Free Bookkeeping Software for Consultants

Overview

Free bookkeeping software for consultants is a small market once you read the pricing pages properly. Of the five platforms checked on 2 November 2026, only two publish a plan that costs nothing indefinitely. The other three publish trials, and a trial is not a free plan no matter how the marketing reads.

That distinction matters more for a consultant than for most businesses, because a consultancy's bookkeeping load is low but continuous. A handful of invoices a month, a steady trickle of expenses, and one annual reconciliation. That is exactly the workload a free plan can carry, provided the free plan does not cap invoices, cap clients, or hide the bank feed behind a paid tier.

This page covers what the five platforms actually publish, and it deliberately does not repeat the paid comparison, which prices the same vendors on total monthly cost once client volume grows. The question here is narrower: which of these is free, and what does free leave out?

Every figure was read from the vendor's own pricing page on 2 November 2026. Two platforms publish a genuinely free edition, three publish trials only, and the details that decide the choice are the caps rather than the price.

What "free" means in bookkeeping software

Four different things get described as free in this category, and only one of them is free.

Free forever. A plan with no end date and no card required. Wave Starter and Zoho Books Free both qualify, with conditions attached.

Free trial. Full access for a fixed period, then either a subscription or a locked account. Xero, QuickBooks and FreshBooks all sit here, with trials of 30 days where stated.

Free with a revenue ceiling. Zoho Books Free is genuinely free, but only while annual revenue stays under 50,000 US dollars. That is a real free plan with a real boundary, and a consultant who crosses it should expect to move.

Free because you are not using the expensive part. This is the subtlest one. Both genuinely free plans include the core bookkeeping and exclude the automatic bank feed. You are not paying money; you are paying in manual entry time.

Reading the four definitions in order explains most of the confusion in this category. A comparison that lists five "free" bookkeeping tools is usually listing two free plans and three trials.

The five options compared

All figures read on 2 November 2026 from each vendor's pricing page.

Wave: genuinely free, with the bank feed moved to Pro

Wave's Starter plan is 0.00 and it is not a trial. It allows unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping records, invoicing through the mobile app, and a dashboard that combines cash flow and customer information.

What it does not include is the part most consultants assume they are getting. The pricing page lists automatic bank import, automatic merging and categorisation of transactions, the reporting dashboard, logo and brand colours on invoices, invoice attachments and reusable message templates as Pro features. Live chat and email support are also tied to having an optional add-on, with Pro the only plan that includes support outright.

For a consultant, that means the free plan is a manual-entry bookkeeping system. You can enter transactions, produce invoices and keep records indefinitely at no cost, but you will type your bank activity in rather than importing it. Whether that is acceptable depends entirely on volume: at fifteen transactions a month it is a few minutes of work, and at two hundred it is not.

Pro costs 19.00 US dollars per month billed monthly or 190.00 per year billed annually, and it is charged per business rather than per owner. A Wave account can hold several business profiles, and each one on Pro is billed separately, which is worth knowing if you run a practice alongside your own consultancy.

Two further details are published plainly. Approval to accept online payments is subject to eligibility criteria including identity verification and credit review, so the payment feature is not automatic. And cancellation takes effect at the end of the billing period in which you cancel, with prices excluding tax.

Zoho Books Free: the most generous free plan, with a revenue ceiling

Zoho Books publishes the most complete free plan in this comparison, and the most clearly documented limits.

The Free plan is 0.00 per organisation per month for one user plus one accountant, with email support. It includes creating invoices, quotes, expenses and journals, receipt and document autoscans, sales receipts, vendor management, mileage tracking, accepting online payments, a self-service customer portal, automated payment reminders, bank reconciliation, recurring invoices, W-9 management, 1099 contractor tracking and filing, and profit and loss, balance sheet and 50 or more reports.

The published caps are unusually specific, which makes the plan easy to evaluate. Up to 1,000 invoices a year. Up to 1,000 expenses a year. Five scheduled reports. Fifty receipt autoscans a month. Add-ons are not supported on the free plan except document autoscans. And the plan is available indefinitely only while revenue for the financial year does not exceed 50,000 US dollars.

