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Self-driving bookkeeping — Accounting software that does the work for you.
Kick is a new AI-powered bookkeeping and accounting platform that we are super bullish on. We’ve been stuck using QuickBooks Online (QBO) since 2010 because there weren’t many other options, but let’s be real—it’s dreadful to use. When we found Kick, we were stoked. If you’re a new business, we strongly recommend starting with Kick—it’s about 500 times more user-friendly than QBO. The Stripe, PayPal, and Mercury integrations work seamlessly out of the box, unlike QBO’s nightmare setup. That said, if you need full accrual accounting, heavy inventory tracking, or complex e-commerce features, Kick isn’t quite there yet—but they’re catching up fast. (Check out our full review and subscribe for updates!)
Accounting software for small and medium teams often based outside of the US.
We find that most teams based outside of the US tend to use Xero, while the US seems to favor QuickBooks Online, although we believe Xero to be a leader in the accounting space even within the US.
If you're a smaller business, running on a cash-basis, and looking for the most modern accounting software, you might want to consider Kick, but if you're looking for something tried, true, and tested, or run an accrual-basis business, Xero is a great choice, regardless of whether you're a US or non-US business.
BILL Spend & Expense (Formerly Divvy) The spend management platform for teams of all sizes (customizable virtual cards, budgeting, auto-reconciling, and expense reimbursement).
I'm sure you've heard of a business credit card? Divvy is a replacement for your typical corporate card. It's totally free to use (no annual fee), you get rewards and it has a much more comprehensive feature set, giving you the ability to create virtual credit cards for each vendor with spending limits. Further, Divvy is an expense management solution. Bought a new marketing software? Categorize it and when integrated with Quickbooks Online, it will automatically reconcile your books for you.
Simply put, if you are a business owner living in the United States, you are missing out if you're not using an expense management solution + a divvy business credit card. There are other players in the market, and we've used all of the core competitors (Ramp, Brex, Expensify, and Airbase), and we're here to tell you to look no further than Divvy (newly rebranded to BILL Spend & Expense). (Did we mention it's totally free? 👀)
Divvy gives us so much control when it comes to our spending. We can easily create a virtual credit card, set a budget and Quickbooks category within seconds for each different vendor. We simply set a budget for each credit card for the exact amount that we know will be charged. If a subscription service decides to increase their pricing and charge our card, it will decline. And we like that, because we want to be the one deciding if someone should charge us more or not. 💪
Because we're able to put virtual cards down with each vendor, Divvy's allowed us (and our vendor) to actually catch a person that committed fraud by stealing and using our credit card 🤯 Of course, the employee of our vendor was fired. Catching them would have been impossible to pin down if we had a generic credit card on file. We share this story in this 1 minute video.
Have multiple employees that need their own corporate card? Create a card for them and set a spending limit, that's all you need to do. You can change the spending limit for each employee, make it $50 or $500, Divvy cards allow you to be flexible. If they leave the company, simply freeze the card (you have total control—just think of what the process is like with a typically corporate card. Issuing a new card for an employee is an annoying process, as is cancelling it). Not to mention the positive affect it has on your employees, as they get to feel empowered and like a trusted part of the team.
The rewards are pretty standard with others in the business credit card space, getting somewhere around 1–1.5% on all categories, with a bit more in certain categories (higher % when making payments weekly—less if made bi-weekly or monthly).
One customer that we recommended Divvy to started using it and quickly saw his reward balance grow. He decided to use the reward funds as Christmas bonuses for his employees. He said, "it's money that's just sitting there, and if I can give them a little extra to take home at the end of the year, it's something cool I get to do."
Travel rewards are also a perk with Divvy as they are partnered with TravelPerk. While we haven't cashed in our travel rewards yet, it's a great option for our next company retreat!
Out of all the competitors, Divvy has the best UI/UX and does a fantastic job at natively integrating with QuickBooks Online (for automating your expense reconciling process), and handles team budgeting like a dream:
Divvy allows you to create a virtual credit card and map it to the respective category + set up an email forwarding filter within your email once, and every single time the card is charged, your QuickBooks Online is already reconciled and up-to-date with a PDF of the receipt.
The Divvy eligibility requirements are way more accessible than that of Ramp and Brex (who both make their account criteria unnecessarily high). Divvy is great for startups and teams of all sizes, even if you're just getting your business started.
Divvy is the best tool in the spend management, business credit cards, budgeting, and basic accounting automation suite for most businesses of all sizes.
Gelt proactively plans, optimizes, and files your taxes so you finish the year with more money in your pocket.
We've switched business CPAs (Accountants) a handful of times over the past decade in business, as our personal and business needs have evolved over time.
Having tried everyone from the expensive big accounting firms, all the way down to the small boutique family offices, there has always been something missing.
Think of Gelt as the experience of the small boutique family office, with the experience of the big accounting firms (with the price somewhere in-between the two).
Gelt is a modern accounting firm that leverages modern software to do your business and personal taxes better.
They have a robust personal dashboard (similar to that of Compound), so you can aggregate all of your business and personal finances (even angel investment tracking), all in one place.
Their strategic help has easily saved us $20k in taxes, just on the advice we were given the first year. No other accountant has their own modern tech, nor have they been this helpful in actually working with the unique needs of our complex financial situation.
