Business

Best Accounting Software for Australian SMEs 

Shivangi

Aug 20, 2026 1:57 PM IST

Category Business

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Synopsis

Choosing the right accounting software can make GST, BAS, payroll and everyday bookkeeping much easier. Compare Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks Online and Reckon One to find the best fit for your Australian SME.

Accounting software is a software you will use every week, if not every day to write invoices, keep track of your GST and stay out of trouble with the ATO. Get it wrong, and you’re paying for features you’ll never use or too rudimentary once your business starts to scale.

This guide compares the major providers Australian small and medium businesses really use, what they charge, and which one is most likely to be right for your business. All figures below are estimates and change frequently, so best to treat them as a rough ballpark and examine the provider's own pricing page before you put your money down.

What to Look When Selecting Accounting Software for SMEs in Australia

It is useful to have knowledge about what facts matter before a brand comparison. The first one is compliance; after all, your software must track GST, lodge your BAS and STP (if you have employees) as these are directly related to your obligations with the ATO. If the software is written for the Australian market, then they tend to do this seamlessly without workarounds, especially if it is not adapted from a US or UK product.

The second thing is fit. What a sole trader with 4 invoices a month needs is very different from what one needs with staff, stock and more than one bank account. Paying for complex inventory management or advanced job costing is paying money down the drain if you don't need it.

Finally, consider who else reads your books. And if you have a bookkeeper or accountant, ask them which software they are satisfied with because you could save money on their fees and minimize mistakes at tax time. Australian bookkeepers are typically strongest in Xero or MYOB, simply because they’ve been around the longest and have the largest user base.

Xero: The Most Popular Choice

Everybody defaults to Xero, being the accounting platform of choice for most Australian bookkeepers and small businesses largely due to ease of use and connection to many other business apps. Its various plans start at around $37 per month for the most basic option and go all the way up to $143 per month for its higher-end tier, with payroll, GST tracking and BAS lodgement included on every plan, as well as an increasing number of payroll seats between tiers.

For small businesses, the best thing about Xero is its clean simple interface paired with an enormous ecosystem of connected apps covering everything you need from point-of-sale systems to industry-specific tools. It also captures high bills and reconciles with banks, which significantly reduces manual data entry. If you’re a service-based business (or e-commerce seller) and want an actual easy to learn without training, for most people Xero is the safest place to start.

However, when it comes to areas like sophisticated inventory and structured award-based payroll, MYOB has a more extensive offering than Xero. Xero will be fine if your business is simple and you’re just invoicing clients, tracking expenses and running basic payroll. If you are managing stock levels, or complex pay conditions, Xero’s inventory capabilities should be carefully checked before deciding Xero does everything you want.

MYOB: A payroll and inventory heavy solution

MYOB has a deep seat in local payroll and compliance, offering software for Australia since 1991. They’re a little more expensive than Xero’s entry-level plans, at about $26 to $70 a month for Business Lite and Pro (with payroll charged on a per-individual basis in addition). MYOB also has more advanced software for businesses with more complex needs, such as AccountRight Plus and Premier (which cost $165 and $210 a month) with unlimited payroll and stronger inventory tools.

Once the payroll gets complicated, that’s where MYOB’s true strength is. MYOB’s payroll engine is more intuitive than Xero’s for that particular task when you’re a business dealing with awards, penalty rates or mixed conditions of employees. An offline desktop version through AccountRight is also available, which matters to businesses operating in patchy internet areas (like construction sites or rural operations).

The trade-off is that MYOB does not look as good as Xero, and that some learners take longer to learn. MYOB learning curve is a bit steeper than others which make MYOB really worth it to use especially for product-based businesses that require proper inventory tracking, or businesses with complicated payroll requirements.

Xero vs MYOB, which is better?

There is no clear winner either way, it depends on what your actual business does day to day. Xero usually comes out ahead for ease of use, has a cleaner interface, and the biggest marketplace for connected apps by far which is relevant if you are using POS systems, project management apps or e-commerce platforms alongside your accounting software.

MYOB will come out when you hold stock, have complex award payroll conditions or need offline functionality. MYOB payroll depth can save real time at pay run if you are in any way a tradesman, retailer with physical stock or business owner employing some mix of casual, part-time and full-time staff at differing pay rates.

For most simple small business-type industries, service providers, freelancers, consultants & small teams who do not maintain stock then Xero is probably the more comfortable daily option. For businesses with physical products or complex staffing, it makes sense to trial both before committing, the free trial periods offered by most providers are sufficient enough for you to get a true taste of either platform.

