Accounting software for small businesses & sole traders

The full set you'd expect of a primary ledger: chart of accounts, general ledger, manual journal entries with reversal and audit log, balance sheet + comparative, P&L cash/accrual + comparative, cash flow statement + 12-week forecast, trial balance + comparative + sign-off, aged AR + AP with customer drilldown, customer + supplier statements, BAS report, BAS lodgement record, GST audit, GST settlement, PAYG installments (T7 / T1×T2), super guarantee tracking, TPAR, ATO calendar, deduction finder, receipt-coverage scan, expense anomalies, supplier ABN audit, FX revaluation, fixed assets with four depreciation methods, CGT cost base, inventory + stocktake, tax codes, tracking categories, P&L by tracking, period locks, receipt and bill scanning, payment runs with ABA export, credit notes, credit limits, bad-debt write-off, petty cash, recurring invoices + expenses, recurring revenue insights, job costing, project budget, quote analytics, Stripe payouts reconciliation, multi-currency invoicing, working-capital ratios, break-even, cost-plus pricing, sales forecast, franchise consolidation, year-end pack, month-end digest, and 328 reports in all.

The Opening Balances wizard imports your closing balances as a single OPENING-BAL journal entry. Chart of Accounts has a CSV import that replaces the seeded chart wholesale. CSV journal import handles bulk historical transactions. Most tenants are operational within a day.

Yes. Invoices can be issued in USD, EUR, GBP, NZD, SGD, CAD, JPY or any custom currency with a per-invoice FX rate. The FX Revaluation report posts a year-end revaluation journal that auto-reverses on 1 July so it doesn't double-count when invoices eventually settle.

Yes. Inventory items track on-hand quantity, purchase price, sale price, and low-stock thresholds. Stock-take / cycle-count workflow handles variance. Stock adjustments auto-post journals (Dr Inventory / Cr COGS or vice versa).

Yes. The Fixed Assets register supports four ATO depreciation methods (prime cost, diminishing value, SBE pool, immediate write-off) with business-use %. Disposals auto-post a balanced journal (Dr Bank, Dr Accumulated Depreciation, Cr Equipment, Dr/Cr Gain or Loss) and flag 50%-discount eligibility for assets held >12 months.

The BAS report calculates G1, 1A, 1B, G10, G11, W1, W2 and 5A directly from your GL with a cash/accrual toggle. The GST Audit Report flags pre-lodgement anomalies. After lodgement, mark the BAS as lodged (with the ATO receipt number), the snapshot is frozen and revisions create a new snapshot rather than overwriting. GST Settlement records the payment in one click.

PAYG installments are advance payments toward your own income tax, reported in 5A on the BAS. PAYG withholding is tax you withhold from employees' wages, reported in W2. Both have dedicated pages and post separately to their own liability accounts.

Yes. The TPAR page auto-detects reportable contractor payments throughout the year for business types subject to the Taxable Payments Reporting System (building, cleaning, courier, IT, security, road freight). At year-end it generates the ATO-format TPAR file ready to lodge.

Yes, invite them as a tenant member. They get a read-only advisor role by default, protected by step-up multi-factor authentication for sensitive actions, with full reports, audit log, and journal access. The Journal Audit Log shows every mutation with actor + timestamp so sign-off is provable.

Payroll is a separate add-on, Rostering & Payroll, at $29 per month with a 14-day trial. It runs rosters, timesheets, pay runs, PAYG withholding calculated to the ATO Schedule 1 coefficients, superannuation, penalty rates, leave accrual, payslips (emailed or downloaded) and an ABA file for paying staff. Single Touch Payroll is not lodged from OneBookPlus yet, so you still report each pay run to the ATO through STP-enabled software. On the accounting side you get a Payroll Summary report, with super-guarantee accrual and PAYG withholding picked up from your pay runs.

Yes, though the accounting module itself is not on it. Free covers invoicing, quoting, contacts and bookings, which is enough for a sole trader who is not yet registered for GST. The double-entry ledger, bank statement import, and the P&L, GST and BAS reports start at Starter. Further up, multi-currency, fixed assets, tracking categories, GST audit, payment runs with ABA, recurring expenses, CSV journal import and franchise consolidation sit on the higher paid plans, still at a fraction of what Xero charges.

Bookkeeping software covers the day-to-day recording: capturing receipts, coding expenses and keeping the ledger tidy. OneBookPlus Finance includes all of that plus the accounting layer on top: financial statements, BAS and GST workflows, PAYG instalments, TPAR, fixed-asset depreciation, period locks and a library of 328 reports. If you mainly need transaction-level record keeping, or you're choosing a tool for a bookkeeper, start with the bookkeeping page; if you want the full ledger-to-lodgement stack, Finance is the deeper surface. Compare the two on the bookkeeping software page.

You never have to touch the ledger to benefit from it. Day to day you invoice, photograph receipts and record the payments that come in, the same as in any simple app. The double-entry engine works underneath so that when you need a BAS, a P&L for a loan application or a clean handover to a tax agent, the numbers are already right. The Free plan covers invoicing, quotes, contacts and bookings. The ledger and the P&L, GST and BAS reports start at Starter. Trying the invoicing side costs nothing.