Software Development

How to Develop an Accounting Software – A Step-by-Step Guide in 2024

how to develop an accounting software
Finding it hard to track your financial performance? You require some scalable and affordable enterprise software solutions if you are overwhelmed with manual bookkeeping, preparing for tax season, categorizing expenses, and managing cash flows. Having personal accounting software for your business is inevitable in recent times. You can hire dedicated developers to develop custom accounting software to perform cash flow analysis, invoicing, payroll processing, preparing income/expense statements, and tax compliance.
However, to create an accounting software needs knowledge about accounting software app development and UI/UX designs. The blog is going to help you understand the key aspects of accounting software development and the best practices that can be implemented to create robust accounting solutions.

What is accounting software?

Accounting software is a tool that helps accountants to record and report the company’s financial transactions. It is a computer program with custom accounting solutions to help business owners save time and minimize errors. With custom software, you can automate accounting tasks, track inventory, generate financial statements, and manage projects. You can install this software on your PC. 

Small enterprises can now scale their business operations and enjoy profitability from accounting software. It has helped them decrease costs and receive alerts from software, saving time, workload, and cash. In the past two decades, the accounting software market has evolved considerably. It now offers cloud-based accounting software solutions. According to Mordor Intelligence research, the accounting software market is projected at USD 19.74 bn in 2024, rising to USD 30.66 bn in 2029, with a CAGR 9.20%.

Why do you need an accounting software?

Reason to Develop Accounting Software
Accounting software can provide numerous solutions to your growing business. It can enrich your financial performance and improve accounting operational stability. As your business grows, you can scale your custom software and ensure the security of client data. So let us know some of the top benefits of having accounting software in your office.

Automates tasks

Accounting enterprise software can help you focus on the core business profitability. It can automate repetitive tasks and save you time from doing data entry, manual invoicing, and other similar processes.

Easy access to company data

Your accounting software can give you easy access to all company information, gathering and saving data. It provides real-time insights into the company’s financial health, allowing you to make better and more informed decisions.

Minimizes financial risks

Doing manual calculations and preparing reports is always time-consuming. It can lead to human errors and legal issues. With robust accounting software, you can reduce errors and make your financial statements and payroll processes accurate and flawless.

Increases accounting efficiency

Building a custom accounting software solution can improve the financial operations of your business, enhancing profitability and growth.

Reduces costs

With accounting software, you will find dramatically observing the decreasing administrative costs of paperwork, processes, documentation, and reconciliation. All these tasks can be done efficiently through the software.

Different types of accounting software

Types of Accounting Software
There are various categories of accounting software. Custom accounting software can be created in various forms, giving your business many benefits. Some of the most adopted types of accounting software are:

ERP (enterprise resource planning) Software

ERP software includes custom accounting modules including various business operations like human resources, supply chain management, and procurement. It gives your business a holistic view of financial health.

Financial Accounting Software

Financial accounting software performs transactions and can manage processes. It can manage financial processes and various fiscal aspects, and provide record-keeping. Some are web-based software that helps in financial tracking, documentation, and handling deposits and invoices.

Project Accounting software

This accounting software can handle the financial aspects of your project, track ongoing costs, and revenues, and provide profitable solutions. It can manage your project costs by focusing on budget, invoicing, tracking expenses, and providing financial reporting regularly.

Tax accounting software

A tax accounting software helps in simplifying tax-related calculations including returns. It tracks individual tax history, highlighting their irregularity in tax payments and holding them accountable for tax evasion.

Billing and invoicing software

This type of accounting software can create invoices, manage receivables, and track payments, helping companies to monitor financial position. With billing and invoicing software, you can track international payments and receipts globally as it covers all currency types and creates invoices according to the country’s financial regulations and standards.

Payroll accounting software

Payroll accounting software can handle workers’ payments and other issues like insurance, taxes, bonuses, and reimbursements. It provides error-free payroll processing, accomplishing all tasks on time. It can also be used for tax withholdings, wage calculation, and payroll outflow.

Main Features of Accounting Software

Using software development services can help you get the below top features in your accounting software.

Payroll processing

It involves employee management, the calculation of salaries, taxes, and deductions. This software can help you track employee working hours and generate flawless paychecks. It ensures payment is done on time, along with properly accounted taxes and deductions.

