The Big List: The 100

Top Accounting
Software Features
PUBLISHED ON FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2014 BY ADAM BLUEMNER
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Theres really only two qualifiers for inclusion on our list of the top 100 accounting
software features.

If a feature appears here, its either:

Something which every accounting software package simply must have. Or,
Something which offers tremendous benefit when accounting software includes it.

It doesnt matter whether the feature has been a standard part of accounting since the
days of Luca Pacioli or if its on the cutting edge of todays technology. Utility is the
relevant standard.

So, without further ado, here it isour 100 top accounting software features.

Accounts payable
1. Vendor records management
First commandment of accounts payable: Know thy suppliers! Advanced functionality
includes custom vendor fields and quick vendor creation with records cloning.

2. Check printing
There are credit card, ACH, and even digital currency payment options these days.
But checks remain a staple. Customization and batch printing distinguish certain AP
systems.

3. 1099 forms
Uncle Sam wants to know which contractors youve paid. 1099 forms generated by
your AP module help tell him. E-filing is available with many programs.

4. Payment date calculation

Would you rather earn interest on your cash or have your vendors earn it? Automatic
payment date calculation uses vendor terms data to help you hold payments until
required.

5. Suspicious payment alerts

Consecutive payments to the same vendor, on the same date, in the same amount?
Could be a duplicate! Alerts for unusual payment trends help catch these mistakes.

6. EFT support
Avoid reconciliation hassles and cash flow drama with electronic funds transfer
support. Youll even save some trees by cutting down on your check printing.

7. Advance payment scheduling

Youve only got so many fingers to tie strings around. Advance payment scheduling is
just what it sounds likeand a proven remedy for chronic late payment-itis.

8. Accounts payable purchase order

reconciliation
Trust, but verify. Reconciling AP payments to an originating PO adds an important
security safeguard.
9. AP document attachment
Internal documents like purchase orders arent the only ones useful for substantiating
AP payments. Attaching vendor invoices fosters transparency and accountability.

Accounts receivable and

billing
10. Customer accounts management
First commandment of accounts receivable: Know thy customer! And, yes, advanced
functionality also allows for custom fields and quick customer creation with records
cloning.

11. Invoice creation

There are a million and one possible invoice layouts. Thats a scientific fact. Seek
flexibility to present invoices with just the fields you need for shipping, billing, terms,
item, and pricing info.

12. Custom accounts receivable terms

Every accounts receivable record is really a short term loan. Make sure the Bank of
Your Business can easily set the terms and rate of your choice.

13. AR aging reports

Time spares no AR record. Find your receivables senior citizens with due date and
issue date aging reports.

14. Progress billing

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Same could be said for the tricky task of
progress billing! But advanced AR features make timing invoices and tracking
payments easier.

15. Sales attributions

To the victor, go the spoils. And to the seller goes the commission. Or at least the
credit. Agent, location, and departmental sales attribution provide performance
metrics and a mechanism for enabling incentive compensation.

16. Cost of goods sold reporting

Breakdown! Go ahead and give it to me. Granular AR reporting on COGS categories
like shipping, handling, taxes, and tariffs, that is.

17. Account holds

Sometimes the Bank of Your Business needs to pump the breaks on the deadbeats.
Account hold features prevent delivery of goods to customers unlikely to pay.

18. AR comment support

Bart in shipping called your top customer a mean name, so thats why you issued that
credit. Things dont always go as planned. Notate AR exceptions with comments.

19. Recurring invoices

The ability to automatically generate invoices for repeating invoices: Now the number
1 recommended approach for preventing carpal-tunnel in AR clerks!

20. Balance-forward
Back to the future. Easily move old balances into new invoices with balance forward
functionality.

21. Sales tax calculation

Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, & Oregon. They dont collect sales tax.
The other ones do. So do many municipalities. Its complicated, but easier with
automatic calculation tools.

22. Credit card payment support

If you really want to have fun, try reconciling credit card processor transaction records
with open AR records, said no one. Integration tools make the task quicker and, in
some rare cases, automatic.
23. Invoice duplication
Same customer ordered the same product as last week? Why not just copy the invoice
and make the necessary change or two instead of re-entering every last invoice field?

24. Envelopes, receipts, reminders,

credit notes, pack slips
Because invoices arent the only documents that need to be created to fill customer
orders.

