Best Project Accounting Software in 2024

This article is part of a larger series on Accounting Software.

• Quick Comparison
• 1. Best Overall
• 2. Best With a Huge Support Network of ProAdvisors
• 3. Best for Unlimited Users
• 4. Best for Service-based Projects
• Our Methodology
• FAQs
• Bottom Line

The best project accounting software combines robust accounting capabilities with powerful project management tools to help businesses manage their projects and monitor profitability. It should allow businesses to set up projects, track project costs, allocate resources, bill clients for projects, and analyze profitability—all in one centralized platform.

We evaluated the best project-based accounting software to help you determine the best solution for your business:

• Zoho Books: Overall best accounting software for tracking project profitability
• QuickBooks Online Plus: Best for project accounting with a huge support network of ProAdvisors
• Xero: Best project accounting software for unlimited users
• FreshBooks: Best for service-based projects, especially those with few accounting users

We are committed to providing you with an unbiased, thorough, and comprehensive evaluation to help you find the right accounting software for your business. We meticulously and objectively assess each software based on a fixed set of criteria—including pricing, features, ease of use, and customer support—in our internal case study.

To delve deeper into our best small business accounting software, we tested and used each platform to evaluate how the features perform against our metrics. This hands-on approach helps us strengthen our accounting software expertise and deliver on the Fit Small Business mission of providing the best answers to your small business questions.

Best Project Accounting Software: Quick Comparison

• Pricing & Inclusions
• Features

Additional users can be added to any plan for $11 per month.

Zoho Books: Best Overall Project Accounting Software for Project Profitability

Pros

• Offers a wide range of accounting and project management features
• Has a robust mobile app that can perform almost any accounting task
• Includes access to phone support and live chat
• Has a dedicated portal for customers to view and pay invoices

Cons

• Has limitations to the number of invoices you can send in the Free and Standard plans
• Requires at least the Professional plan to access project accounting features
• Doesn’t allow you to manage and track fixed assets
• Requires additional fees for extra users

• Zoho Books offers four subscription options with project accounting features.
• Professional: $50 per month for up to five users and unlimited invoices
• Premium: $70 per month for up to 10 users and unlimited invoices
• Elite: $150 per month for up to 10 users, unlimited invoices, and advanced inventory
• Ultimate: $275 per month for up to 15 users, unlimited invoices, and advanced inventory

Add-ons:

• Additional users: $3 per user, per month
• Receipt scanning: $10 for 50 scans per month
• Snail mail credits for sending invoices: $2 per credit

You can try any of Zoho Books’ paid plans for free for 14 days.

We selected Zoho Books as the overall best project-based accounting software for tracking project profitability because its Professional to Ultimate plans have all the project accounting features that you would expect to see. These include project creation, project estimations, assignment of project costs, allocation of inventory used, and project reporting. It also offers excellent general accounting features, including accounts payable (A/P) and accounts receivable (A/R) management, banking and cash management, and income and expense tracking.

The biggest advantage of Zoho Books over other software listed in this guide is its excellent mobile accounting app. It has all of the features you’ll find in the desktop interface, including the ability to create and send invoices, accept payments, and record billable time. We believe these are crucial features for modern project managers and business owners who often work out of their offices.

• Deciding Factors
• Standout Features
• Best For
• Our Evaluation

• Project tracking: Zoho Books allows users to set up and track projects, making it easier to monitor project-specific income, expenses, and profitability. You can assign income and expenses to specific projects, track project-related time, and generate reports to analyze project performance.
• Expense management: This enables you to manage project expenses efficiently. Not only can you capture and categorize project-related expenses, but you can also record vendor bills and track reimbursable expenses. This helps to allocate costs accurately and ensures that project costs are accounted for.
• Invoicing: The platform comes with features that are beneficial for project-based businesses. You can create customized invoices, bill clients for project work, and track payments received. Zoho Books also offers the option to bill clients based on project milestones or time-based billing rates.
• Time tracking: This allows you to monitor the time spent on project tasks. You can track billable hours, record employee timesheets, and associate time entries with specific projects. This helps in accurate project costing and invoicing based on hours worked.
• Reporting and analysis: Zoho Books has various reporting features to generate project-specific financial reports. You can assess project profitability, analyze project expenses, and monitor overall financial performance. These insights are critical to making informed decisions and managing projects effectively.

• Project-based businesses: Zoho Books is a great option for project-based businesses such as construction companies, architects, event management firms, and creative agencies. Its project accounting features enable accurate tracking of project-related income and expenses, time tracking, and invoicing based on project milestones or hourly rates.
• Retail and inventory management: Zoho Books includes basic inventory management features, allowing you to track inventory levels, manage stock movements, and generate reports to monitor sales and profitability. This is especially beneficial for companies that utilize inventory as part of their projects.
• Service-based businesses: Zoho Books is a good fit for service-based businesses, such as consultants, agencies, information technology (IT) services, marketing firms, and professional service providers. It offers features like time tracking and client invoicing, allowing businesses to track time spent on projects and bill clients accordingly.
• Businesses working remotely: The top spot in our guide to the best mobile accounting apps is Zoho Books—and for good reason. It has excellent functionality for both iOS and Android devices and even has an app integration with Apple Watch. All of the features available in the computer interface are also accessible with the mobile app, which makes it useful for businesses working remotely.

