Two different problems get solved here and most people only have one of them. Keeping books means every transaction is categorised and the year-end is a report rather than a weekend. Capturing receipts means the evidence exists at all. A full accounting package does both and asks you to learn it; a receipt app does the second and hands the rest to someone else. Filter the thirteen below by which one you are short on.
13 tools compared, no affiliate links
QuickBooks (opens in a new tab)
Free trialThe accounting software most accountants already know, with a tier aimed at one person.
Best for: Handing a file your accountant will not complain about
A cloud ledger built for small businesses and the accountants who work on them.
Best for: Growing past a one-person ledger
FreshBooks (opens in a new tab)
Free trialStarted as invoicing and grew into accounting, so the invoice side is the polished part.
Best for: Billing clients and keeping books in the same tool
Free accounting and invoicing, paid for by the payment processing you may not use.
Best for: Books that cost nothing until you take card payments
Zoho Books (opens in a new tab)
Free planFull accounting with a free tier for small turnover, inside the wider Zoho suite.
Best for: Low revenue and a long feature list
FreeAgent (opens in a new tab)
Free trialUK accounting built around self-assessment, free with some business bank accounts.
Best for: UK sole traders and limited companies
Sage Accounting (opens in a new tab)
Free trialA long-established accounting name with a cloud tier for very small businesses.
Best for: Working with an accountant who insists on Sage
Not software: a bookkeeper does your books each month and you read the result.
Best for: Not doing bookkeeping at all
Expensify (opens in a new tab)
Free planPhotograph a receipt and it reads it, files it and builds the report.
Best for: Rebilling expenses to clients
Receipt and invoice capture built to feed an accountant's ledger cleanly.
Best for: An accountant who wants the paperwork pre-sorted
Shoeboxed (opens in a new tab)
Free trialYou post an envelope of paper receipts and they come back as data.
Best for: A physical pile you are never going to scan
Tracks income, expenses and mileage in the background and estimates the tax as it goes.
Best for: Knowing what you owe before the bill arrives
Reads your bank transactions and finds the deductions you did not label.
Best for: Deductions you would otherwise miss
No tool in this list matches that filter yet.
Outbound links are not affiliate links and no tool paid to be listed. Plans change often, so check the current pricing page before you commit.
Eight of these keep full books, and the honest tiebreaker is not the feature list. It is what your accountant opens without complaining, which in most countries means QuickBooks or Xero. FreshBooks is the better daily tool if you bill clients constantly, because it grew out of invoicing. Wave and Zoho Books are the ones that cost nothing, which is a real argument at the start and a smaller one once someone else has to read your ledger.
Software sold to "small businesses" assumes payroll, several users and a bookkeeper. Self-employed work has none of those and one thing they do not: your own tax return. FreeAgent files UK self-assessment directly and is free with some bank accounts. Hurdlr runs a live US tax estimate so the bill is not a surprise. Keeper reads transactions for deductions you never labelled. All three are built for one person, and all three are built for one country.
QuickBooks wins on a single point that has nothing to do with software: almost every accountant can already open it, so handover costs you nothing. Against that, the solo tier does noticeably less than the business tiers, and the tax features are strong in the US and UK and thin elsewhere. If your accountant has no preference, Xero handles multiple currencies better and Wave does the same basic job for nothing. If they do have a preference, take it.
Five of these only handle the evidence. Expensify is the one to pick if you rebill expenses to clients, because a report is its output. Dext exists because accountants ask for it, and is pointless without a ledger behind it. Shoeboxed solves the specific problem of paper you have already accumulated: you post the envelope and they type it. None of them keeps books, so pairing is the normal setup, not a compromise.
Every tool here reads what already exists. It categorises the invoice, files the receipt and totals the year, and it cannot make an invoice exist that you were never able to send. If a client wants an invoice from a registered business and you do not have one, no amount of bookkeeping fixes that, and the missing income is the part your year-end will not balance. That is the gap Ruul fills by letting you invoice without a company while the books stay wherever you keep them, with the documents and transaction history exportable when the year ends.
Before you commit
If someone else will touch these books, their preference beats every feature comparison on this page. An accountant working in a package they know is faster and cheaper than one fighting an unfamiliar export, and you are paying for that time either way.
Tax features are built for one jurisdiction. Self-assessment filing, deduction rules, VAT handling and tax estimates are all country-specific, and a tool that is excellent in the US can be an expensive ledger everywhere else. This is the single most common mismatch here.
If an accountant does the books, you need clean receipts and nothing more, and a capture app costs a fraction of a full package. If nobody else is doing them, a receipt app leaves you with a pile of data and no ledger. Pick for the arrangement you actually have.
Moving years of categorised history between packages is genuinely painful and rarely clean. It is worth a slightly wrong choice on price to get the right choice on who can read it, because the cost of changing arrives exactly when you are busiest.
Whatever you pick only works if the evidence goes in while it is fresh. Reconstructing a year in March means chasing invoices, bank statements and receipts across several tools, and the deductions you cannot prove are simply lost. Keeping the invoices and their records in one place makes the year-end a download rather than a reconstruction.
Ruul lets you invoice clients without a registered company, in 190 countries, with payouts in 140+ currencies. You send the invoice, Ruul acts as the legal counterparty and collects the payment, and you get paid within one business day of the client paying. No setup cost and no monthly fee, just a 5% transaction commission.
