Once you have everything all planned out, organizing the structure would be the next step. And among many other essential things in an organization is the management of the primary 5 M’s.

Money
Manpower
Materials
Machinery
Methods

As evident as it is, money is a crucial element in the overall aspect from the grounds up to business growth. Every move you make to boost the company requires either expense or expenditure and liabilities emerge.

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With the money out, revenues and profits should come in to ensure the company’s success. Thus, balancing and analyzing the money’s movement in and out of the company is tremendously essential. It determines the progress of an organization, whether the business is winning or losing.

That is why accounting exists and one of the most imperative and impactful departments, if not the most, in managing an organization.

Overview

Inarguably, accounting is an essential and impactful aspect of the business. It ensures the recording, analyzing, and monitoring of all the financial transactions of a business. Through this process, the company secures a smooth flow in managing the organization.

Hence, it is a grueling operation to handle and manage. For years, businesses are doing everything manually. Just imagine how back-breaking, mind-blowing, and entirely exhausting it must have been.

But thanks to technology, everything now is more manageable, smoother, and faster. The emergence of technological advancements ushered the birth of digital innovations and developments that brought all works and processes in greater heights.

Among which is the advent of programming applications, such as accounting software. With this breakthrough, everyone feels at ease and more productive as everything becomes more straightforward and more comfortable for them. Therefore, they are producing a lot of works and have flawless transactions in many business dealings.
And so, if you’re starting a small business in Canada, finding the best accounting software is a must and what you should probably be doing before even commencing officially. Besides, it is relevant to know the flow of your cash and everything in between when it comes to your investments.

Today, you’ll get to know the best accounting software in the market for small businesses in Canada through understanding what features you need for your system. From the prices to their popularity, you’ll have a good grasp of what will suit your business more.

What are the Accounting Rules and Standards in Canada?

Before learning and understanding the requirements for choosing the best accounting system in Canada, it’s of great importance to know the rules and standards the country observes and follows when it comes to accounting.

The bulleted list is the significant names and policies that come along with Canada’s accounting standards and rules.

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Accounting Regulation Bodies

The independent body responsible for establishing the standards of accounting and financial information in Canada is the AcSB or the “Accounting Standards Board of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants,” also referred to as the Canadian Accounting Standards Board.

Accounting Standards

There are three main options that small businesses can select when it comes to accounting standards with which their financial statements will get the basis or reference.

Non-GAAP reporting, which is for tax purposes
International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)
Accounting Standards for Private Enterprises (ASPE)

Of the three mentioned above, the second and the third accounting standards are the types of “Generally Accepted Accounting Principles” (GAAP) in Canada.

Accounting Reports

These involve financial accounts of for-profit organizations or businesses in Canada that usually include the four following things.

A Balance Sheet
A Cash Flow Statement
A Profit and Loss Account
A Statement of Retained Earnings

The balance sheet, on the other hand, includes the following components of 12 predetermined successive months.

Shareholder Balance
Liabilities
Assets

Accounting News

For all related news about Canada’s accounting, check out EIN News.

Certification and Auditing

It’s a must that companies, such as small businesses, should seek a statutory auditor to carry out a yearly or an annual audit of their organization’s financial health.

Professional Accountancy Bodies

Among the legitimate accounting organizations in Canada are the following listed below.

CGA – Certified General Accountants Association of Canada
CICA – Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada
CMA – Order of Certified Management Accountants
CPAB – Canadian Public Accountability Board

Public Requirements

CPA handbook’s recommendations apply to all the companies in Canada. However, for public organizations, insurance companies, and banks, specific regulations apply.

More so, it is essential for Canadian companies to present an annual report of their balance sheets and financial statements. Those businesses listed on the stock exchange, on the other hand, must ensure to submit their financial reports quarterly.

