There’s no single best invoicing or accounting tool for one to five people, so here’s our pick for each situation. On your own, invoicing: Wave’s Starter plan, free with no invoice cap. On your own, wanting your bank transactions imported: the lowest paid bill for one user, Wave (Pro) at $19 a month. Two to five people in the books: the lowest paid bill for three users, Wave (Pro) at $19 a month (Square Invoices not priced at this size), with every login on one price. Your accountant wants a login and revenue is under Zoho’s cap: Zoho Books’ free plan. You track time against projects and bill it: Zoho Books Professional, at $50 a month. Cards in person, one location: Square Free. Working in Spanish: Zoho Books or FreshBooks for the app itself; QuickBooks for invoice templates it translates into Spanish.
Every figure on this page is for one business and one location. Wave’s Pro fee is per business, so a second business is a second subscription; Square prices its paid plans per location, so a second location pays twice.
On your own, invoicing: start free
Our pick is Wave’s Starter plan, chosen for one thing: it keeps real books with no cap on invoices, estimates, bills, or records. A one-person business can invoice every week for nothing for as long as it suits. Start Wave’s free plan.
What it gives up: bank transactions are typed in by hand, and the app is in English only. No invoice or record cap ends it; it stops being practical when typing in the bank takes too long, or when a partner or bookkeeper needs their own access, which takes Pro. On Starter, only a payroll manager or a Block Advisor tax pro can join.
The other free options end in their own places. Zoho Invoice is invoicing only, a separate product from Zoho Books, with a yearly invoice limit Zoho shows only inside your account. Square Free suits you if you take cards in person (see below). QuickBooks Free is the narrow case: it connects one bank account, but stops at 2 invoices a month, unless you qualify for and turn on QuickBooks Payments, which lifts the invoice limit. When free invoicing is enough compares all of them.
On your own, wanting your bank imported: the lowest paid bill
Our pick is the lowest paid bill for one user, Wave (Pro) at $19 a month, chosen because the bank import is the usual reason to pay and Wave Pro adds it inside the account you started on Starter. It also adds receipt capture and takes Wave’s branding off your invoices. See Wave Pro.
What it gives up: Wave has one paid plan and no inventory, project costing, or purchase orders, so if you’ll need those, you’ll move later. The alternative that keeps that path open is Zoho Books Standard, at $20 a month, which connects bank feeds, and its Professional plan adds inventory and projects in the same account. Standard stops at 5,000 invoices a year.
If you’d rather not pay at all: QuickBooks Free connects 1 bank account and syncs its transactions at no cost. If your business banks through one account, it may be all you need, as long as you can live with its other limits: 2 invoices a month unless you qualify for and turn on QuickBooks Payments, one user, and no accountant access. Intuit is also testing a beta edition of QuickBooks Free with different limits; this guide describes the standard plan (QuickBooks Online pricing has the details).
Two to five people in the books
Here’s what each tool costs for two to five people, with extra people priced in where a vendor sells them as an add-on:
| Tool | Total for 2 users | Total for 3 users | Total for 4 users | Total for 5 users |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| QuickBooks Online | $85 a month Essentials | $85 a month Essentials | $140 a month Plus | $140 a month Plus |
| Xero | $27 a month Early | $27 a month Early | $27 a month Early | $27 a month Early |
| FreshBooks | $34 a month Lite + 1 team member | $45 a month Lite + 2 team members | $56 a month Lite + 3 team members | $67 a month Lite + 4 team members |
| Wave | $19 a month Pro | $19 a month Pro | $19 a month Pro | $19 a month Pro |
| Zoho Books | $20 a month Zoho Books Standard | $20 a month Zoho Books Standard | $23 a month Zoho Books Standard + 1 user | $26 a month Zoho Books Standard + 2 users |
| Square Invoices | Not priced: no user count stated | Not priced: no user count stated | Not priced: no user count stated | Not priced: no user count stated |
FreshBooks: each person beyond a plan’s included users is a team member at $11 a month, included in the figure.
Zoho Books: each person beyond a plan’s included users is a user at $3 a month, or $2.50 billed yearly, included in the figure.
Square Invoices doesn’t state how many people its plans cover, so this table prices it for one person only.
Our pick is Wave Pro, chosen because it doesn’t charge by the login: for five users the lowest paid bill is Wave (Pro) at $19 a month (Square Invoices not priced at this size), the same as for two or three. Each person gets their own login as an admin, editor, or viewer. See Wave Pro.
What it gives up: time tracking, inventory, and projects, which Wave doesn’t sell; hours can still go on an invoice, typed in as a quantity. The caps to check on the others before you read their rows as your bill: Xero’s Early plan stops at 20 invoices a month and 5 bills, FreshBooks’ Lite at 5 clients, archived ones included, and Zoho Books Standard at 3 users before extra users at $3 per user a month, or $2.50 billed annually. On QuickBooks, people move you up a plan: Essentials covers three, Plus five.
Your accountant wants a login, and revenue is under Zoho’s cap
Our pick is Zoho Books’ free plan, chosen because it gives your own accountant a login on a free plan: 1 accountant, alongside you. Wave’s Starter plan admits only a payroll manager or a Block Advisor tax pro, and QuickBooks Free has no accountant access. It keeps real books for nothing for a business with revenue under $50K for the financial year. Start Zoho Books’ free plan.
What it gives up: it’s for one user besides the accountant, it has no automatic bank feeds, and it stops at 1,000 invoices a year. The revenue cap is the one you can see coming: the year your sales pass it, the plan ends, and Standard, at $20 a month, is the step, in the same account.
