The best accounting software compared

What is Accounting?

Accounting refers to the department in a company responsible for bookkeeping. Often, the far broader term 'financial accounting' is used to describe accounting. Employees in this area of the company are referred to as accountants.

9 Areas of Accounting

In large companies, accounting is often divided into different areas:

• Financial accounting

• Accounts receivable accounting

• Accounts payable accounting

• Asset accounting

• Payroll accounting

• Cost and performance accounting

• Inventory and quantity accounting

• Energy accounting

• Cameralistics (in public organisations)

What is the difference between Accounting and Bookkeeping?

Even though the terms 'accounting' and 'bookkeeping' are colloquially used as synonyms, they have different meanings as business terms. While accounting refers to the department in a company that carries the responsibility for bookkeeping, bookkeeping describes only the methodology or activity.

Accounting is responsible for, analyses and documents all operations that affect a company's assets. This includes fixed and variable costs such as revenues and sales revenues, material expenses, depreciations, rental expenses, loans, as well as wages and salaries.

On the other hand, bookkeeping describes the recording of all business transactions of a company using proofs. The sorting of proofs must be seamless and must be ordered in terms of time and facts. A clean bookkeeping can represent all figures of a business, which is why it serves as an important source of information for entrepreneurs as well as fulfilling the legal requirements of authorities. Nowadays, the double-entry bookkeeping system, which was developed in the Middle Ages and has hardly been changed since then, is mostly used.

Why is Accounting and Bookkeeping Important for Businesses?

Clean accounting (and bookkeeping) is central for self-employed entrepreneurs, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large companies. The receipts collected over the year must be submitted to the tax office at the end of the year with the tax return.

Basically, all merchants are obliged to document their business transactions systematically. While sole traders are encouraged to do simple bookkeeping, entrepreneurs with more than 600,000 euros in turnover in two consecutive years or more than 60,000 euros in profit per year must operate double-entry bookkeeping.

In addition to the obligation to keep books, accounting offers several advantages. Entrepreneurs or the accounting department always have all the figures in view, which is essential to ensure that the company has enough financial resources. In addition, accounting helps in creating documents for stakeholders such as employees, investors, customers and suppliers.

Accounting Software Comparison on OMR Reviews

Finding the right accounting software is not that easy. Because not only is there a large number of providers, but there are also large differences in terms of pricing and scope of functions.

Which accounting software suits your company depends strongly on your company size, your budget and the functions you need. While simple and cheaper software usually only covers financial accounting, some software is a jack of all trades and includes features such as Project Management, CRM or warehouse management.

Therefore, a detailed comparison of accounting software is essential for you. On OMR Reviews, you can weigh up which software is tailored to your needs using the experiences and reviews of users from the OMR community and decide accordingly.

What is Accounting Software?

Accounting software assists users with accounting processes. Accounting programs are usually used in companies, but freelancers and sole traders also use accounting software. Accounting software allows you to digitise accounting with all its sub-areas, which can bring many advantages such as cost and time savings.

Key Features of Accounting Software

• Document capture

• Accounting (Creating invoices and reminders)

• Create cost estimates, quotations and delivery notes

• Write credit notes

• Create business evaluations (BWA)

• Create profit and loss statements (P&L)

• Create annual financial statements

• Create balance sheets

• Create income surplus calculation (EÜR)

• Cash register book

• Online banking connection for automatic updates of bank transactions

• Automatic invoice recognition with an Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Elster interface for VAT registration

• Cloud import of invoices

• Postal interface for document dispatch

• Integrated CRM system for customer management

• Automatic reminder dispatch

• Order overview

• Inventory management

• View company figures in the dashboard

• Create reports and reportings

• Mobile app for mobile access from smartphone or tablet

Advantages of Accounting Software

The use of accounting software can bring several advantages compared to manual accounting, both in small and medium-sized as well as large companies. Not only does the software save time and effort, but it also helps to uncover errors and omissions. For example, accounting programs offer test routines with which details can be checked, missing information can be added and errors can be avoided. Regular updates of the software guarantee that they are always legally up-to-date. The most important advantages of accounting software at a glance are:

• More clearly arranged accounting due to digitisation of all processes

• Easier and faster access to digitised documents

• Time saving and minimisation of search costs through search function for finding documents in the archive

• Manual sorting of documents is eliminated

• Paper, printer, folder and storage space costs can be saved

• Transparent and easy collaboration with external stakeholders such as tax advisors, accountants or suppliers

• Reduction of sources of error

• Saving of personnel costs

• Digital dispatch of data & documents leads to cost savings (e.g. postage)

• Protection of data from water and fire damage or theft

• Secure data transfer in real time

What types of Accounting Software are there?

Accounting programs can support small business owners to corporations with accounting. However, the choice of software and how it is used varies greatly depending on the size of the company. As already described, accounting software can be true all-in-one tools and also feature areas such as Project Management or warehouse management. Specialised software, on the other hand, is often exclusively focused on financial accounting.

On-Premise Accounting Software

In addition, accounting software providers offer their software in different formats. Some accounting programs can be purchased once in a traditional manner and installed and used on-premise, i.e. on your own computer, via download.

Cloud-based Accounting Software

Other providers offer their accounting software online as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. This means that the software runs in the cloud. This has the advantage that anyone with access can access the accounting program from any device, provided a current Internet browser is installed and an Internet connection is available

Mobile Applications

Some providers have also developed apps for smartphones and tablets, so the accounting software can be accessed from anywhere.

Which Accounting Softwares are there?

Here are some well-known providers of accounting software:

• sevdesk

• lexoffice by lexware

• Sage ERP

• Datev

• taxdoo

• WISO MeinBüro

• Accounting Butler

• Paperwork

• Fastbill

• easybill

You can find more bookkeeping software in our Accounting Software category on OMR Reviews.

What does Accounting Software Cost?

Affordable cloud-based accounting software starts at a price of about 10 euros per month. Medium-priced software costs between 15-30 euros per month. For enterprise solutions, which are used in medium to large companies, monthly fees of several hundred or even several thousand euros are usually charged.

Free Accounting Software

There are also some free accounting software, like MonKey Office, Taxpool Accountant Mini or GnuCash, which include the basic functions for accounting. However, these can only pay off for small businesses at best, as they offer very limited functions compared to paid software.