As an accountant, managing client relationships and keeping track of important financial information is crucial to the success of your business. That’s why finding the best CRM software for accountants is essential to streamlining your processes and improving overall efficiency. With a multitude of options available, it can be overwhelming to determine which CRM software is the right fit for your specific needs. In this article, we will explore some of the top CRM software options for accountants, highlighting key features and benefits to help you make an informed decision.
The best CRM for accountants is Hubspot: It’s simple and easy to use, offers a huge range of accounting-specific integrations needed to work with your existing software, and automation tools that will help you standardize and streamline your team’s workflows, leaving them with more time for clients.
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Accountants need dependable access to a business’s financial transactions to do their jobs. The best CRM systems make that simple by offering the customization tools and automations needed to craft the perfect process. To figure out which top CRM solutions are best for accountants, our testing and research team got hands-on with 13 platforms.
Read on for a summary of our findings, from examples of each software’s interface to explanations of the accounting integrations each has to offer.
In this guide:
Best CRMs for Accountants: At-a-Glance
The five CRMs in this guide range in starting costs from $9 to $25 per user, per month. Some plans are more limited than others, however.
Before we explain each offering in more depth, take a look at this quick comparison table to see which option catches your eye. Then, keep reading to find out if it delivers on that promise.
Best CRMs for Accountants: Reviews
Every single CRM below integrates with the two most commonly used accounting software: QuickBooks and Xero. However, there’s a lot more that goes into making a CRM perfect for an accountant.
5 CRMs for Accounting:
- HubSpot – best for small accountancy firms
- Zoho – best for customer support
- Freshsales – best for detailed reporting
- Salesforce – best for automations
- Pipedrive – best for large accountancy firms
Why Hubspot is a great choice for accountancy firms
Hubspot delivers on all the core functions that accountants will need: The user interface is easy to navigate and collaborate through, and it has a raft of easy ways to collect valuable customer data, from web forms and a chatbot to email campaign creation tools.
You’ll be able to connect to your business’s QuickBooks Online account with a data sync, allowing you to access and work on the same contacts, products, and invoices across platforms. You’ll get a similar end-to-end visibility with the Hubspot Xero integration as well, which syncs expensing, syncs invoicing, and lets you import and categorize all recent bank transactions with a single click.
Some of HubSpot’s accounting limitations can be addressed with the right integrations. For example, Hubspot invoices will not charge taxes, but QuickBooks Online users can overcome this by creating invoices with tax charges in QuickBooks and syncing the data with Hubspot after the fact.
HubSpot’s ticket management process keeps all service issues in one place. Source: Duanetoops testing
Hubspot does come with a host of downsides worth mentioning, however: The free plan has no live tech support, limits file storage to five documents, and has mandatory Hubspot branding across specific utilities like its web forms. Plus, the free plan recently rolled back its user cap, and now supports a maximum of two users, down from five.
You can check out our full Hubspot CRM review for more specifics on interface flexibility and more.
Hubspot pricing
Once you outgrow the free plan, Hubspot offers a lot of paid plans to choose from: They have individual sales, service, and marketing plans starting at $15 per month, as well as a bundled CRM suite plan starting from $20 per month.
On top of that, they have a website-focused CMS plan. For more details, you can visit our Hubspot pricing guide.
Why Zoho is a great choice for accountancy firms
Accountants that priorize their business’s customer service will thrive with Zoho, since it filters cases by how complex they are, allowing for rapid response times, and it offers broad customization tools that ensure the most useful data is always on hand.
Zoho also stands out for the customer service it offers, particularly in comparison to Hubspot: Both platforms are aimed at tiny companies, but Hubspot Free doesn’t have email or live chat, while Zoho offers increasing levels of live support across all paid plans. The trade-off is the cost, since Zoho is not free.
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Starting with Standard — Zoho’s cheapest paid plan — users will have access to the standard CRM tools they need, including workflow conversion, email insights, and up to five CRM Marketplace integrations including QuickBooks and Xero. Fields and reports can be customized with any paid plan, as well. All inventory management tools are withheld for the higher-priced Professional plan, however, which will impact inventory accounting efforts.