25. Estimating and quoting

Pesky customers always wanting to know what stuff will cost before they buy! Save
time by automating the conversion of estimates and quotes into orders and invoices.

26. Email invoicing

Does anyone not have an email address anymore? Pretty safe to assume a big chunk of
your customers would prefer email invoices. And it saves printing and postage. Win-
win!

27. EFT support

Whats not to like about supporting electronic funds transfer payments? Collect
payments faster, reduce uncollected accounts with auto-pay options, and ease
reconciliation tasks.

28. Promotions, coupons, rebates

Eligibility, tracking, redemption. Theres a lot to keep up with to when it comes to
discounting. More robust systems automate much of the administration.

29. RMA support

Returned orders can wreak havoc on your books. Normalize your returns management
record-keeping with built-in features designed to support best practices.

30. Customer credit management

You know whos good for it and who might not be. Flexibly managing maximum
outstanding balances by customer can help reduce uncollected receivables.

Budgeting and forecasting

31. What if scenarios
When the crystal ball isnt perfectly clear, what-if scenario support allows you to
apply changes to revenue and expense drivers and consider the potential financial
impact.

32. Versioning & approvals

Is there a bit of back and forth in your budgeting process? Allow for collaboration,
approvals, and versioning to create budgets everyone can live with.

33. Sales forecasts

Its part art and part science. Consider previous performance, weighted trends,
seasonal patterns, and market changes to better predict sales revenues.

34. Actual variance reporting

Does what it is match up with what it was supposed to be? Software that links
your budgeting tools and general ledger answers that question.

35. Rolling budgets

Should where you are in a calendar year should determine how far out youve
budgeted? Adding a new budgeting period at the conclusion of a completed period
fixes the total length of budgeting visibility.

Cash management
36. Bank reconciliation
Good software imports bank records in real-time. Better software tries to auto-match
bank and accounting records. The best options smoothly handle split payments and
other tricky situations.
37. Cash flow analysis and positioning
Are you prepared for upcoming capital events? Do your accounts hold sufficient cash
to pay the bills? Is free cash earning optimal interest? Cash flow software supplies the
answers.

Fixed assets
38. Multiple depreciation formulas
Is it a necessity for accurate balance sheet valuation and tax optimization to support
the right depreciation method? You bet your assets!

General ledger & financial

reporting
39. Double entry, accrual accounting
Back to the basics. Support for double-entry, accrual-based accounting is an absolute
must for GAAP compliance.

40. Balance sheet

Any accounting software supports balance sheets to report on a businesss financial
condition. Some offer more control over presentation and detail.

41. Profit and loss

Howd you do during X period? The profit and loss statement knows. Like the balance
sheet, P&L vary in different programs by ease of compilation and visual display.

42. Chart of accounts

Generally, you can choose between pre-defined account codes or importing/defining
your own when establishing a chart of accounts. Sorting options and navigation tools
differ between programs.
43. Flexible accounting periods
4/4/5, 52/53. If those numbers carry meaning for you, support for flexible accounting
periods is likely a baseline qualifier for which software will work for you.

44. Departmental tracking

It slices, it dices, it juliennes! Okay, well maybe not juliennes. But dividing revenues
and expenses to departments, locations, and cost center does offer more granular
performance visibility.

45. Inter-company transfers

Transactions between commonly-owned businesses quickly multiply the number of
required journal entries. Avoid mistakes with automatic posting.

46. Automatic reversing entries

Adjusting and reversing entries are easy opportunities for mistakes. Automation helps
move accruals forward without opening the opportunity for human error.

47. Fund accounting

When being accountable is more important than being profitable, theres fund
accounting. Many non-profit and government organizations find it indispensable when
working with grants and allocations.

48. Flexible account codes

Length, starting point, format. Make sure your software allows the account coding
structure you require.

49. Financial statement consolidations

Merge financials to get a clearer view of the road your business is on.

50. Statistical accounts

The fancy term for it is business intelligence. But many accounting programs have
long allowed for the tracking of non-financial data like headcounts and units sold.
 Inventory
51. SKU tracking and stock counts
Managing SKUs and stock counts represents the fundamental basis of any inventory
control system.

52. Bar-coding or RFID

When you move from carrying a little bit of stock to a lot, inventory scanning
technologies like bar-coding and RFID are the ultimate time-savers.

53. Serial number or lot tracking

Thats the one! The ability to recognize not just the type of item, but the specific unit
or batch helps with everything from warranty tracking to avoiding unnecessary recall
costs.