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Tax Year

Like all other countries, tax is pertinent to the government’s progress and stability. Normally, the tax year for Canada’s accounting policy starts on the first of January and ends on the thirty-first (31st) of December in the same year. Nonetheless, companies may also opt to establish their tax year of twelve consecutive months from the date that they started their operation, such as from the first of June to the thirty-first of May.

Rule of thumb that every company or business should remember, a taxation year should not exceed fifty-three (53) weeks or three hundred seventy-one (371) days. And once selected, you cannot change the tax year without the approval from the authorities.

What are the Top 10 Requirements for Choosing the Best Accounting System?

Automation in the accounting system is among the many most transformative tools that small businesses are adopting. With the creations of accounting software, the company’s now are free from long-drawn-out tasks.

Thus, giving accountants the luxury to concentrate all their efforts on assisting in cash flow’s improvements and developing key performance indicators. It’s like having valuable advice from a chief financial officer without the cost.

By saying so, here’s a checklist of accounting system requirements to identify what’s the best accounting software features you need for your small business.

General Ledger

Whatever accounting system you would like to implement in your business, General Ledger (GL) is absolutely among the essential lists. General Ledger is like a master record of all the company’s financial transactions and operations.

So, when you want to buy an accounting system, you should make sure that General Ledger is functional or working according to the context of the business that you’re operating.

Accounts Payable

Another basic yet essential feature of an accounting system is the Accounts Payable (AP), which should be among the top priority list in buying accounting software. It manages all the funds that a business owes to its vendors and other creditors. There are lots of AP modules that let a company manages all the vendors in one place.

Accounts Receivable

This requirement lets businesses manage all the revenues due. Accounts Receivable (AR) allows owners to manage their clients and prioritizes the most valuable customers.

With AR, the company can ensure accurate and efficient processing of payments by selecting the best solution through choosing the tools that the business needs the most.

Billing and Payroll

Among the most relevant requirements or features of an accounting system is the automatic billing. Unlike before, it will take hours to days for the staff to manage the processes involved in billing. Now, operations are in a breeze with less human intervention and errors.

Moreover, due to the risk associated with acquiring or outsourcing payroll systems, several companies have opted to get their own payroll software. Apart from that, businesses’ responsibilities include paying off social security and all due taxes.

Hence, it is significant to maintain the payroll system internally. In this way, you can take full visibility and control of all these things. Moreover, the payroll module also allows tracking of employees’ records, such as tracking down their sick leaves and paid time off as well as their regular and overtime pay.

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Project Accounting

The project accounting module allows users to view and manage finances associated with the particular projects that they’re working on, such as the cost and budget involved as well as the profitability and reporting.

With this system, you’ll be able to have a specific view of your finances. Hence, it would be easier to facilitate communication within certain projects, and therefore, lessen errors. Moreover, allowing you to calculate variances and deviances.

Fixed Assets

Another valuable feature that you should look at when buying accounting software is the fixed asset module. Through this tool, you are able to account for everything that’s part of your operation, regardless of slow return.

There are numerous essential tools included in the suite, such as leasing options, equipment maintenance, calculating depreciation, managing tax benefits, barcode, and ID tracking, and automatic integration of the information to the general ledger of the company.

Budgeting

Purchasing an accounting system is also an impactful force in planning your finances through solid budgeting tools. You can create budgets and make comparisons to the past versions.
In doing so, you’ll have a clearer view of the progress in terms of managing the costs. With this tool, forecasting features of this application utilize the company’s data to predict future costs that enables you to plan more effectively.

Multi-Entity Financial Management

This application is another essential tool in businesses that have various entities or branches in other areas as it supports multiple processes and currencies, apart from the taxes and regulations.

Tax Management

All businesses have to tackle taxes, and so, having an automatic tax management system is immensely imperative to cover everything about taxes, according to keeping track of the tax rates and updating them into the system automatically.

Reporting and Analytics

Another feature that you should look into in buying an accounting system is the reporting and analytics tool. It is imperative for the accounting team to have the ability to share information quickly and easily. Most of all, it’s also an effective way to ensure that unauthorized people will not see sensitive information about the business.