The Autopilot feature, available in Helpdesk on Zoho CRM, helps a business shape personalized customer journeys. Source: Duanetoops testing
Zoho pricing
Zoho offers a main CRM that has five plans in total. After a limited free plan, you’ll pay $14 per user, per month for Standard, $23 per user, per month for Professional, $40 per user, per month for Enterprise, and $52 per user, per month for Ultimate.
The free plan is limited to three users and does not include any CRM marketplace integrations, so we don’t recommend it for accountants who depend on integrating QuickBooks, Xero, or similar accounting solutions.
For more details on Zoho’s plans (as well as their other standalone CRM, Bigin), check out our Zoho pricing guide.
Freshsales
Best for detailed reporting
Freshsales offers comprehensive marketing and sales tools at low prices, all within a software platform that’s easy to use and customize. Our research team was particularly impressed with its automated lead scoring algorithm, as well as its complex reporting — two tools that accountants are likely to find a lot of use for.
Why Freshsales is a great choice for accountancy firms
Freshsales will automatically score leads by using trends from past sales data, as well as any rules the user wants to add. Depending on the rules you set, you can identify high-intent leads, automate outreach to cut down on manual effort, or reduce first-response time in order to boost efficiency.
In addition to its QuickBooks and Xero integrations, Freshsales offers additional accounting-related integrations with the fundraising and donation platform Revv, invoicing and subscriptions service Zuora, and OpenCart, for bi-directional customer data syncing.
Our research team determined the platform has a few downsides, but they’re specific enough that they may not apply to your business needs: Social media integrations are limited, customization does not get notably better across higher-priced plans, and marketing contacts are capped at 1,000, regardless of the plan.
Users can add a deal in Freshsales by filling out a field. Source: Duanetoops testing
Freshsales pricing
Freshsales starts at just $9 per user, per month for its Growth plan. Costs quickly rise with the next plan, Pro, which costs $39 per user, per month. A final plan, Enterprise, is available at $59 per user, per month.
Growth offers email templates, custom fields, basic workflows, a mobile app, and 24/5 support, while Pro adds lead scoring, more advanced fields and reports, multiple sales pipelines, and a suite of AI tools that accomplish tasks like writing sales emails and enhancing existing text.
Salesforce
Best for automations
Salesforce offers a “flow builder” that can automate any record within its platform, making it a top choice for users who love to set up time-saving processes. Advanced tech nerds will love the developer sandbox and unlimited custom applications, both of which are available starting with the Pro Suite — and neither of which are offered by more simple rivals like the less-customizable Freshsales.
Why Salesforce is a great choice for accountancy firms
Salesforce is packed with data visualization functionality, and accountants who need up-to-the-minute data can craft their own custom dashboards with the exact graphs, charts, and listicals they need.
Salesforce is built to support custom automations to streamline all core functions, from lead management to marketing campaigns, pipeline management, and activity tracking. Sales forecasting, analysis, and reporting can also be automated, saving accountants valuable time when surfacing insights.
The Salesforce interface might be overcrowded, but it offers customizable dashboards, so your most important charts are front and center. Source: Duanetoops testing
The software’s less positive aspects include an overcrowded interface and limited live support, as well as a tendency to save helpful marketing and lead generation tools for its more costly plans. Plus, our researchers noted a lack of responsiveness and some error messages while testing the data import process in the brand’s Lighting interface.
The visual sales pipeline and lead scoring tools aren’t available on the Salesforce Starter and Pro plans, so businesses that need a CRM for handling lead generation may want to consider Freshsales for its lead scoring algorithm. Still, Salesforce remains one of the biggest and most feature-rich platforms in CRM.
Salesforce pricing
Salesforce isn’t cheap. Its Sales Cloud plans start at $25 per user, per month for Starter Suite and go from there: Pro Suite is $100 per user, per month; Enterprise is $165 per user, per month; and Unlimited is $330 per user, per month.
Plenty of features are withheld from the Starter Suite as well, including the flow builder, web services API, and forecasting are only available from Pro and up, while tools including opportunity scoring and lead scoring aren’t available until Enterprise (though lead scoring will still cost extra on that plan).
