Comparing accounting software: the checklists, and our own honest answers

These pages are built the same way, and it is worth saying why before you read one. None of them makes a claim about another product — not what it has, not what it costs, not what it dropped last year. Those claims go stale within weeks and are unfair besides; check the other product on its own site, on the day you decide. What each page gives you instead is a checklist of the things that actually decide the choice for a business like yours, and then KRONENWERK's answer to every row, including the rows where the honest answer is no.

Why a checklist beats a feature table

Every vendor's comparison table is written to be won by the vendor who wrote it. The rows are chosen after the winner is known. A checklist written from the buyer's side looks different: it asks what you will actually have to produce in the next twelve months — a valid e-invoice a customer will accept, a document your accountant can work from, a job with forty files attached to it, a tax line a bookkeeper can claim — and then asks each product to show you that thing rather than describe it. The useful question is never "is it on the roadmap" but "show me the document it produces for this case".

The pages, and who they are for

A QuickBooks alternative in Canada is the general checklist for a Canadian business: the two-tax document, the registration numbers, the input-tax-credit thresholds, the accountant's access, and what a migration really involves. Moving on from free invoicing software is for the business that has outgrown a free tool — usually at the moment it registers for a sales tax, starts keeping supplier bills it can claim, and acquires an accountant who wants records. An alternative for a business that runs on jobs is for contractors, studios and workshops where the unit of work is the job, not the invoice; it also states plainly that KRONENWERK has no time tracking, which ends the comparison for anyone who bills by tracked hours.

In Europe, the German checklist covers E-Rechnung in both directions, GoBD-shaped records, the § 14 UStG particulars — and the two rows that send readers elsewhere, DATEV and ELSTER. The European checklist is the equivalent for a business working across several countries. Accounting software with an API and e-invoicing software for developers are for the reader who will integrate rather than click.

The rows we lose on

Four answers are no, and they are printed on the pages rather than buried: there is no DATEV interface and no SKR03 or SKR04 chart; there is no ELSTER filing, so the Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung is made on ELSTER or by your adviser; there is no payroll; and there is no time tracking. There is also no free plan and no trial — the plans are paid from the first month and cancellable at any time. If one of those is your requirement, the honest answer is that another product fits better, and it is cheaper to learn that here than in January.

How KRONENWERK handles this

SUPPORTED WITH LIMITATIONS What it does do: invoices with several taxes on a line, checked against the country's rules before a number is spent; XRechnung, ZUGFeRD and Factur-X issued and validated at issuance, and incoming e-invoices read into bills with the file attached; frozen issued documents, credit notes for corrections, gap-free numbering; receipts, supplier bills and attachments; jobs; multi-currency books; bank connections; an AI assistant with a company-set limit; migration with an approval step and a reversal rule; accountant access. Prices on the pricing page; the switching guide walks through what a move involves.