Best Finance Apps for Small Business Budgeting

Small business owners wear many hats. Especially when just starting out, finding tools to efficiently manage your small business finances can be an essential part of your day-to-day business operations. You need to stay on top of your budget by keeping track of spending and expenses and knowing exactly how much money your business is bringing in. 

Instead of complicated spreadsheets, you can use finance apps to manage your budget while saving yourself time and using additional features to be more productive. Gain insights into your business's financial health while accurately visualizing your budget so you can reduce costs and maximize profits. 

Not sure which apps to start with? Below, we cover some of the best finance apps for small businesses and independent professionals.

Quickbooks Money

Quickbooks Money helps you track the cash flow in and out of your business account. This finance app gives you real-time visibility into your cash flow and allows you to compare it with historical trends. Upgrading to Quickbooks Online unlocks additional features like reporting for comprehensive budgets and forecasts. 

Quickbook features:

• Intuit Assist. Free AI tool automates tasks like invoicing and expense records. 
• Custom invoicing. Create personalized invoices for clients and accept payments. 
• Goal tracking. Set up business goals and track your progress while receiving actionable insights. 

Pricing:

QuickBooks Money is free. If you’d like to process payments, you’ll need to pay per transaction (1% per ACH bank account and 2.99% for each credit card or digital wallet). QuickBooks Solopreneur offers bookkeeping for freelancers and self-employed individuals for $20 per month. Registered small businesses that need accounting features can use QuickBooks Simple Start for $35 per month.  

FreshBooks

Freshbooks offers a wide range of reporting features to give you accurate insight into your business’s financial health. These reports are visual and user-friendly, making them easy to understand. Your dashboard breaks down profits, expenses, outstanding invoices, and incoming revenue, tracking your finances in real-time to help you make informed business financial decisions. 

Freshbook features:

• Automation. Set up recurring invoices for clients you work with regularly, automate online payments, and send late payment reminders. 
• Expense tracking. Easily keep track of expenses with mobile receipt scanning and automated categorization using the mobile app. 
• Gusto integration. Complete and manage payroll using Gusto to handle tax calculations, filing, and compliance if you need to pay employees or contractors. 

Pricing: 

Freshbooks Lite costs $6.30 per month, which includes access to basic features and invoicing for up to five clients. Upgrading to Plus for $11.40 per month allows you to invoice up to 50 clients and run financial and accounting reports. 

YNAB (You Need a Budget)

YNAB is designed to help individuals and their families, but also has features that are excellent for freelancers, entrepreneurs, and small business owners. This finance app approaches budgeting by assigning every dollar a job using expense categories. YNAB focuses primarily on spending and budgeting and may not have other features that you need to manage your business finances. 

YNAB features:

• Goal setting. Set different personal and business goals (choose from templates) and track your progress toward achieving them. 
• Access anywhere. YNAB’s finance app is available for Android and iOS and can even be accessed on your iPad or Apple Watch to view your finances on-the-go quickly. 
• Integrations. You can use a custom API or connect YNAB with thousands of apps using Zapier. 

Pricing: 

YNAB’s is $14.99 per month or $109 ($9.08 per month) if paid annually. 

Zoho Expense

Zoho offers a wide range of finance apps for freelancers, small businesses, and even enterprises. Set up your business’s budget and assign a category or expense type. You can choose the time period—monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, or yearly—and create budgets for specific users to track their spending. Run reports to compare the budget to actual expenditures. 

Zoho Expense features: 

• Budget warning. Alert users when they’re approaching the budget limit and even block them from adding or approving additional expenses. 
• AI fraud detection. Audit your business expenses to check for duplicate entries or fraudulent activities. 
• Per diem automation. Calculate per diem based on location and optionally split rates between categories. 

Pricing: 

Zoho Expense’s free version offers basic expense tracking and limited features for up to three users. If you want budgeting and advanced reporting features, you’ll need to upgrade to the Premium plan for $7 per month. 

Xero

The small business account software from Xero lets you manage every aspect of your business finances, including budgeting. You can check your cash flow, send invoices, track expenses, and more through their finance app. Create a customized dashboard with the essential financial data you need—cash flow, bank balances, and goal progress—at a quick glance. 