That last condition is the one to read twice. Zoho Books Free is not a trial and not a feature-limited demo; it is a real accounting system with a revenue boundary. A consultant billing under 50,000 dollars a year fits inside it comfortably. One billing more should treat the free plan as a starting point rather than a destination.

There is one important omission that matches Wave's pattern. The feature list for the Free plan includes bank reconciliation, while connecting bank feeds is listed as a Standard plan feature. Reconciliation is the process; the feed is the automation. So the free plan reconciles transactions you enter, rather than pulling them from your bank automatically.

Standard costs 20.00 per month or 15.00 per month billed annually with three users, and that is where bank feeds, custom reports, sales tax tracking and API access begin. Zoho Books also offers a 14 day trial of the paid editions if you want to test the difference before paying.

Xero: no free plan and a 20 invoice cap on the entry plan

Xero publishes no free plan and no free edition. Anyone describing Xero as free bookkeeping software is describing a promotion, not a price.

The entry plan is Early at 27.00 per month, and its published limits are the interesting part. Early includes sending quotes and 20 invoices, with the invoice limit applying to both approving and sending invoices, plus five bills. Xero also notes that transactions initiated by app partners may automatically contribute to the invoice limit, which is a detail that surprises people who connect a CRM or a project tool.

For a consultant, 20 invoices is not a month of work in most practices. It is closer to a quarter or two, which means Xero's entry plan is priced for someone with very few clients rather than someone replacing a bookkeeping habit. Growing at 59.00 per month removes that cap, and Established at 97.00 per month adds multi-currency, project time and cost tracking, and expense and mileage claims.

Xero does advertise a substantial promotion, with 90 per cent off the base plans for the first six months under an offer stated to end on 2 November 2026, the day this was read. Promotions are the reason a platform can look free in a comparison and cost 27.00 per month six months later. Subscriptions auto-renew monthly until cancelled, and Xero states that moving to a less expensive plan is only possible one month after an upgrade.

There are no per-user licence fees, which is genuinely unusual and worth noting for a consultant who works with an accountant. Optional extras include auto-reconcile at 5.00 per month on Early and Xero Payroll powered by Gusto at 36.00 per month plus 6.00 per employee or contractor. All prices exclude tax.

QuickBooks Online: a 30 day trial and an entry plan at 38.00

QuickBooks Online offers a 30 day free trial and a 50 per cent discount for the first three months, and publishes no separate free plan on its pricing page.

Simple Start, described as for starting small, is 38.00 per month at list price and includes one user with access for two accountants. Essentials is 85.00 per month with three users, Plus is 140.00 per month with five users, and Advanced is 340.00 per month with 25 users and three accountant seats.

One oddity is worth recording rather than glossing over. The Simple Start description on the pricing page reads "Everything in Free, and", which implies a free tier exists somewhere in the product line. No free plan and no free-plan limits are published on the same page, so this article does not claim one. If a free QuickBooks tier exists, its limits are not documented where a buyer would look, and a consultant should not plan around it.

Two published details matter for a consultancy. Automated bank feeds are listed among the accounting features, so unlike the two genuinely free plans above, the paid entry tier includes the automation. And the page states plainly that there is no annual contract and you can cancel anytime, which is a meaningful contrast with platforms that sell twelve month commitments.

Bill payment includes free ACH within the monthly allotment, with 0.50 US dollars per standard ACH transaction over it. Prices exclude tax.

FreshBooks: a 30 day trial and 5 clients on the entry plan

FreshBooks publishes no free plan either. It offers a 30 day free trial with no credit card required and no contracts, and states that after the trial your invoices, expenses and bank transactions are stored in case you upgrade later, with any connected bank account severed until you resume.

The entry plan is the one to study. Lite is 23.00 US dollars per month and sends invoices to 5 clients. Plus is 43.00 per month for 50 clients, and Premium is 70.00 per month for unlimited clients. An 80 per cent discount for four months is currently advertised on the monthly plans, which brings Lite to 4.60 and Plus to 8.60, and that promotion is exactly the kind of pricing that gets described as free elsewhere.