You track time against projects and bill it
Charging an hourly rate doesn’t call for special software. On every plan of Wave, including the free one, you add an item, enter the hours as its quantity and your rate as its price, and you can rename the columns to read hours and rate. What costs more is the software doing the time work for you:
- Recording time as you work, in timesheets: QuickBooks from Essentials, Zoho Books from Professional, Xero on Established.
- Turning recorded time into invoice lines: QuickBooks Essentials adds billable time to a customer’s invoice; Zoho Books Professional and Xero Established invoice the time logged against a project.
- Seeing what each project earns against the time it took: project profitability on QuickBooks Plus, Zoho Books Professional, and Xero Established.
Our pick, if you need the second and third, is Zoho Books Professional, at $50 a month for 5 users, chosen for one thing: each person logs time against a project’s tasks, and the billable hours become the invoice, with project profitability in the same plan. See Zoho Books’ plans.
What it gives up: if your accountant works in QuickBooks, that can matter more than the software price. QuickBooks Essentials, at $85 a month, records employee time and adds it to invoices for 3 users, though project profitability waits for Plus; Xero does both on Established, at $97 a month. Zoho Books’ Standard plan doesn’t include timesheets, so don’t price it for this job. If you only need hours on the invoice, none of these is necessary.
Cards in person, one location
Our pick is Square Free, chosen because invoices sit in the same account as the card reader you already use, with no monthly fee and no invoice cap on its pricing page. Start Square Free.
What it gives up: Square is invoicing and payments, not bookkeeping, so you’ll still want accounting software beside it. Its paid plans are priced per location. And Square’s pages don’t say how many people can use a plan, so this guide prices it for one person only; ask Square before you plan around a team.
Working in Spanish
Two things are easy to mix up: the language of the app you work in, and the language of the invoices your clients see.
- You want to work in Spanish yourself: our pick is Zoho Books, chosen because its interface can be set to Spanish and its free plan lets you start without paying while revenue is under its cap. Each customer’s invoices, quotes, and reminders can go out in Spanish too. Start Zoho Books’ free plan. FreshBooks also switches its interface to Latin American Spanish and sets Spanish per client, but it has no free plan and is priced by clients.
- Only your clients need Spanish: QuickBooks translates an invoice’s template text into Spanish on every plan, Free included. Your own text, like item names and the email, stays as you wrote it, and QuickBooks’ pages don’t say whether the app itself comes in Spanish.
What these give up: none of the three says whether its support is offered in Spanish. Wave’s app is in English only and translates nothing, but you can type Spanish into any editable field on an invoice and rename its columns; wording you can’t edit stays in English.
A worked example
Say you run a four-person architecture studio. All four of you log in, you send about thirty invoices a month to around forty clients, and some projects are billed for the hours spent. Each architect records time against a project’s tasks through the week, those hours become the client’s invoice, and you want to see which projects earn their keep against the time they take.
The table’s four-person column gives the bill for four logins on each tool. Wave Pro covers all four at $19 a month, but it has no timesheets or projects: you’d add up each architect’s hours yourself and type them onto the invoice. Zoho Books Standard with one extra user is in the table too, without timesheets either. QuickBooks needs Plus for four people, at $140 a month, and FreshBooks’ Lite is too small for forty clients.
Because the studio records time against projects, invoices those hours, and wants project profitability, its pick is Zoho Books Professional, at $50 a month, which covers all four logins, the timesheets, and the project reports.
The closest competitor is Xero Established, at $97 a month. It also tracks time and costs against projects, invoices them, and reports project profitability, with no per-user fee. It costs more each month, so it’s the pick when the studio’s accountant already works in Xero; that can outweigh the difference.
FreshBooks Plus would take all four people and the forty clients: Plus covers 50 clients at $43 a month, and the other three people are team members (add-on, $11 a month per user). Fitting the people and clients doesn’t make it a full fit, though: FreshBooks lists time tracking and project billing on every plan, but its comparison table puts project profitability on Premium, not Plus.
Wave Pro would be the alternative only if the studio didn’t need time tracked against projects or project profitability: billing fixed fees, or typing its hours onto invoices itself, it would do the job for less.
What we didn’t pick, and why
- Xero doesn’t charge per user either, which suits a team, and Established tracks project time. We didn’t pick it because it has no free plan, Early’s monthly invoice and bill caps push a busy team to Growing, and its pages don’t say whether it works in Spanish.
- FreshBooks suits a service business with a small, steady client list, and it works in Spanish. We didn’t pick it for a team because it’s priced by clients and then by each extra person, and its discount can end at any time.
- QuickBooks Online grows from one user to twenty-five within one tool, with recorded time on invoices, inventory, and projects along the way. We didn’t pick it for a small team because each step in people is a plan change. If your accountant works in it, that can outweigh the difference.
Our view
Pick by the situation you’re in now, not by brand. One person who invoices should start free and pay when typing in the bank takes more than an evening a month. A team should look first at tools that don’t charge by the login, then check the caps that matter to them: clients, invoices, bills, or revenue. Pay for a bigger plan for a feature you’ll use this year, like time tracked against projects or inventory. What this approach gives up is a single answer, and a single answer would be wrong for most of you.
Your next step
Write down four numbers this week: the people who need a login, your busiest month’s invoices, the clients you billed last year (archived ones included), and whether you need time recorded against projects or only hours on an invoice. Find your situation above and start its free plan or trial. Use it for one month-end before you pay for more. If you’re comparing two tools head to head, Wave or QuickBooks for a very small business sets them side by side, and what accounting software costs in the first year prices the year.