When evaluating providers for this year’s list of the best cloud accounting software companies, we focused on ease of use, cost, customer service, features and functions, variety of pricing plans and customer reviews. We focused on five distinct categories using 25 separate metrics to arrive at our ratings for the best providers. Here’s a look at each of these evaluation criteria in more detail.
Pricing
We prioritized software that was either low-cost or had an affordable plan in a series of pricing plans. We also gave credit to those apps that either provided users with a free version of the software or at least a free trial period. When considering the affordability of cloud accounting software, many providers have promotions going where the software is greatly reduced for a brief period, then goes up in price. Those that had price increases that were reasonable fared better in our ratings. This accounted for 10% of our weighted scoring.
Features
For features and functionality, we primarily looked for software that offered fully functional accounting software providing users with a long list of useful features. Some of the features that we considered to be essential for cloud accounting software offering a mobile app, providing automatic data backup and double-entry bookkeeping, offering training in some format, and providing time tracking and payroll capabilities. Some additional features we wanted to see as well included document management, customer relationship management (CRM) integration, multicurrency support, budgeting dashboards, invoicing platforms and the ability to create purchase orders (POs) and handle bill payments. We weighted features at 50% of our total score.
Third-party Reviews
We researched reviews from real users to gauge their opinion of each platform. We wanted to get their opinion about how simple the software was to use and that, according to recent users, the companies provided satisfactory customer service. We looked online at popular third-party review websites, focusing on providers that received at least 300 or more positive reviews on most of these sites as well as received high marks (3.5 or higher out of 5) by the actual users of the software. These reviews accounted for 10% of the total score.
Expert Analysis
Our final criteria, also based on customer responses, was determined by our panel of experts after looking at how users felt about each cloud accounting software when it came to popularity, stand-out features, value for the money and ease of use. These final criteria make up 30% of the total score.
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