Whether you’re tracking your personal or business expenses, you need a tool to help you automate and do your accounting quickly and efficiently.
If you’re a Mac user, the tool you pick must also be compatible with your system. There are many locally installed options for Mac computers, but today, there are more cloud-based ones you can use on any device, anywhere, provided you’re connected to the internet.
The challenge lies in narrowing down your choices. However, one of the most popular accounting software – QuickBooks – is used by individuals and businesses alike.
The software provides tools that reconcile your income and expenses automatically, sync with Square and PayPal, POS machines, and apps so you can easily account for your income. Plus, QuickBooks integrates with your bank and credit accounts, gives a complete overview of your transactions, eases payroll management, and formats your tax data properly.
While QuickBooks makes all these tools available for you, it doesn’t mean the software is the best for your Mac. It’s expensive, only offers one plan for Mac users, charges extra for key services, and has a very high learning curve – especially for people who aren’t accountants.
And, without additional fees, you get limited support and no software updates despite the higher upfront costs you incur to use the software.
Thankfully, there are other options available that offer similar features and still work with Mac computers.
This guide lists the 15 best QuickBooks alternatives for Mac that you can check out. We’ve evaluated them based on usability, features, compatibility with Mac computers, price, customer support, and more.
Best QuickBooks Alternatives For Mac
1. Xero
Xero stands out as a favorite accounting tool and QuickBooks alternative for Mac users running small businesses. Unlike QuickBooks, this tool has a comparatively low starting price, expansive integrations with other apps, and general user-friendliness making it ideal to manage your finances.
With Xero, unlimited users can access the tool regardless of your subscription tier to analyze performance or run reports with at least limited access. You can also set up different user permissions so each employee can access what’s related to their job.
Xero also offers full certification for accountants, making it easier for the software company’s customers to find help from external professionals.
The software comes with a sleek dashboard that’s simple enough for Mac users, inventory management, invoices, online payment acceptance, sales tax tracking, reporting, customization, and automatic bank reconciliation among others.
Xero integrates with more than 800 other payroll and accounting apps, which is more than QuickBooks can provide.
2. Quicken Deluxe
This accounting software is ideal for your personal accounting needs. It works with your Mac and tracks your income and expenditures, allows you to pay bills from the program, and has tools for balancing accounts, creating budgets, and tracking debt.
You also get a portfolio view to see and track your investments, spending trends, and other data while keeping your receipts handy for tax season.
Quicken provides programs for business finances including industry-specific software. You can track rental income, property tax expenses, repairs, and insurance.
Plus, it provides ready-to-print or digital copies of forms and documents for different uses within the program – including file digital copies of signed forms.
The software is more affordable than QuickBooks and is designed to help you stay within your budget, reduce debt, and track your investments.
3. FreshBooks
FreshBooks is a suite of accounting tools and business software that tracks how much time you spend on projects for yourself and your team. You can add the tool to invoices, schedules, payroll forms, and project management.
FreshBooks tracks money that you receive or pay out and helps you stay on top of your budget. This way, it’s easier to balance your ledger, track purchases and payments, and populate tax forms from the information it collects.
You also get reports in FreshBooks including bank reconciliation and general ledger summaries. And through the data it stores about your business, the software provides trial balances, sales tax summaries, and profit and loss comparisons.
It’s a good program for small business owners using Mac computers to keep track of their income and expenditures.
Compared to QuickBooks, FreshBooks is more Apple Pay friendly. It is intuitive and rich in features, including an app that lets you respond to customer queries and get alerts when they view or pay invoices, or when they’re overdue.
The software comes with double-entry accounting, and it’s entirely cloud-based unlike QuickBooks for Mac, which is used on the desktop computer. You also get automated features and reports.
4. FreeAgent
If you’re a freelancer, FreeAgent is the QuickBooks alternative for you. The software helps you manage the time you worked while tracking expenses for tax season.
You can take pictures of receipts from your phone camera and the app will automatically tag, add them to your expenditure reports, and save the captured receipts.
You can also send out invoices and estimates from the program, track account activity (bank or credit card), and sync your data with tax agents.
The tool tracks your personal expenses and saves them separately while showing you how you got earnings that affect your budget, income tax expenses, and income to debt ratio.
The program is cloud-based compared to QuickBooks for Mac, which is a desktop program. This way, FreeAgent lets you access data from your mobile device besides getting it on a computer or desktop.
5. Wave Accounting
Wave Accounting provides owners of small businesses with basic tools to handle their accounts for free including invoicing, ledgers, and filing of receipts.
Like QuickBooks, you can track purchases, sales tax, and bank/credit accounts for an up-to-date balance sheet.