These are just some of the quick tips and essentials that you should look into when you’re looking into buying accounting system software.

Conclusively, you should make sure that all-embracing features your business needs are part of the accounting system that you’re going to purchase.

What’s the Best Accounting Software in Canada?

After knowing the top ten accounting system’s requirements for your small business, it’s time to find out the most popular and widely used accounting software in Canada today. Check out what’s best for your business.

Zoho

Zoho is the ideal choice of web-based accounting software by various small businesses today. The platform went through an intricately meticulous process during its creation to help manage the finances of businesses.

It’s an easy-to-use online accounting system solution. Hence, it became a popular choice by many small businesses. With this software, you can automate recurring tasks and transactions, such as auto-charging, billing, and payment operations.
Other than that, Zoho can also help in real-time inventory and project time tracking processes as well as automatizing other business workflows, especially anything related to accounting.

Some of the features that Zoho provides include the following listed below.

Product Features:

Accounts Payable
Accounts Receivable
Accrual Accounting
Bank Reconciliation
Billing and Invoicing
Billing Portal
Cash Management
Contact Database
Dunning Management
Expense Tracking
General Ledger
Government
Multi-Currency
Payment Processing
Project Accounting
Purchase Orders
Tax Calculator

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Product Details and Specifications:

System Requirements

SaaS
Android
iPad
iPhone

Training

Webinars
Documentation
In-Person
Live Online

Support

Online
Business Hours

Integrations:

Zoho comes with wide-ranging integrations in payment gateways, tax, and apps, such as POS, document and management, bills and expenses, and time tracking.

Payment Gateways

Authorize.net
Braintree
2Checkout
Forte
PayPal
PayPal PayFlow Pro
PayPal Payments Pro
Stripe
Worldpay

Tax

Avalara
tax1099.com
track1099

Bills and Expenses Apps

Entryless

Document and Management Apps

box
Dropbox
Evernote
Google Drive
OneDrive

POS Apps

Square

Time Tracking Apps

Temponia

Zoho Apps

Zoho CRM
Zoho Expense
Zoho Projects
Zoho Subscriptions

Freshbooks

Another award-winning accounting software is Freshbooks. It provides painless billing and invoicing processes. It is among the most preferred best cloud accounting system solutions for small businesses.

Like Zoho, it has also received a high rating for customer satisfaction. Freshbooks accounting software provides an easy, fast, and secure way of processing large amounts of numbers and information of great complexity.

It comes with powerful accounting system features, which include time tracking, reporting, project management, payment processing, invoicing, and expense tracking.

Product Features:

Accounts Payable
Accounts Receivable
Activity Tracking
ACH Payment Processing
Automatic Time Capture
Billing and Invoicing
Billing Portal
Billable Hours Tracking
Billable and Non-Billable Hours
Biometric Recognition
Contact Database
Customizable Invoices
Customer Portal
Deferred Billing
Dunning Management
Expense Tracking
Hourly Billing
Invoice History
Invoice Management
Invoice Processing
Messaging
Mobile Access
Mobile Payments
Multi-Currency
Multi-Period Recurring Billing
Multiple Billing Rates
Mobile Time Tracking
Online Payment Processing
Online Invoicing
Online Punch Card
Online Time Tracking
Punch Card
Payroll Management
Project Tracking
Payment Processing
Project Billing
Partial Payments
Quotes/Estimates
Recurring Billing
Recurring/Subscription Billing
Receipt Management
Reporting/Analytics
Tax Calculator
Time Tracking
Time Tracking by Client
Time Tracking by Project
Time Per Project Reporting

Product Details and Specifications:

System Requirements

SaaS
Android
iPad
iPhone

Training

Webinars
Documentation
Live Online

Support

Online
Business Hours

Integrations:

Freshbooks also integrates with some applications and business systems.