54. Location tracking & movement

history
Location is everything. Well, maybe not everything. But its pretty important when
you want to find and ship the stuff you sold.

55. Product movement history

Track product movement history to optimize handling performance, dissuade potential
thieves, and trace breakage.

56. Price management

Setting pricing on just a handful of products is straightforward. Managing prices on a
large number of items with volume or customer-based discounting requires more
sophisticated controls.

57. Bill of materials, kitting

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts? Must be because it was assembled from
a reliable bill of materials!
58. Stock level alerts
Were almost out of X, time to reorder! Stock level alerts help avoid shortages, back-
orders, and, most importantly, disappointed customers.

59. LIFO, FIFO, average cost options

Finding a program with support for flexible costing isnt hard, but it is important for
minimizing your tax burden.

60. Landed costs

Its not just the cost of your products and supplies that matters. Its also the cost to
acquire and store them. Landed costs help you understand product profitability more
accurately.

61. Unit of measurement conversion

Gallons to pounds. Pallets to cases. Boxes to units. Whatever your conversions are,
pre-defining custom calculations prevents an opportunity to introduce manual errors
and saves time.

Job costing
62. Estimate vs actual reporting
Did you earn the profit you expected to? Tracking costs against the original estimate
lets you see which jobs brought home the bacon.

63. Customizable cost breakdowns

Isolating each individual cost driver in job performance is the first step to reducing
costs. Tracking labor, materials, sub-costs, equipment, and other costs improves job
profitability visibility.

Payroll
64. Check printing
Employees generally wont work for free. Ergo: payroll checks. Customizable stubs
and batch printing options differentiate your options.

65. Federal W2, 940, 941, 944 forms

Forms, forms, and more forms! Any comprehensive payroll software should be able to
create all the forms you need for your payroll tax filing.

66. Tax withholding calculation

Another baseline payroll software capability is automatically calculating
withholdings.

67. Benefits deductions

The ability to properly deduct for 401k, insurance, or other employer provided
benefits is a critical component of any complete payroll program.

6 8. Canadian payroll tax support

North of the border? Support federal and provincial payroll taxes with Canadian tax
tables and forms.

69. State payroll forms

Every state has its own tax rules. But some payroll solutions dont support every
stateor do so only at increased cost.

70. Direct deposit

Do away with lost checks, printing costs, and reconciliation hassles with direct deposit
capability.

71. Time and attendance

Does how much employees work affect how much youre going to pay them?
Integrated time tracking features reduce the time associated with hourly-based
paychecks.

72. Employee self-service

Knock, knock. Its another employee checking on their vacation days or benefits
again. Give the power to the people and save yourself some time on common payroll
questions.

73. Electronic tax filing

Electronic tax filing. Just one more thing you can have your payroll software do for
you, so you dont have to.

74. Prevailing wage and certified payroll

Government contractors often need to submit payroll certification reports to verify
compliance with labor standards. More capable payroll programs automate the
creation of these reports.

75. Tips, vacation pay, bonuses,

commissions
Incentives! Theyre great to get employees performing, but a pain for payroll
administrators. Ease the burden with custom support features for incentive calculation
and application.

Purchasing
76. Purchase orders
Maintain product order histories, avoid duplicate purchases, satisfy supplier
requirements, and create a check and balance for outgoing payments by using
purchase orders.

77. Purchase requisitions

You cant just have anybody buying anything wily-nily! Purchase requisitions create
workflows demanding proper authorization and approval.

78. Auto-generated POs

High demand, high turns, regular supplier? Sounds like a good time to auto-generate
POs based on inventory thresholds.
79. Vendor management
Keeping up with lead times and consolidating orders to take advantage of discounts
are procurement pro maneuvers available to amateurs with the right software.

Security
80. Role-based authentication & user
privileges
Lay down the law on who can do what when and under which conditions.
Authenticating users and granting privileges as required is a cornerstone of good
accounting application security.

81. Audit trails

Sunlight is the greatest disinfectant. Audit trails arent bad either. A key to preventing
fraud is software that captures all account activity and tags it to the originating user.

82. Encryption
Did you know that storing unencrypted credit card data is a big time no-no? PCI
standards forbid it. Protect your customers data and then show off on your website
that youve done so with fancy logos from compliance orgs.