Five clients is a genuine constraint for a consultant, and it is not a usage cap that can be stretched. It is a client count. A consultant with six active clients is on Plus, which is 43.00 per month at list. That is the honest arithmetic, and it is why the paid comparison on this site prices these platforms on real client volume rather than on the advertised entry tier.

Add-ons are priced separately: team members at 11.00 per month per user, advanced payments at 20.00 per month, and payroll at 40.00 per month plus 6.00 per month per user. None of these are required to invoice clients.

What the free plans actually include

A named summary, because this is the section that decides the purchase.

Wave Starter is 0.00 with unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping records, invoicing through the mobile app, and a combined cash flow and customer dashboard. Excluded: automatic bank import, automatic transaction merging and categorisation, the reporting dashboard, invoice branding, attachments and reusable message templates. Support requires an optional add-on. Online payments are available at 2.9 per cent plus 0.60 US dollars per credit card transaction and 3.4 per cent plus 0.60 US dollars per Amex transaction, subject to approval.

Zoho Books Free is 0.00 per organisation per month for one user plus one accountant, with email support. Included: invoices, quotes, expenses and journals, receipt and document autoscans, sales receipts, vendor management, mileage tracking, online payments, a self-service customer portal, payment reminders, bank reconciliation, recurring invoices, W-9 management, 1099 tracking and filing, and 50 or more reports. Caps: 1,000 invoices a year, 1,000 expenses a year, 5 scheduled reports, 50 receipt autoscans a month, and free only while annual revenue stays under 50,000 US dollars.

Xero, QuickBooks Online and FreshBooks publish no free plan. Their trials are 30 days at QuickBooks and FreshBooks, and no trial length is stated on the Xero pricing page that was read. None of the three should be described as free bookkeeping software.

The payment fees that survive the free plan

This is the part of free bookkeeping that costs money, and it is the same for everyone. The software can be free; taking card payments is not.

Wave publishes its rates directly: 2.9 per cent plus 0.60 US dollars per credit card transaction and 3.4 per cent plus 0.60 US dollars per Amex transaction on the free plan. Pro reduces the fixed element to zero for the first ten transactions in a monthly period, then returns to 0.60. Wave also notes that Discover processing is only available to US customers and that approval depends on identity verification and credit review.

Zoho Books includes accepting online payments on the free plan and advertises earning 1 per cent back in Zoho Credits for every card transaction accepted, with terms applying. The pricing page read on 2 November 2026 does not publish a transaction fee schedule, so this page does not quote one.

The practical point for a consultant is that the payment fee is charged on money you receive, not on the software you use. A consultant invoicing 5,000 dollars a month through card payments pays more in processing than most paid bookkeeping plans cost, which is why choosing free software is not the same as choosing a free stack.

What a consultant actually needs from free bookkeeping

Three requirements decide whether a free plan is enough, and they are not the same as the feature list.

Manual entry is viable at low volume. Both genuinely free plans expect you to enter or reconcile transactions rather than import them. At a consultancy's transaction volume that is realistic. The moment it stops being realistic, the cost of the upgrade is smaller than the value of the hours.

The invoice cap matters more than the price. Zoho Books Free allows 1,000 invoices a year, which no solo consultant will approach. Xero's paid entry plan allows 20, which many will exceed in a quarter. A cap that arrives before the end of the year is a subscription in disguise.

Client counts are the other cap. FreshBooks Lite invoices 5 clients. That is a hard boundary on the shape of a practice, not a usage allowance.

The pattern is consistent across the five. Free plans are limited by what they exclude, and paid plans are limited by what they count. A consultant should read the counting rules first, because those are the ones that force a decision mid-year.

For the wider picture, the paid bookkeeping comparison prices the same platforms once volume grows, the accounting comparison for small agencies covers the full monthly bill, the Wave review goes deeper on that platform, and the exit terms for accounting software covers what leaving costs. The invoicing hub holds the rest.

Frequently asked questions