Pipedrive
Best for large accountancy firms
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Pipedrive helps track business deals, and it offers a lot to keep your business chugging through that process: Large companies can benefit from the efficiency of the streamlined platform, thanks in part to 24/7 live support across all plans and strong security tools can even proactively flag suspicious activity with automated email notifications.
Why Pipedrive is a great choice for accountancy firms
Pipedrive helps with collaboration, a key concern for large teams that otherwise lose entire days to miscommunication. The system both offers a straightforward user experience that makes it easy to build a custom environment with the right integrations and chatbots, and it lets users create automations that can interact with popular business software including Slack, Trello, and Teams.
The platform ensures users keep current deals in their crosshairs with a central dashboard that lists all open deals and how far along they are. QuickBooks and Xero are both included in the app marketplace, along with a handful of other accounting integrations. Large accounting firms will need a CRM that works with their existing tech stack, and Pipedrive’s wide range of integrations means it offers something for nearly everyone.
Functionality can be limited in some areas, however: You’ll be charged extra for webform creation. You also won’t be able to create custom tasks, so it may be difficult to determine which teams are addressing each one.
Pipedrive will sync with any major email provider and will automate email templates. Source: Duanetoops testing
Pipedrive pricing
Pipedrive’s five plans start with Essential, for just $14 per user, per month. After that, there’s Advanced ($34 per user, per month), Professional ($49 per user, per month), Power ($64 per user, per month), and Enterprise ($99 per user, per month).
These prices are around the industry norm, and even the most expensive is lower than Salesforce’s second-lowest plan. Some reporting and security tools are only unlocked with Professional and above, so check out our Pipedrive pricing guide for more details on which features are included in each plan.
How to Choose the Right Accounting CRM
Customer Relationship Management software has to wear a lot of hats: You’ll need marketing efforts to get leads heading down the customer pipeline, a sales team to get them committed, and all the proper support lines to make sure all your customers are happy and content to stick around. Accountants need to analyze all the data involved, so they’ll need to be able to use a CRM at least as well as anyone else.
Customer data access is key to analysis: You can’t make bricks without clay. A good CRM should give accountants a simple, streamlined interface.
Automations, chatbots, and any customization tools are helpful, since they speed up data access and boost collaboration between team members. Integrations with existing accounting-specific software will dramatically save time by syncing invoices, estimates, and more.
Finally, the most advanced CRMs will offer functions that complete tough accounting tasks all by themselves, such as customer lifecycle overviews or other custom reports.
We take our impartial research and analysis seriously, so you can have complete confidence that we’re giving you the clearest, most useful recommendations.
After conducting an initial exploration to identify the most relevant, popular, and established CRM tools in the market, we put them through their paces to find out more about their strengths and weaknesses. In total, we analyzed 13 CRM systems, grading them across 84 areas of investigation.
Based on years of market research and CRM product testing, we’ve established a CRM research methodology to score products, which consists of six main assessment categories and 13 subcategories. This covers everything from the available features and scalability capacity to the product’s value for money and much more.
Our main testing categories for CRM systems are:
Features: The functionalities and capabilities provided by the CRM software, such as contact management, lead and opportunity tracking, and task and activity management.
Help and Support: The resources and assistance available to users when they encounter issues or require guidance while using the CRM software.
Customization: The ability to tailor the CRM software to suit the specific needs and processes of the organization, e.g. customizing fields, layouts, and workflows.
Scalability: The ability of the CRM software to accommodate the growth and changing needs of the organization, such as the capacity to handle a growing customer database.
Price: The cost associated with using the CRM software. It includes factors such as licensing fees, subscription plans, and additional charges for add-on modules or features.
Team Structure – Sales CRM: Determining if a platform makes it easier to manage large sales teams, including team dashboards, team hierarchies, and team inboxes.
Usability – Small Business CRM: Assessing the simplicity of the interface, the ease of navigating through menus and options, and the overall user experience.
When it comes to calculating a product’s final score, not all testing areas are weighted evenly, as we know some aspects matter more to our readers than others, which are merely “nice to have.” After hundreds of hours, our process is complete, and the results should ensure you can find the best solution for your needs.
At Duanetoops, we have a number of full-time in-house researchers, who re-run this testing process regularly, to ensure our results remain reflective of the present day.
Learn more about our research.
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