The software’s dashboard gives you an overview of every part of your finances, in an organized, easy-to-understand way – along with more in-depth information if you need it.
Wave offers free and paid subscription plans that are better to use if you’re just starting out or lack the budget to pay for QuickBooks. Plus, Wave is easier to understand, and you get payroll tools for tracking vendors, contractors, and employees.
The program is compatible with your Mac so you can invoice and track the money you receive. You can also run payroll in Wave, including getting a summary of income tax that you have to pay on your employees’ or sales income.
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6. Sage50 Cloud for Business
If you need to manage accounts for multiple businesses, Sage50 Cloud is a suitable QuickBooks alternative for Mac. The software can consolidate the businesses into one entity and prepare statements of consolidated financials.
You can test drive the software on its site and access a hosted version with sample data. The features of this powerful accounting software include robust inventory management, tracking expenses and hours to assign to invoices, consolidating unlimited companies for one price, and more.
It may be more difficult to use than QuickBooks, but it’s more affordable because QuickBooks requires separate subscriptions per business, making it expensive. In the first year, new customers get a discount on the software.
Its highest plan also provides advanced budgeting tools and multiple-business support. Plus you can use it online to perform some functions and synchronize your files.
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7. Zoho Books
Zoho is a suite of apps for different business functions and needs including accounting. With Zoho Books, a low-cost high-value tool, you can find excellent features and reporting capabilities to manage your business’s finances.
There’s a free version, which makes Zoho Books better than QuickBooks especially for beginners, an easy-to-use and learn interface, and workflow automation. For instance, you can send email alerts if invoices exceed a particular amount or apply late fees or discounts in some cases.
And you can create contacts on the software based on the leads you get from its CRM counterpart, for example. As your business grows, the tool scales with you through integration with other Zoho applications, making it a complete solution for your needs compared to QuickBooks.
It’s more affordable than QuickBooks, has a client portal in all plans, integration with other Zoho programs, and a similar experience in terms of accounts receivable, robust inventory, and accounts payable. You also get great customer support.
8. Buildium
Property managers also get a worthy QuickBooks alternative for Mac (version 11.0 or later and Macs with M1 chip) in Buildium.
The software offers standard bookkeeping features along with tools to help you manage your tenants through screening, electronic leases, and its resident portal where tenants can pay rent and send requests for maintenance.
It’s more affordable than QuickBooks and easy to learn and use. The software also provides unlimited customer service and you can track work orders turning them into bills.
You can also track your profit and loss per property, file 1099 forms, and email them for tracking to the respective vendors and owners.
Financial reporting is included where you can create reports on cash flow statements, balance sheets, rental owner ending balances, and other data.
You can also communicate with homeowners and board members via email, text, or postal mail through Buildium.
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9. Tipalti
Tipalti is a cloud-based platform for payment automation and management that helps you meet your deadlines accurately. The software addresses administrative overload, late payments, human error challenges, and non-compliance.
It can lower the amount of time you spend on managing your finances, which is one of the biggest pain points for accountants and accounting teams.
Tipalti allows you to use the software without having to undergo any training, compared to QuickBooks, which has a steep learning curve that non-accountants may not quickly adapt to.
Plus, the software has a demo where you can see how all its features come together. You can automate your business’s global payment operation from new hire onboarding processes to compliance with tax rules and regulations.
Tipalti also works across 190 countries so you can streamline your payment processing methods in each of the nations you do business in.
Plus, you can meet all your regulatory and tax requirements with the least need for an accountant or other human intervention, improve customer experiences, and vendor payment processes with quality attention.
10. AvidXchange
If you’re looking for an end-to-end accounts payable tool, then AvidXchange is worth considering. The software is trusted by many businesses in the US to manage invoices and automate payments conveniently for optimized accounting operations.
You can automate purchase orders, enjoy paperless invoicing, and native B2B payment processing so your suppliers get paid quickly and you can efficiently track and review their transactions.
AvidXchange is popular for its easy-to-use interface compared to QuickBooks, whose learning curve is a turn-off for newbies, and you can use its intelligent automation options to run your business efficiently.
The software’s interface is highly configurable so it adapts quickly and easily to the needs of your business no matter the industry. Workflow automation options are included so you can lower your operational costs for A/Ps and use the tool from any device since it’s web-based and mobile-ready.
Along with all these features, AvidXchange integrates with over 180 tools including Sage Intacct, Oracle NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics GP, and more, so it works with your existing business app ecosystem.
11. Bill.com
Bill.com is a centralized accounting platform that digitizes and automatically processes your accounts receivables and payables. The system is powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to record invoices, manage cash flows, approve payments, and track financial transactions.