Our evaluation shows that Zoho Books’ biggest strengths are general accounting, project accounting, and customer support. The only downside is that the platform doesn’t allow you to generate a report that compares actual to estimated labor and inventory. If this feature is crucial to tracking your project profitability, then we recommend FreshBooks or Xero.

Unfortunately, Zoho Books isn’t the most affordable project accounting software on this list. You need to purchase at least Zoho Books’ Professional plan ($50 monthly) to use project accounting. If you want a more affordable solution, the best alternative we recommend is Sage Business Cloud, which allows you to manage projects for as low as $11 a month.

QuickBooks Online Plus or Advanced: Best for Project Accounting With a Huge Support Network of ProAdvisors

Pros

• Allows you to track income and expenses by class and location
• Provides easy access to local independent QuickBooks ProAdvisors
• Offers powerful inventory tracking with automatic calculation of cost of goods sold (COGS)
• Includes receipt capture to generate transactions from uploaded receipts

Cons

• Doesn’t allow you to enter bills or record time worked through the mobile app
• Requires one subscription per organization
• Can be expensive compared to other software

QuickBooks Online has two tiers that will enable you to track costs by project.

• Plus: $90 per month for up to five users
• Advanced: $200 per month for up to 25 users

You can either sign up for a 30-day free trial or purchase right away to get 50% for three months.

QuickBooks Online is widely used by many businesses due to its powerful accounting features. While it has no industry-specific features, it can be customized to nearly any type of business. Most project-based businesses will find QuickBooks Online more than enough, as it includes essential project management features, like the ability to create and track projects, track time, and bill clients for work performed.

One of its advantages is that it gives you access to a large support network of QuickBooks ProAdvisors. It provides a “Find-a-ProAdvisor” directory on its website, where businesses using QuickBooks Online can search for and connect with ProAdvisors who specialize in project accounting or another specific area of expertise. It also excels in project accounting, with features such as time tracking, milestone-based billing, and progress invoicing serving as useful tools.

• Deciding Factors
• Standout Features
• Best For
• Our Evaluation

• QuickBooks ProAdvisors: If you don’t have the time or inclination to maintain your books, you can hire an independent QuickBooks ProAdvisor who is trained and certified by QuickBooks. For more information, read our guide on how to find a QuickBooks ProAdvisor. Even if you keep your own books, it’s always a good idea to work with a local accountant to save you time when issues arise.
• Location and class tracking: Location tracking allows you to tag transactions based on different physical or virtual locations within your business. This feature is useful if you have multiple locations or branches, operate in different regions, or want to track financial data for specific departments or divisions. Class tracking lets you tag transactions based on different classes within your business, such as projects, products, services, or any other category that you want to analyze independently.
• Receipt scanning: You can scan receipts for operating expenses and billable expenses and attach the receipts to your expense entries for documentation purposes. With your smartphone camera, you can capture receipts and match them with expense entries easily.
• Mileage tracking: You can use QuickBooks Online’s mileage tracking to stay on top of your mileage expenses for client billing. You can also account for non-billable mileage expenses to track your expenses and profit. The solution offers the added benefit of GPS mileage tracking to make billing even easier.
• Mobile check deposit: This new feature allows you to deposit checks from the mobile app. Available for QuickBooks Business Checking users, when you take a photo of your check and upload it to QuickBooks, the software will generate a digital transaction automatically. Read our QuickBooks Business Checking review for more information about the account.

• Startups seeking a scalable solution: We selected QuickBooks Online as the overall best startup accounting software because it is fairly scalable in case your business needs advanced accounting features as it grows. It offers multiple subscription plans that cater to different business sizes and needs. As your business grows, you can easily upgrade to a higher-tier plan to accommodate additional features. You can also grant access and set permissions for multiple users, controlling what information each user can view or modify.
• Business owners who need help to get started: QuickBooks Online offers a free meeting with a QuickBooks ProAdvisor, who will assist you with setting up your company and chart of accounts and answer your general bookkeeping-related questions.
• Businesses that want one platform for all of their business management needs: QuickBooks Online integrates with WORKetc, which is a complete business management system that offers a customer relationship management (CRM), time tracking, project tracking, customer support, and more. It allows you to export invoices, transactions, and expenses from WORKetc directly to QuickBooks Online, then sync payments made against WORKetc invoices to QuickBooks Online.

QuickBooks Online earned excellent scores in our evaluation of accounting and project management, which isn’t surprising given that it’s our overall best small business accounting software. However, we found some minor drawbacks in its project management tool, such as the inability to track estimated vs project costs, similar to Zoho Books.

Also, we would like to see QuickBooks add a dedicated document management for storing and managing project documents, like blueprints, contracts, and permits. The provider may draw inspiration from Zoho Books, which has a designated inbox for receiving financial files like receipts and invoices.

Furthermore, QuickBooks Online didn’t do well in pricing as it’s a bit expensive, and the Plus plan supports only up to five users. If you want a more affordable solution that can scale with your business, then Xero might be preferable as it allows you to add an unlimited number of users.