Acuity Scheduling
Automatic
Authorize.net
Avalara Trust File
Basecamp
Birdsketch
Blacktimer
Braintree
Capsule
Chrometa
ChronoMate
Citrix Podio
EazyBI
FUNDBOX
Google Apps for Work
Gusto
Hours
HubSpot
hurdlr
LiveChat
MailChimp
MileIQ
OneSaaS
PayPal
PAYMENTEVOLUTION
Proposify
Partial.ly
RightSignature
ReceiptBank
Revamp CRM
Shopify
Stripe
Solve
toggl
Wufoo
Xpenditure
You don’t need a CRM!
Yalla
Zendesk
Zapier
123 Form Builder

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Product Details and Specifications:

System Requirements

SaaS
Android
iPad
iPhone

Training

Webinars
Documentation
Live Online

Support

Online
Business Hours

QuickBooks (QuickBooks Online)

Among the top list of accounting software solutions is the QuickBooks. It’s ideal for startups and small businesses, as it offers solid tools for operations involved in accounting like tax calculation, sales monitoring, invoice management, and expense tracking.

With this accounting system, you’re cutting down the cost and time that you need to spend in mind-numbing and tiring tasks. Thus, your staff can focus more on the other higher demands of your business.

It prides itself on combining all essential accounting tools in one platform. Whatever is your accounting need, QuickBooks software has something for you. Most of all, it offers generation of reports, according to your preferred data visualizations and real-time monitoring of your company’s finances.

Product Features:

Actionable insights
Automatic tax calculations
Automated online banking
Balance sheet reporting

Banking data synchronization
Bill management
Check printing
Custom invoices
Dashboards and feeds
Estimate creation
Export data to excel
Invoice management
Mobile receipt capture
Multi-device document sharing
Pay online link in invoices
Payment Tracking
Profit and loss reporting
Sales and expense management
Smartphone compatibility
Support for Mac23

Integrations:

Among the many functional things about QuickBooks accounting software is that it can integrate with other applications seamlessly.

Time Tracking by Sheets
Method CRM
Bill.com
Mavelink
Shoeboxed
Jobber

Product Details and Specifications:

System Requirements

SaaS
Android
iPad
iPhone

Training

Webinars
Documentation
Live Online

Support

Online
Business Hours

Wave

Impressively powerful accounting software that’s free for you to get. It’s an easy-to-use system that allows synching of expenses, getting ready for tax time, connecting to bank accounts, and balancing the books.

There are no overblown or complicated steps to use this software in your small business accounting. Everything is already set-up for you, so it’s easy to get started right away.

Lastly, you can access it anywhere you are at any time of the day. So, say goodbye to all the manual processing and receipt entry. Everything is in an organized arrangement, so it’s easy to handle tasks like tax payments.

Product Features:

Accounts Payable
Accounts Receivable
Bank Reconciliation
Billing and Invoicing
Billing Portal
Cash Management
CPA Firms
Contact Database
Customizable Invoices
Expense Tracking
Fixed Asset Management
General Ledger
Government
Mobile Access
Multi-Currency
Online Invoicing
Online Payments
Payroll
Payroll Management
Project Accounting
Project Billing
Purchase Orders
Reporting/Analytics
Tax Management

Integrations:

This free accounting software offers integrations with several applications.

Etsy
Google Sheets
HubSpot
MailChimp
PayPal
Shoeboxed
Zapier

Product Details and Specifications:

System Requirements

SaaS

Training

Webinars
Documentation
In-Person
Live Online

Support

Online
Business Hours

Wave accounting software is free. Some of its features, such as invoicing and receipt scanning, are also free. If you would like the payroll feature added, you will need to pay for that, and there’s also a minimum fee for bank payment transactions.

NetSuite ERP

A unified management suite that’s also a crowd-favorite by small businesses is this NetSuite ERP. One of its distinct features is its adaptability or flexibility over several applications and processes.

