Business Choice Awards 2017: Accounting Software and Services

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Keeping track of money is something that matters regardless of what your business does or how successful it is. Accounting software and services have replaced paper books, but these solutions have also become much more than simple ledgers.

Accounting software and services can perform billing, payroll, rudimentary customer management, general ledger, accounts payable and receivable, and many times provide related functions such as banking, asset management, and credit card management. Many have add-on modules like inventory tracking and point-of-sale (POS). The primary measures of success of accounting software or service implementation are accuracy and ease of use—doing the job correctly while saving time and simplifying financial management of your company.

So it's no surprise: this edition of our Business Choice Awards focuses on accounting software and services. If you've outgrown jotting down numbers on napkins, you need an accounting software or service.

Our survey asked respondents to rate their overall satisfaction, reliability, and tech support experience with the accounting software or service they use, plus the likelihood they would recommend it to others. The answers are below

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Looking for some expert recommendations? Check out the PCMag Business Software Index Accounting & Finance section, and read The Best Small Business Accounting Software of 2016.

Accounting Software and Services

In this year's survey, PCMag readers nominated over 25 companies, of which six received enough responses to be included as finalists. PeopleSoft from Oracle is the only addition to the finalists that have otherwise been the same since we starting surveying in this category in 2014. This year's winner of the Business Choice Award for best accounting software or service is Sage, which earned top scores in overall satisfaction, reliability, and tech support satisfaction.

PCMag readers who chose to spice things up with Sage rated it the highest overall, as well as in reliability (8.3) and in tech support satisfaction (8.1). Usually such high ratings also carry over to a high likelihood to recommend and NetPromoter Score (NPS)—both generated via the same question of recommendation—but Sage's 7.2 in likelihood to recommend and 7 percent NPS put it behind Quickbooks, recommendation wise. Sage's overall score is fantastic considering last year it only had a 7.2; its 7.8 this year also exceeds that of last year's winner (SAP at 7.4).

If you think these scores seem low, you're right. Traditionally, accounting software and services score on the low side, period. No user is really in love with their accounting solution—accounting is a necessary evil, not something business owners look forward to performing. Plus, accounting providers don't seem to be locked in a hotly contested race for innovation.

It's worth noting that despite that attitude, the numbers this year are mostly an improvement for most players. Microsoft went from an overall 7.0 to 7.6; Quicken from 6.9 to 7.6, and QuickBooks did the best jumping from 6.8 to 7.7. The only lower was SAP, which dropped from first (7.4 in 2015) to worst (6.9).

For the second year in a row, Microsoft at 10 percent had the lowest percentage of respondents requiring tech support while SAP had the most at 44 percent. Our winner, Sage, had 34 percent require tech support, but the best score for tech support satisfaction at 8.1. For the third year in a row, Quicken trails the pack in tech-support satisfaction with a 5.0. No one likes to call Quicken, apparently.

See all of our survey results for accounting software and services.

WINNER: ACCOUNTING

Sage
Last time just a runner-up, now Sage—maker of various premium cloud accounting products like Sage 50C, Sage 300, and many more—is heralded by our readership as the overall best to use for tracking business finances. It also scores high for tech-support quality and software reliability.

Methodology

We email survey invitations to PCMag.com community members, specifically subscribers to our Readers' Choice Survey mailing list. The surveys are hosted by SurveyMonkey, which also performs our data collection. This survey was in the field from November 21, 2016 to December 12, 2016.

Respondents were asked to rate their accounting solutions using multiple questions about their overall satisfaction with the solution, as well as experiences with technical support within the past 12 months.

Because the goal of the survey is to understand how the email marketing solutions compare to one another and not how one respondent's experience compares to another's, we use the average of the email marketing solutions' rating, not the average of every respondent's rating. In all cases, the overall ratings are not based on averages of other scores in the table; they are based on answers to the question, "Overall, how satisfied are you with your accounting software?"

Scores not represented as a percentage are on a scale of 0 to 10 where 10 is the best.

Net Promoter Scores are based on the concept introduced by Fred Reichheld in his 2006 best seller, The Ultimate Question, that no other question can better define the loyalty of a company's customers than "how likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?" This measure of brand loyalty is calculated by taking the percent of respondents who answered 9 or 10 (promoters) and subtracting the percent who answered 0 through 6 (detractors). (For more, read PCMag's Top Consumer Recommended Companies for 2015.)

If you would like to participate in PCMag's monthly Readers' Choice surveys and to be eligible for our monthly sweepstakes promotion, please sign up today.

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