Picture Alex, founder of a growing environmental consulting firm, comparing bookkeeping software options on her laptop. “I know I need something better than spreadsheets,” she mutters, “but how do I choose between all these options?” Choosing the right bookkeeping & accounting software for consultants can feel overwhelming if you’re like Alex. Let’s cut through the confusion.
Understanding What Matters
Consulting firms have unique financial needs. Through their work with over 175 professional service firms, System Six has found that consulting businesses need particular capabilities in their bookkeeping software. You’ll want to track project profitability, allocate time and expenses efficiently, create professional invoices, and see your real-time cash flow. Most importantly, your software should play well with other business tools you use daily.
The Top Contenders
1. QuickBooks
QuickBooks Online is System Six’s top recommendation for most consulting firms. “QuickBooks Online forms the backbone of our client’s financial systems,” explains Tim from System Six. Its robust feature set and extensive integration capabilities make it ideal for consulting firms.” The software excels at project and class tracking, offers strong reporting capabilities, and grows alongside your firm. While its interface can initially feel overwhelming, proper setup and guidance can transform it into a powerful ally for your business.
2. Xero
For firms with international operations, Xero offers a compelling alternative. Its multi-currency handling and intuitive interface make it particularly attractive for firms across borders. One System Six client who switched to Xero praises its clean interface and excellent bank reconciliation features. However, compared to QuickBooks Online, Xero offers fewer US-specific features and a more limited selection of third-party integrations.
3. FreshBooks
Smaller consulting practices (<$400K in revenue) might find FreshBooks hits their sweet spot. It shines in time tracking and professional invoicing, with an interface that won’t send you reaching for the aspirin. Yet, as your firm grows, you might find its reporting capabilities and basic accounting features somewhat constraining.
4. Sage Intacct
Sage Intacct enters the conversation for consulting businesses scaling beyond $20 million in revenue. It offers sophisticated financial management features that larger firms need, though its significant investment requirement and steep learning curve make it overkill for smaller operations.
Making It Work
Having the right software is just the beginning – the implementation transforms it from a tool into a game-changer. As one System Six client shares,
“They revamped our whole accounting system into accurate and dependable practices. They take on the entire setup and effectively act as consultants until your accounting operations run smoothly.”
The setup phase proves critical. Many firms stumble by trying to configure these tools without proper expertise. Working with experienced partners like System Six ensures your chart of accounts reflects consulting industry best practices, your project tracking captures the right metrics, and your automation saves time rather than creating headaches.
Your accounting software needs will evolve as your firm grows. Quarterly reviews of your financial systems help ensure they continue supporting your business effectively. “I don’t have to think about my accounting anymore,” one System Six client notes. “It’s just taken care of seamlessly.” This peace of mind comes from combining the correct software with expert implementation.
Making Your Choice
When selecting your software, consider your firm’s current size and growth trajectory. A solo consultant’s needs differ vastly from those of a 50-person firm. Think about which features you genuinely need today and which you might need tomorrow. Consider your budget not just for the software but also for proper implementation and support.
Remember Alex from our opening? She ultimately chose QuickBooks Online, which she implemented with System Six’s guidance. “Now I actually understand our numbers,” she says. Instead of wrestling with basic bookkeeping, I’m using financial insights to drive decisions.” Her story could be yours, too.
The right combination of software and expertise can transform your financial operations from a burden into a strategic advantage. Consider partnering with experts who can help you not just choose the right software but implement it in a way that gives you back your evenings and weekends. After all, you became a consultant to solve complex problems for clients, not to become an amateur accountant.
For churches, the calendar year closes with exciting and reflective celebrations of Advent and Christmas. Church staff focuses on providing reflective, engaging opportunities to connect with one of the most meaningful seasons in the liturgical calendar. In the wake of the tinsel and pageants, advent calendars and carols is another milestone in the annual calendar: donor giving statements. Rather than inciting enthusiasm and joy, most church administrators and accounting volunteers cringe at the thought. These staff members could share stories of fighting with printers, chasing down missing data, and mail merging statements through all hours of the night.
