monthly subscription fee for six months or a whole year. But if you don’t like the software, you still have a 60-day money back guarantee.
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