83. Automatic data back-up

Lots of options these days: disk, cloud, tape. Automatic backup functionality helps
turn potential catastrophes into minor annoyances.

84. Locked reporting periods

Protect the past from the future. Lock down and close accounting periods to avoid
issues with accounting irregularities.

System
85. Search tools
Capable and efficient search functionality is a hidden time-saver. Find out what fields
are searchable when talking to vendors. Give yourself extra credit as a savvy buyer, by
asking their existing customers about search speed in a live environment.

86. Import/export
Data migration is about as much fun as a root canal. Forgetting to check on the ease of
migrating data with import/export tools is a good way to lose days or even weeks to
cumbersome manual data input.

87. Web-based
You can use your web browser for just about anything these days. And, guess what,
there are plenty of accounting applications that make use of it too.

88. SaaS
Two propositions for you: 1) Let somebody else handle the software hosting and techy
stuff. 2) Lease rather than buy. If that sounds good, check out software as a service
(SaaS) options for your next accounting system.

89. Unlimited records

Surprise! Some accounting software options have records or data file size limits.
Whether its a hard limit or just one that moves you to another price level, its
something to be aware of.

90. Custom reporting

Your accounting software is a rich source of information about your business. Custom
reporting tools let you fish out the info you need. Front end reporting GUIs spare you
the pain of authoring your own database query statements.

91. Report templating

Doing the exact same work youve already done before. Thats public enemy #1 when
it comes to efficient software. Report templates provide the info you need without
repetitive effort.

92. Multi-currency
Doing business overseas? The ability to store multiple currencies and move between
them is a functionality youll definitely want access to.

93. Integration
So many opportunities for integration needs! APIs can connect CRM, POS, HR,
manufacturing, project management, and many other types of software to your core
accounting system.

94. Mobile apps

If you do business when youre away from your main business workstation, you may
want to ask yourself: Does your accounting software?

95. Approvals management

Configurable workflows and approvals let you manage and authorize processes across
a range of financial activities.

96. Keyboard shortcuts

Every time you reach for your mouse unnecessarily a kitten dies. Ok, maybe not. But
you do get less efficient. For repetitive tasks, shortcuts cut the time and labor costs.

97. Multi-user
Expect to set up individual accounts for multiple users? Expect to pay for multiple
user licenses.

98. Multi-entity
One is supposed to be the loneliest number. But accounting software solutions that
only support one company entity have plenty of company.

99. Graphical management dashboards

1000/1. Last I heard, its still the going rate when exchanging words for pictures.
Quickly share KPI data with top decision makers via graphical management
dashboards.
100. Configurable alerts
If a tree falls and nobody hears it, it still definitely makes a sound. Make sure youre
tuned in and listening for critical business events with conditional alerting.

Dive deeper
Hey, youre still here! 100 accounting software features later and still reading. You
are a true accounting software glutton for punishment, arent you? Impressive!

For even more info on features and functionality, continue reading our software
application guides:

Accounts payable (http://findaccountingsoftware.com/focus-on-

functionality/accounts-payable-software-is-much-more-than-simply-writing-
checks/)
Accounts receivable (http://findaccountingsoftware.com/focus-on-
functionality/accounts-receivable-software-pick-the-right-program-to-manage-
your-billing/)
Budgeting (http://findaccountingsoftware.com/focus-on-
functionality/budgeting-software-plot-a-course-for-financial-success/)
Cash management (http://findaccountingsoftware.com/focus-on-
functionality/cash-management-software-integrate-your-banking-and-
accounting/)
Fixed assets (http://findaccountingsoftware.com/focus-on-functionality/fixed-
asset-management-software-pick-the-right-program-to-manage-assets/)
General ledger ((http://findaccountingsoftware.com/focus-on-
functionality/general-ledger-software-building-a-foundation-for-accounting-
success/)
Inventory (http://findaccountingsoftware.com/focus-on-functionality/inventory-
control-software-managing-your-stock-down-to-the-item/)
Job costing (http://findaccountingsoftware.com/focus-on-functionality/job-
cost-software-promoting-profitability-one-project-at-a-time/)
Payroll (http://findaccountingsoftware.com/focus-on-functionality/payroll-
software-learn-how-you-can-still-save-when-cutting-the-checks/)
Purchasing (http://findaccountingsoftware.com/focus-on-
functionality/purchase-order-software-select-the-right-tool-to-manage-your-
purchasing/)