Reports and analytics

Effective accounting software can generate insightful and analytical reports to ensure the company’s financial stability. It includes income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow management. Businesses can track areas of improvement and can make informed decisions on investments and expenses.

Accounts payable and receivable management

This feature facilitates businesses in tracking payments and receivables. You will know who owes money like suppliers through accounts payable and how much your customers owe you. Through software automation, you can streamline the entire payment process and send reminders for payments.

Inventory management

The inventory management feature helps perform several functions such as asset management, stock movements, sales monitoring, etc. As an entrepreneur, you can track your products in stock, those that are sold quickly, and those that need replenishment frequently. With this feature, you get real-time inventory updates. It can also generate purchase orders and prevent stockouts.

Tax Preparation

A robust accounting software can help you prepare and file tax returns regularly. It will enable you to calculate tax liabilities, generate tax forms, and file returns online. It also alerts you about the deadlines and guides you about tax compliance.

Budgeting and forecasting

This feature creates financial plans and provides future projections. It sets financial goals, forecasts revenue, and expenses, and makes effective budgeting. It gives you insights into business operations and checks financial situation.

Expenses tracking

Expense tracking is a special feature that helps you track various expenses like bank payments, reconciliations, employee salaries, and various outgoing transactions to help you know the types of costs.

How to build an Accounting Software?

Steps to develop an accounting software
It has been almost 10 years of building effective accounting software solutions for our clients. As a reputed fintech app development company, we know developing accounting software is a complex process. We break it down into six simple steps. 

Market Analysis

At the onset, you need to browse various web pages of service providers and understand what they offer. At this stage, you must consider various aspects such as identifying the problem, finding the needs of the target audience, determining the features and functionality of your software, and understanding its viability. To know more about its business viability and future, you take the next step.

Project Planning

To create accounting software, you need to plan the project. It includes features, budgeting, and fixing the timeline. You must check the key functions of the software and determine what money should be invested. For that, you can hire experts to help you determine the project timeline.

Creating Designs

The next step involves creating a suitable design for your software. It includes checking out with references, knowing customer persona, exploring current accounting design trends, and developing an intuitive UI/UX design. We suggest you create a mindmap and wireframes to establish a perfect view of your customer preferences. Creating a clickable prototype can prove effective at this stage.

Develop MVP

After finalizing the UX design, the next step is to develop an MVP (minimum viable product). This is a functional version of accounting software. It contains all the necessary elements that are needed to test your product. It includes the top features that you want to give and the functions that you need to provide. At this stage, you must not overload your product with more features and should go with the most important ones. 

Software Testing

Before using your accounting software, you must rigorously test it with a quality assurance team. It can help you ensure all the aspects of your app function properly and are as per the requirements. It will also help you check the flow, bugs, and security issues if any before you launch your product. 

Releasing the app

The final step involves the software release and getting relevant feedback from the users. The feedback will help you track areas of improvement and make necessary changes. Post-release app maintenance is crucial. Make sure it is regularly updated to keep it functional, relevant, and fast. 

What is the cost of developing an Accounting software?

Several factors influence the cost of developing accounting software. They can be:
  • Software complexity and advanced customization
  • Features and functionalities
  • Integration with other systems like CRM or ERP
  • Location of software development company and hourly rates

The cost of developing accounting software ranges from $50000 to $100000.

Conclusion

Choosing a reliable accounting software development company can help you promote organic business growth. Their team of experts has the skill to resolve complex software development challenges and provide customized solutions to meet your business goals.
Whitelotus Corporation is a leading Fintech app development company delivering robust accounting software solutions. You can hire dedicated developers from Whitelotus Corporation to build small and large-scale enterprise software systems. We know how to harness the tools and functionalities of various technologies to create the best solutions that will meet your expectations.

FAQs

It varies based on your business requirements. Many factors play a role here like the complexity of features you need, development methodology, and much more. On average, it takes three to six months to develop good and reliable accounting software.
Yes, you can. To create accounting software for your own business needs top skills and high expertise. You can hire dedicated developers from Whitelotus Corporation to build effective and business-driven accounting software.

Author

  • Sunil Chavda

    Sunil is a result-orientated Chief Technology Officer with over a decade of deep technical experience delivering solutions to startups, entrepreneurs, and enterprises across the globe. Have led large-scale projects in mobile and web applications using technologies such as React Native, Flutter, Laravel, MEAN and MERN stack development.

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