If you have a small or medium-sized enterprise and want a complete solution that can automate your payments, Bill.com is an excellent choice.
You can automate payments from start to finish, and enjoy a seamless experience by integrating or connecting other payment accounts and accounting tools in one place.
To improve accuracy, Bill.com uses machine learning, which works to reduce any serious issues going forward while minimizing human intervention and error.
You also get automatic data entry and other smart features including duplicate invoice detection so you can focus on your core business.
Unlike QuickBooks for Mac, Bill.com is web-based so you can access it on any other device, anywhere, and at any time.
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12. Zoho Expense
Zoho Expense is also part of the Zoho suite of tools that are designed to make it easier for you to report and track your expenses. The total solution can automate multiple expense management processes and record all your transactions efficiently.
Plus, you can convert receipts into expenses, bundle them into one, and generate reports with the click of a mouse. One of its nifty features is the ability to automatically capture transactions done by credit card and turn them into expenses.
Zoho Expense can run across devices so you can access it anywhere and anytime. A free trial is available so you can test run it before committing to a paid plan.
Plus, you can reduce spending limitations and allow expenditure issues, enforce corporate spending policies, and ensure compliance.
The software is more affordable than QuickBooks and easier to learn and use, plus it comes with a boatload of integrations that you can use from one account.
13. AccountEdge
AccountEdge is a locally-installed accounting software and QuickBooks alternative for Mac. You can download and install it on your Mac and use its robust set of features including invoicing, journal entries, estimates, expense and inventory tracking, job costing, charts of accounts, and more.
For newbies, the software may be tricky to learn and navigate, like its QuickBooks counterpart, but it’s way cheaper and has a good mobile app.
You also get customer support via phone and other avenues, though the latter is at an extra cost.
Overall, AccountEdge has a good reputation especially among Mac users, and you can pony up to get extras like payroll, data conversion, and implementation among other premium features.
14. Mint
Mint is an excellent tool for personal accounting. It can help you create and remain focused on your budget, track bills and other expenses when they’re due, and track income too.
It’s simpler and easier to learn and use than QuickBooks, especially for newbies and non-accountants.
Mint provides graphs that show you where you spend most of your money, along with tips and hints to pay down your debt and raise your credit score.
You can use Mint with your Mac computer and other Apple devices like iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch.
The accounting app helps you bring your budget with you and stay on task, see how much you have available for spending per category, and get reminders about the bills you need to settle.
15. Kashoo
Kashoo touts itself as the world’s simplest accounting system. The online or web-based program understands your spending habits, using learning technology, and recommends new practices.
You can balance your income to debt ratio, improve credit scores, and create monthly budgets to manage your money better. You also get financial reports that display your overall monthly spending along with a breakdown of each financial transaction.
Kashoo organizes your receipts in order and formats your data automatically to populate tax forms. It adds expenses, income, and other financial details to remove redundancies in multiple summaries, forms, and spreadsheets. This way, you won’t duplicate or triplicate entries.
It’s easier to learn and use than QuickBooks and doesn’t have a pricey subscription plan. In fact, it comes with a free plan for truly small businesses so you can send invoices, accept payments, send estimates, track your income and clients.
The app can learn your habits when it comes to spending and uses it to formulate a practical budget, reduce your debt, and set reminders. It also accounts for purchases automatically from receipt images.
What To Look For In The Best QuickBooks Alternatives For Mac
Before you run off and get yourself one of these QuickBooks alternatives for your Mac, here’s a list of the top things to keep in mind:
- Scalability: The software should grow with your business. Check if you can upgrade it when you need to and if it has limits on certain features.
- Features: What extras do you get beyond the standard accounting features to help your business run efficiently? The software may offer more integrations, inventory management, multi-currency options, and others that can meet your needs. But you may also get extras that you won’t use yet you pay for them monthly.
- Accessibility: Can you access the software from any device or location? Check if it’s desktop or web-based/cloud-based before making a decision.
- Cost: Price is important so you know how to budget for the software. Find out if it offers annual and monthly plans and any add-ons that could increase the cost.
- Collaboration: The tool you pick should enable you to work with your team or external parties like a bookkeeper or accountant.
Wrapping Up
QuickBooks is a veteran in the accounting software space, which is why it’s so popular. It has tools for personal and business use, and you can find most of the features you need in there. Plus, it works with your Mac.
However, it’s pricey, has a steep learning curve, and you only get one plan for Mac users.
With these 15 QuickBooks alternatives for Mac, you can get all the features you need and even access your financials wherever you go, at any time, and from any device – mobile phone, laptop, or desktop.