At System Six, we understand how complicated it can be to provide accurate, accessible donor information to your congregants. Every year you may find yourself thinking, “There has got to be a better way…” – there is! We have put together this comprehensive guide to help you streamline your giving throughout the year so that statements can be processed, sent, and reconciled in moments – rather than weeks.
Four components affect church donor giving statements:
1. How you collect donations
2. How you track your spending
3. How you store donor giving data
4. How you send donor statements
A crucial recommendation: the least number of tools needed to complete these steps, the better! Throughout this guide, we will highlight several of our favorite tools. Be sure to evaluate the tools you currently use to see if they can meet any of these needs throughout the year.
We’ve all had to pivot this year in order to keep ourselves and our communities safe. While some companies, like System Six, have been working remotely for years, we recognize that the shift to completely digital platforms and processes can be overwhelming and daunting. The good news is that there are so many great options for online tools that will have your team working cohesively in no time. We know that nothing can quite replace the collaborative vibes of your office or the chit chat around the water cooler, but hopefully these tools will help you get on the same page while you can’t be in the same space.
We use Teams (and have used Slack in the past) primarily as a means to field casual conversation and quick questions. In order for this to work to its full potential, though, you have to have strong buy-in from your team and commit to quick response times together so that it remains an effective means of communication. Teams can be used for questions and updates that can be handled quickly and easily; it’s not for asking particularly heavy questions that require your colleague to completely stop what they are doing to help. Make sure to ask specific questions and avoid ambiguity.
Karbon is our preferred tool for task management. It is a tool that is specifically built for accounting firms but we’d highly recommend a tool like this (see Teamwork, Clickup, or Asana) for keeping track of tasks. Email is not an ideal place to assign tasks because once the email has been sent there is no visibility of if/when the task got done and no way to see if the task is still in process.
With Karbon, you can automate reminders, setup workflows, and ensure that there is visibility on the scope of a project for each team member.
With a remote team or clients who span multiple time zones, it can be such a simplifier to use a scheduling service. Save yourself the endless “reply-alls” and mishaps over who is on what time zone and invest in a service like Calendly for booking appointments. Calendly updates your availability in real time so you can rest assured that you will never double book a meeting. It comes with features like custom reminder emails, cancellation notices, and calendar syncing. The free version works fine for most people though it is branded with “calendly” and you only have one meeting type as an option.
Google Drive | Easy & sharable access to information
We can’t stress enough the importance of real time editing and updating of shared documents. Avoid sending various versions back and forth with Google Docs robust variety of cloud-hosted documents and spreadsheets. We especially love the Google Sheets features for collaboration around ideas, updating contacts, and sharing live content. We’ve been able to connect Google Sheet directly with Quickbooks Online to automatically pull key financial metrics directly into various meeting agendas which has been extremely valuable when reviewing our company performance as leaders on a weekly basis. You can review our meeting agenda template here!
Fathom is a reporting app that is especially focused on turning complex financial reports into beautiful, easy to read trends, Fathom connects easily to QBO, and it presents financial information in an easy, understandable way. Fathom puts accounting info into a visual, easier to understand form that is especially helpful for anyone who may not be especially numbers-minded. Really, it is a communication tool as much as a financial tool.You want your numbers to communicate the story of what is happening in your business and be able to present this data to your key stakeholders (team members, investors, or your spouse).
Loom is a great tool to create a tutorial by sharing your screen and recording the session to send via URL. If you need to shoot off a quick explanation about how to use a feature, or want to show a client an element of a program or website, you can record a short video for them. This allows the information to be reviewed at someone’s convenience.. And if your client or colleague has to pause to go homeschool their third grader, then they can always come back to it later!
While the focus of this post is the tools we use while working remotely, the theme is communication. This is particularly essential when you aren’t just down the hall from someone, but you still need to be able to communicate quickly and clearly. We want to make sure that the tools we do use are easy to use, intuitive, secure, and allow for quick and helpful communication.
Chris joined System Six from a career in finance, where he served as an advisor to and investor in medium-large sized businesses. He’s worked for several fast growing companies, holds a business degree from Stanford, and is a great advisory resource for our clients.
Chris loves being with family, going for runs and working on his golf game.