It offers real-time reporting and analytics and customizability of customer-facing tools and commerce systems. What makes this scalable cloud ERP system solution is its perfect meshing of operations involving business intelligence and financial management.

Product Features:

Accounts Payable
Accounts Receivable
Approval Process Control
ACH Payment Processing
Ad Hoc Reports
Accounting Integration
Accounting Management
Audit Trail
Asset Budgeting
Asset Lifecycle Management
Automatic Re-ordering
Activity Tracking Asset Management
Alerts/Notifications
Accounting Integration
Accounting
Agile Methodologies
Automatic Time Capture
Barcoding/RFID
Billing and Invoicing
Billable and Non-Billable Hours
Budget Management
Back Order Management
Bug Tracking
Benefits Management
Balance Sheet
Budgeting and Forecasting
Billing Portal
Bank Reconciliation
Cash Management
Check Writing
Check Processing
Collections Management
Campaign Management
Catalog Management
Contingency Billing
Customer Portal
Customizable Invoices
CRM
Campaign Management
Consolidation/Roll-up
Costing
Customer Management
Commission Management
Compliance Management
Contract Management
Compensation Management
Catalog Management
Client Portal
Collaboration Tools
Cost-to-Completion Tracking
Capacity Management
Customer Database
Call Management
Campaign Management
Container Shipping
Category Customization
Duplicate Payment Alert
Document Management
General Ledger
Fixed Asset Management
Multi-Currency
Project Accounting
Purchase Orders
Tax Management
Expense Tracking
Fraud Detection
Online Payment Processing
Overpayment Processing
Recurring Billing
Receivables Ledger
Payment Processing
Project Billing
Online Invoicing
Online Payments
Mobile Payments
Recurring/Subscription Billing
Hourly Billing
Key Performance Indicators
Financial Management

Integrations:

Epay
ClickSoftware
NetSuite Ecommerce
Integrate with existing web investments and CRM
NetSuite Professional Services Automation (PSA)

System Requirements

SaaS

Training

Webinars
Documentation
In-Person
Live Online

Support

Online
24/7 Live Support

The listed items above are just some of the product features of NetSuite ERP. Below is a table comparing all five accounting software. Ratings shown are from the accumulation of the various reviews provided by buyers, users, and experts of these mentioned accounting software systems on the developer’s website and other review sites.

From a thousand of reviews provided by various experts, buyers, and users in three major websites, we’ve added the average for each accounting system and divided them from the number of source sites, where we took out the values.

Accounting System
Price
( Starting Price)

Rating (5/5)

Overall Rating
Software
CAD
Ease
Features
Design
Support
Value for Money
(5/5)
Zoho
$9/month
5
5
5
5
5
5
FreshBooks
$15/month
5
5
5
5
4.5
4.9
QuickBooks
$5/month
4.5
4.25
4.2
5
4.5
4.5
Wave
Free
4.5
4
5
4
4.5
4.4
Wave (Payroll)
$20/month

Wave (Bank Payment)
minimum $1 fee

NetSuite ERP
Quote-Based Plan
4
4
2.7
5
4
3.94

What is Desktop Accounting Software?

Generally, there are two primary platforms for your automated accounting system, and these are the cloud-based and desktop. So, what’s the difference between the two?

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Cloud-Based Accounting Software

These are the accounting software applications that are accessible wherever you may be using the internet and with any device, such as Zoho, Wave, NetSuite ERP, and FreshBooks.

QuickBooks Online is a cloud-based programming application, but QuickBooks is a desktop accounting software.

Desktop Accounting Software

From its namesake, desktop accounting software is the accounting program that you install, store, and run in your personal computer or laptop, which means you can’t access it elsewhere except your computer.

Conclusion

Overall, the best accounting software for small business in Canada is the Zoho accounting software. Hence, it has received a popularity score and overall rating of five over five (5/5) due to its seamless and flawless user-friendly design and functionalities that are impressively impactful in the whole accounting processes.

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