The spend management platform for mid-size teams (customizable virtual cards, budgeting, auto-reconciling, and expense reimbursement).
Ramp is a corporate card and expense management platform designed to help companies control spend, automate finance tasks, and gain real-time visibility into expenses. It's a leader in the spend/expense management and accounting automation space, with a clean UI/UX, tons of reporting features, and fast search functionality. Ramp is built for scaling businesses who want better financial control without the friction of traditional banks.
They have a great UI/UX, tons of reporting/insights features, and a super clean and fast search functionality to find exactly what you're looking for:
Super fast, taking just minutes to issue cards and accounts.
Easy navigation with CMD+K search and an AI chatbot for help.
Immediate visibility into transactions and spend patterns.
Easy to configure budgets via spend programs and card restrictions.
Automatic retries and Gmail integration for company-wide receipt fetching.
Native integrations with top accounting platforms, plus powerful reporting and tagging features.
Alerts via mobile app, SMS, and Slack for ultimate visibility
1.5% cashback standard with less complexity compared to other tools.
Custom contract uploads and renewal alerts.
No annual fees, no user fees, and no hidden fees. Revenue comes from interchange fees and an optional paid tier for larger teams. BUT Important: You need around $25K in your business bank account at signup to get approved. Your credit limit will be based on your cash balance. If you're looking for an expense management solution with no bank minimum, then check out BILL Spend & Expense (typically better for smaller businesses while Ramp is better for growing/scaling businesses with cash flow).
Accounting software for small and medium teams typically based in the US
We find that teams based in the US tend to use QuickBooks Online, and businesses outside of the US tend to lean more toward Xero.
This is important because it means that the features QBO is building is more focused on things like US Sales Tax laws, while Xero may have more accounting features helpful outside of the US especially.
Also, accountants inside of the US are often more proficient with QBO as compared to Xero (although they should be familiar with both).
P.S. We highly recommend QBO over QuickBooks Desktop because of their robust API—you're not going to be integrating QuickBooks Desktop easily with anything.
Rating: D-
Some people have mentioned that QuickBooks Online allows for some expense management features like virtual credit cards, that said, a tool like Bill Spend & Expense (formerly Divvy) does so much more for expense management than simply allowing for a one-off virtual card though. Unlike QBO, a proper expense management tool allows you to go deeper, as it ties in individual and team budgets (across the entire company), all to ensure your company only allocates what they have budgeted for.
QBO also does not have proper receipt matching that automatically ties the receipt from your email to the individual transaction.
QBO does not have credit card rewards with their virtual credit card solution either.
Rating: C
This is one of those areas that it makes sense that they cover, but you can tell it was an add-on versus being their core service. Payroll is boring, and hey, QBO does the job, it's just not a straightforward user-experience, and let's just say we used it for 4 years before switching to Gusto, and there's not a single bone in my body that misses QBO for payroll. It was also incredibly painful closing it down with them, reporting to all the Department of Labor agencies, and everything. Save yourself the time and skip out on QBO for Payroll.
Rating: D
If you compare QuickBooks Online to any of the best time tracking software on the market, you'll see just how wildly barebones, slow, and underwhelming it is. Even just the process of logging into QBO feels like you're pushing a boulder uphill, now you need to do it any time you track software? No thanks, I'll pass.
They designed it more to be for people who just need to submit their time one-per-day or once-per-week, they are building to check a box, not to be leading the time tracking space.
The spend management platform for small and mid-size teams (customizable virtual cards, budgeting, auto-reconciling, and expense reimbursement).
Expensify is one of the original expense management solutions on the market. We actually used Expensify for the first few years in business (more recently switching to Divvy).
It started as a simple invoice/receipt scraping tool that you'd forward your receipts into [email protected] via email, and it would pull out all of the details, learn from past classifications, and sync that over to your accounting software like QBO or Xero.
They have more recently moved into the virtual credit card experience, realizing that if the charge starts with a virtual credit card, all the categorization is way more consistent and seamless (whereas that's where Divvy, Brex, and Ramp all started).
Rippling lets you easily manage your employees’ payroll, benefits, expenses, corporate cards, bill pay, & more—in one place. The majority of our coverage is focused on their Rippling Spend product.
Rippling Spend could beconsidering if you have 50+ employees or are already in the Rippling ecosystem (e.g., using their Human Capital Management and Payroll products). Otherwise, we suggest exploring either BILL Spend and Expense or Ramp.
Here’s why:
Many of Spend’s core features and value adds are only accessible if you use Rippling’s other products, HCM and Payroll, which enable you to leverage all of your employee data. Without this ability to leverage employee data, you only have access to a subset of features and functionalities that we feel do not offer the same value as both BILL S&E and Ramp, which come at a lower cost. This makes BILL S&E and Ramp strong options for companies seeking standalone spend management solutions.
On the other hand, if you:
You might find value in Rippling Spend. The features Rippling touts in their marketing materials (policies, card groups, etc.), that leverage the data that’s in Rippling’s other platforms, truly are great offerings that undoubtedly save users time – time spent manually entering data, looking across multiple platforms for data, reviewing policies, reconciling expense reports, etc.
Just make sure you watch out for:
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