Seeking Recommendation: Small Business Software WITHOUT a Monthly Subscription Fee

[Homerun Hitter]

Hi. I cannot overemphasize how much I despise paying a monthly subscription fee for any software program, as if I'm their personal annuity program for the rest of my life. I understand all the business reasons a software company has for doing this, but I resent it. I'm not into pirating or getting software sideways, and do want to support a good software vendor.

Is there a decent accounting/bookkeeping program out there that is either freeware/shareware, or a reasonable one-time purchase for the software? We have a small home-based business that hasn't shown much of a profit in five years, so I'm running a very tight ship and shaving expenses wherever possible. I do our taxes with Turbotax, but Intuit wants me to pay them $35.00 a month till I die for the pleasure of integrating Quickbooks with Turbotax. This is a total deal-breaker for me.

Sorry for the snark. I appreciate any suggestions you may have.

Happy New Year,
Homerun Hitter

[Evan]

If you go to Intuit's website, they will only push their QuickBooks Online product. But they still sell a desktop version that is preferred by many professionals. You can certainly purchase it from any office supply store or Amazon and it'd be a fixed cost. While they do encourage you to upgrade each year, often that is unnecessary. Even if you did, it'd still come out cheaper than the $35/month price tag.

If you're looking for that integration of QBO and TurboTax though, you really don't have much for options as unfortunately that's how Intuit built those products. You'll likely need to manually prepare it from QuickBooks which shouldn't be too big of a challenge.

Good luck!

[Fulcrum]

I run AccountEdge (https://www.accountedge.com/). The base program is a one time buy and the one license can be used for multiple entities. Subscriptions don't start until you get into addons. Also, if I recall correctly, the software is integrated with Shopify.

Note - I am not a reseller of the software, just a satisfied user.