Xero features: 

• Real-time data. Match and reconcile your bank transactions daily so you have an up-to-date view of your finances. 
• Project tracking. Set budgets for your projects, and then monitor your progress while comparing the actual expenses to your budget. 
• Just Ask Xero (JAX). Xero’s AI business companion, JAX, can help automate accounting tasks like invoicing and quoting clients while answering your questions about using the finance app. 

Pricing: 

Xero’s basic plan starts at $20 per month, which includes access to basic features and 20 monthly invoices and quotes. Depending on your business's needs, you can upgrade your plan to Growing for $47 per month or Established for $80 per month. 

Fina

Fina is a budgeting app for those who want to manage their personal and business finances side by side. Fina allows you to customize tracking based on custom-built metrics and create budgets or forecasts using categories and specific scenarios that fit your personal and business goals. You can make these budgets as simple or complex as you need. 

Fina features: 

• Segmentation.  Keep your financial accounts separate for accounting purposes while still consolidating them for reporting.
• Fina AI. Get insights into your financial data and health with the help of Fina’s AI tool. 
• Integrations. Connect your data from over 12,000 financial institutions and third-party apps, or import your data manually. 

Pricing: 

Fina’s Essential plan starts at $5 per month and supports one profile and up to five live financial connections. You can upgrade to Premium for $12 per month to have unlimited financial institutions and multiple profiles. 

Goodbudget

Goodbudget is a financial planning app that uses the envelope budgeting method. While marketed toward home budgeting, it is excellent for freelancers and small businesses. The envelope method divides your income into "envelopes" that you set for each budget category. These envelopes could be for supplies, marketing, business travel, or anything else. When you need to make a purchase, you use the designated envelope to avoid overspending and help visualize your budget.

Goodbudget features:

• Synch and share. Manage budgets with your business partners. 
• Debt payoff. Work on reducing your business's debt and track your progress.
• Save. Create savings envelopes for upcoming expenses.

Pricing: 

The basic version of Goodbudget is free. A premium account is $10 per month, giving you unlimited envelopes, accounts, and up to five devices.

Key features to look for in a finance app

Some finance apps like Fina are strictly designed for budgeting, while others like Xero offer additional accounting features that can be helpful for managing business finances. The features you need depend on your business structure and financial goals. You may only want basic reporting features that let you set a budget and compare profits to losses. Or you may want to manage all aspects of your business finances like inventory, invoicing, and payroll—within one platform. Key features to consider include:

• Invoicing. Create and send invoices to your clients. 
• Payments. Accept payments from clients and customers directly through the finance app.  
• Expenses. Monitor project or client expenses, store and organize receipts, and categorize spending for your profit and loss calculations. 
• AI tools. Automate tasks and gain insights into how to improve your finances. 
• Reporting. Dive deeper into your financial data by running customized reports to make informed business decisions. 
• Time tracking. Log hours spent on projects to improve productivity or accurately bill clients. 
• Integrations. Connect your financial app with other third-party apps or financial institutions that you use for your business. 
• Inventory. Monitor stock levels and manage orders so you understand your profits better and avoid running out of inventory. 

Help your business with top-rated talent

As a freelancer or small business owner, finance may not be your strong suit—and that’s okay. Finding the time to set up these processes and input the data can be a struggle, even with the right finance app. You can hire a freelance bookkeeper to manage the day-to-day details of your business finances, like expenses, invoicing, and even payroll, so you can stay focused on growing your business. If you need assistance managing your cash flow, financial analysts on Upwork are ready to help you create budgets and set up financial forecasts. Let the experts handle the numbers so you can focus on what you do best.

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This article is intended for educational purposes and should not be viewed as legal or tax advice. Please consult a professional to find the solution that best fits your situation. Prices are current at the time of writing and may change over time based on each service’s offerings. Upwork is not affiliated with and does not sponsor or endorse any of the tools or services discussed in this article. These tools and services are provided only as potential options, and each reader and company should take the time needed to adequately analyze and determine the tools or services that would best fit their specific needs and situation.