Most accountants train to work with the simplest 

tools that generations of accountants before them

used. However, There may come the point in your career that you will work for a company that too
large or too complicated to stick by this traditional means of accounting.
Luckily, modernization has innovated most of the jobs around the world, and
the accounting profession is no exception to that. Hence, to keep up with other professional, it is
important that one learns about the latest and most common accounting software’s used in the
market.
Why Are Accounting Software Important?
Most accountants engage in hundreds, if not thousands, of transactions every single day.
Furthermore, they would have to summarize and present these transactions with the highest level
of accuracy possible. This rigorousness of their job is because, at the end of the period, these
reports would be a major of basis of future decisions.
Before accounting software existed, they’d have to record each one these transactions of their
books manually. Hence, not only was their job several times harder before, the accuracies of their
reports were highly unreliable. Thanks to accounting software, all these changed.
Most Common Accounting Software
To help you find the best software for you and your business. We’ve listed below 5 of the most
used Accounting software by companies today:
QuickBooks Accounting
QuickBooks is one of the most famous accounting software in the market. California-based
financial software company Intuit released the first version of the software in 1998 to cater for the
need of simplified accounting platforms. Today, QuickBooks, according to the company, holds an
estimated 85% of the retail market.
QuickBooks Online lets you see how your business is doing instantly.
–QuickBooks Website
The software is available in three variants. The first one is the original desktop version of the
software. The desktop-version offered the user various services such as remote payroll assistance
and outsourcing, remote access capabilities, online banking and reconciliation, electronic payment
functions, and more.
QuickBooks also has a cloud-based service called QuickBooks online. The product is available to
users who are willing to pay a monthly subscription which provides them exclusive access to
QuickBooks online platform.
Lastly, QuickBooks Point of Sale is one of the newest offerings of Intuit. It aims to replace
traditional cash registers by offering other functions such as inventory tracking, customer
information, sales, and more.
Xero Accounting
Unlike QuickBooks, the New Zealander Rod Drury and his personal accountant created the
software more recently in 2006  to compete with what he believed were outdated accounting
software in the market.
Xero is offered as a “software as a service” product where users can access the platform by
paying monthly subscriptions. Since its initial release, the product is now available in over 180
countries worldwide.
Some of the major offerings of the software are automatic bank and credit card account feeds,
invoicing, accounts payable, expense claims, fixed asset depreciation, purchase orders, and
standard business and management reporting. Some of which are not available to others.