Opening a retail store is a big accomplishment. Whether you have a traditional brick-and-mortar operation, or you’re going all-in with an online store (or even a combo of the two), retail lends itself especially well to scaling and delegation. This allows you, the business owner, to enjoy the profits from your business without having to be entrenched in the day-to-day operations of the store.
To enjoy any possible profits of your retail store, however, you have to remain organized and properly manage your finances—making the right retail accounting software essential for Bookkeeping for Retail store.
Top Accounting Software for Small Retail Businesse
1. QuickBooks Desktop
As you search for the right retail shop accounting software, there’s no doubt you’ll come across the QuickBooks suite of products. QuickBooks is one of the most popular accounting solutions for small businesses out there—and for good reason.
In particular, the more traditional QuickBooks Desktop is a great option for brick-and-mortar retailers.
With QuickBooks Desktop, you can:
- Track income and expenses
- Create and send invoices
- Run over 100 reports
- Track sales tax
- Manage bills and accounts payable
- Track inventory with up to 14,500 items
- Pay 1099 contractors
2. QuickBooks Online
When it comes to cloud-based retail accounting software, QuickBooks Online is going to be one of the best solutions out there. Similar to QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Online is known for its reliability, range of features, and powerful accounting tools.
Unlike QuickBooks Desktop, however, QuickBooks Online is web-based—meaning you can use your account anywhere you have internet access. In this way, QuickBooks Online is a much more flexible solution, making it a great choice for multi-store retail businesses, as well as online retailers. QuickBooks Bookkeeping Services helps you in manage your accounting services with Quickbooks.
3. Xero
With unlimited users, inventory management included in all plans, and over 700 third-party integration options, Xero accounting is one of the best accounting software solutions for online retail businesses. A top alternative to QuickBooks Online, Xero offers many of the same features, with a few slight differences.
First and foremost, as we mentioned, Xero includes unlimited users with all three of their plan options, as well as inventory management tools, among a full range of standard bookkeeping and accounting features.
Additionally, Xero’s three plans fall at a generally lower price point in comparison to QuickBooks Online, with the Early plan starting at $9 per month—although this plan limits the number of invoices, quotes, bills, and transactions you can make on a monthly basis.
The Bottom Line
At the end of the day, these are just a few of the retail shop accounting software options that are available out there. Ultimately, therefore, it will be up to you to decide if one of these solutions or an alternative platform is right for your business.
This being said, as you compare different options, you’ll want to be sure to pay attention to their general accounting tools, as well as the features that are more specific to retail businesses—like inventory, sales tax, and payroll.
Additionally, you’ll want to consider the flexibility, accessibility, and of course, affordability of any retail accounting software—especially if you have multiple locations or run an online-based business. To this end, you’ll also want to ensure that any platform you choose can integrate or work with any existing business tools you utilize, particularly your point of sale system or ecommerce software.
Contact us here for Accounting Software for Small Retail Businesses.
