Which accounting software to buy? Appropriate selection criteria

Factors to consider when choosing accounting software

Choosing the best accounting software for your business can be challenging. Each system, software program will include a different set of features, and most units offer a variety of price plans that correspond to functions, number of users, and other aspects.

To simplify your search and choose the right accounting software, first keep these three key factors in mind:

• Cost: Are you looking for an inexpensive piece of software with basic features or an application with full business functions for a higher price?
• Usability: How many people will use the software? Is your business in need of an online system stored in the cloud for convenience during work? Is the software required to be usable on the mobile version as well? What capabilities are you looking for software with?
• Features: What do you need to find accounting software for? What problems do you need software to solve, what operations, what reports do you need when doing accounting?

How to buy the right accounting software for your business

To buy the right accounting software for your business, you need to clarify your needs, features, software price, and other factors when making a decision. The best recommendation for you when making a decision to buy some accounting software is to arrange the options in the following order:

Choose software that fits your budget

Before you start looking for the right accounting software, you need to clearly define your investment budget. Each software provider will have service packages that come with different feature sets. Software prices often increase with the number of features and number of users of the unit. 

So, how much money can your business spend? Please answer this question correctly. This will help you consider and make a choice that better suits your needs. No one wants to pay a hefty price for software features that a business never uses.

In addition, you should also consider: 

• Will the software be sold for a large fee and for monthly payments?
• Will I have to pay any additional fees for accompanying software or service updates?
• Are there hidden or additional costs if the business uses the software?

Depending on the software you should consider to compare with the company budget. This will also help you to eliminate unexpected charges of additional fees or loss of money

Buying the best accounting software is choosing one you know how to use

If you're a business owner and don't have an in-depth knowledge of the accounting field, you probably don't want to spend a whole working week studying and doing bookkeeping. That's why you need the help of software. So think, a software with many complex operations and formulas will help you solve the problem well or not?

As mentioned above, one of the factors you need to consider when choosing is usability. A good accounting software, suitable for businesses, must be an easy-to-use, simple-to-operate software. Even if you are not an accountant, you can still easily manipulate and create data analysis reports, supporting good cash flow management.

Furthermore, depending on the skill level and professional requirements, the software may provide the appropriate features as well as the accompanying user manual information. Thus, if you need to learn new knowledge and apply more difficult accounting formulas, you can still easily learn and learn through the documents that the software provides.

Decide what features to include in your accounting software

An accounting software will have many features. Managers' job is to choose the essential features that are required to meet their use needs. Everyone loves a full-featured software. However, we can assure you that not many businesses when buying accounting software can know and use all the available features of the software.

To help your organization find and select the right software, make a list of required features. Prioritize features from most needed to least used.

We've also put together some popular features for your reference:

• Automating a number of information and data such as: Billing, VAT calculation, handling exchange rate differences, pre-setting warehouses and costs for imported documents, adjusting foreign account balances currency, calculate the cost of production... 
• Allow multiple users to access at the same time
• Retrieve information and data in the form of statistics
• Easily export reports when searching for data or export reports according to specific requirements of administrators
• Ability to adjust, change the report interface as required
• Create and track invoices easily
• Make simple financial statements
• Connect to a bank account, ensure information security
• Decentralize many levels for each individual to access the software
• Record customer history, secure customer database strictly according to common industry standards​

Should look for software with flexibility

If your company defines "office" remotely, including spaces such as airport lounges, restaurants, coffee shops, or homes, you need to consider choosing cloud-based accounting software for flexibility.

The information and data will be stored on the cloud and you can access it anywhere, anytime or with any device if there is an internet connection. This is also one of the criteria that many businesses are interested in in recent times.

Have quality customer support and are there when you need it

The final criterion to choose to buy the right accounting software is to consider the accompanying support services. Because when using software, businesses may have questions or need help to better understand how to operate the software. Therefore, the desire at this time is to have a quick response support group. A software provider with good customer support service, always ready to answer customers when needed will be the key for businesses to make the final choice.