QuickBooks Online: A Third Contender

Intuit’s QuickBooks is very popular globally, but has a much smaller mindshare and market share among Australian accountants and bookkeepers vs. Xero or MYOB. Monthly rates for its Australian plans start at the basic-level Simple Start plan (in reality, as low as $33 a month) to about $84 per month for the Plus plan, which adds inventory and project monitoring. For example, payroll is not included in the main subscription but available via an integration with Employment Hero that does handle STP and superannuation, albeit at extra cost.

If you are already familiar with QuickBooks from working overseas it can also make quick sense if a feature set in full sync is more suited to your workflow than Xero or MYOB. The downside for Australian users is the lack of specialists in it compared to Xero, which means getting help might be a little more effort, and its tools for BAS and GST are functional but not as deeply embedded into everyday workflow as Xero’s.

Reckon One: An Affordable, True Australian Alternative

Reckon is an Australian-built option that doesn’t seem to get the same traction as the big three, but it’s ATO-registered, STP compliant and much cheaper too. Reckon One, for example, starts from about $24 per month for the core accounting functionality with payroll only available as an additional cost module, allowing you to pay only for what you use.

But for those operating as sole traders or micro-businesses with uncomplicated requirements when it comes to invoicing, expense categorisation, handling of GST and BAS, then the essentials offered by Reckon come in cheaper than Xero or MYOB. That’s a reasonable choice if keeping software costs low with complete compliance is your aim, but its app ecosystem and bookkeeper familiarity are smaller in scale compared to the household names, meaning less support may be available.

Accounting Software	Starting Price*	Best For	Main Strength
Xero	~$37/month	Small businesses & service businesses	Easy to use and large app ecosystem
MYOB	~$26/month	Businesses with employees & inventory	Strong payroll and inventory tools
QuickBooks Online	~$33/month	Small businesses & international users	Good all-round accounting features
Reckon One	~$24/month	Sole traders & micro-businesses	Affordable and simple

The Best Free Accounting Software for Small Businesses in Australia

Most free tools are extremely basic, limited to simple invoicing only or simply a free trial of full-functioning paid plans after a period, so true “free” accounting software for Australian businesses is a rarity. If you’re an extremely early-stage sole trader with basically no transactions happening, all of the basic invoicing tools (which are a lot less comprehensive than bookkeeping software) offer free tiers but once your business outgrows them they won’t be able to handle GST, BAS and payroll correctly.

Most of the time it makes more sense to start with the cheapest paid plan that supports correct GST tracking and BAS lodgement right off the bat rather than chasing free software. Having your records set up correctly from the start means a huge amount of cleanup later on, and the entry-level products from Xero, MYOB or Reckon will not cost enough to be the deciding factor for all but the smallest businesses.

Different Software Requirements for Sole Traders and Companies

A sole trader without any employees typically requires a fraction of what a corporate entity with staff needs. All the basics: simple invoicing, expense tracking and BAS lodgement are all that’s really required which is why most entry-level plans from Xero, MYOB or Reckon are suited towards sole traders without paying for features they’ll never utilize along with sole-trader-specific tools like Rounded.

If you have employees, any business needs software configured to correctly manage Single Touch Payroll which is the new legal requirement we must abide by for real-time reporting of wages, tax and super to the ATO. This typically means upgrading to a mid-tier plan on your platform of choice, as entry-level plans are often limited in the number of employees payroll is able to process.

Inventory and job-costing functions are truly value-added, rather than an optional extra if your business owns shares in a larger mother company or runs multiple cost centres. This is typically where moving to a more premium tier for MYOB or the Comprehensive and Ultimate plans with Xero becomes pricier than remaining on a basic plan.

What “ATO-Compliant” Actually Means

ATO compliant, in software means that the software can lodge BAS (business activity statement) lodgments electronically and report payroll via Single Touch Payroll, both connecting to ATO systems directly instead of manually processing paperwork. As all of the platforms we cover here, Xero, MYOB (Review), QuickBooks Online and Reckon, are ATO registered for STP and support BAS lodgement there shouldn’t be any need to choose between platforms based solely on compliance.

What is different is the smoothness with which that compliance gets folded into day-to-day use. For some platforms, GST and BAS information is popped all the way to the desktop during regular business as you go which makes lodging quarterly almost automatic whereas others require a little more elbow grease in filing before submission. If this is important to you, the way to test it is with a free trial directly of the BAS and payroll screens rather than just taking marketing claims.

Wrapping Up: How to Decide

Start with what your business does, not what looks fancy. If you are a service, sole trader or small team with no stock, then Xero is fairly simple to use and Reckon is better value in terms of pricing estimates are approx. If you have inventory or complex payroll, MYOB is worth the slightly higher learning curve. Get it now: almost every provider has a free trial, and two weeks of real-life testing will tell you far more than a comparison table like this.