Kashoo: Easy Cloud Accounting for Small Businesses

published on 29 January 2024

Most business owners would agree that managing finances and accounting can be an overwhelming task.

However, with the right software solution, small business accounting can be simple and straightforward. Kashoo offers an intuitive cloud-based platform that makes accounting accessible for small business owners and solopreneurs.

In this review, we'll explore Kashoo's core accounting capabilities, mobility features, reporting and analysis, banking integration, pricing plans, ease of use, and customer support. We'll highlight the pros and cons to help you determine if Kashoo is the right fit for your small business needs.

Introduction to Kashoo

Kashoo is easy-to-use, cloud-based accounting software designed for small businesses. It focuses on mobility, collaboration, and simplicity to help teams track finances and run reports from anywhere.

Overview of Key Features

Kashoo offers several key features tailored for small business accounting needs:

  • Invoicing: Create professional invoices, track payments, and manage billing from one centralized platform. Automatically sync invoice details with other Kashoo tools.

  • Expense Tracking: Capture business expenses on-the-go with mobile receipt scanning and reporting features. Seamlessly categorize expenses for taxes.

  • Bank Connectivity: Securely connect bank accounts to automatically import latest transactions into Kashoo. Avoid manual entry and ensure accurate books.

  • Custom Reporting: Build custom reports with an intuitive drag-and-drop report designer to extract key financial insights. Flexibly track KPIs over time.

Ideal Users

Kashoo works best for small teams and businesses with 1-50 employees. It streamlines collaboration across stakeholders so everyone stays on the same page. The software is tailored for most industries including:

  • Professional Services
  • Retail & Ecommerce
  • Marketing & Creative Agencies
  • Healthcare & Wellness
  • Real Estate

Key Benefits

Kashoo offers several advantages over traditional accounting software:

  • Lower Costs: Affordable monthly pricing tiers make professional accounting accessible for small business budgets

  • Mobility: Native iOS and Android apps allow finance teams to manage books and run reports on-the-go

  • Bank Integration: Automatic bank feeds and reconciliation saves hours of manual work

  • Simplified Reporting: Custom reports provide financial insights without the need for advanced accounting expertise

In summary, Kashoo simplifies accounting for lean teams through an easy-to-use and collaborative cloud platform designed to lower overhead costs.

Core Accounting Capabilities

Kashoo provides small businesses with a robust set of core accounting features to manage their financial operations.

General Ledger

Kashoo enables easy setup of a chart of accounts and general ledger to track financial transactions. Key capabilities include:

  • Customizable chart of accounts with income, expense, asset, liability and equity accounts
  • Real-time double entry bookkeeping
  • Detailed transaction logging with running balances
  • Flexible reporting by account, date range, etc.

With its general ledger, Kashoo gives small businesses the accounting foundation to monitor their financial performance.

Invoicing

Kashoo makes it simple to create professional invoices and get paid faster. Users can:

  • Build customizable invoice templates
  • Automatically calculate taxes and discounts
  • Accept online payments via Stripe integration
  • Set up recurring invoices for regular clients
  • Email invoices directly to customers

The tool reduces time spent on invoicing and improves cash flow for small businesses.

Managing Bills & Expenses

Kashoo facilitates streamlined AP workflows for tracking expenses and paying bills. Key features include:

  • Snap photos of receipts to log expenses on-the-go
  • Organize expenses with categories and tags
  • Assign expenses to jobs for better cost tracking
  • Pay bills directly within Kashoo
  • Automate payments for recurring bills

Overall, Kashoo equips small business owners with the essential accounting tools needed to manage finances and gain insights into their companies. Its simple set up and use makes it easy for non-accounting experts to handle core accounting tasks.

Mobility

Kashoo's mobile capabilities allow users to access their accounting data and collaborate with team members remotely.

iPhone & Android Apps

Kashoo offers free mobile apps for both iOS and Android devices. The apps provide the same full accounting functionality as the web-based software, enabling users to:

  • View and manage invoices, expenses, bills, and other financial data
  • Create and send professional invoices from a smartphone
  • Capture receipts and track expenses on-the-go using the phone's camera
  • Sync data automatically across devices in real-time
  • Share files and collaborate with team members remotely

The apps aim to provide easy accounting mobility for business owners and accounting teams to work from anywhere.

Working Remotely

Kashoo is designed for modern remote and multi-location teams. Key features that facilitate remote collaboration include:

  • Real-time data syncing across the web and mobile apps
  • Shared access to files, invoices, expenses and other financial data
  • Commenting and messaging capabilities to communicate within the platform
  • Custom user permissions to control data access
  • Activity log tracking all events for transparency

With robust remote access and collaboration tools, Kashoo enables accounting teams to work effectively from diverse locations while maintaining data security, transparency, and control.

Reporting & Analysis

Kashoo provides robust financial reporting and analysis tools to help small businesses track their finances.

Standard Reports

Kashoo comes with standard financial reports out-of-the-box, including:

  • Profit and loss statements to analyze revenue and expenses over time
  • Balance sheets to view assets, liabilities, and equity
  • Cash flow reports to understand cash inflows and outflows

These standard reports are easy to set up and provide the essential financial data small businesses need to measure performance.

Advanced Reporting

For more customization, Kashoo offers advanced reporting features like:

  • Building custom reports with specific data sets, date ranges, and complex formulas
  • Scheduling and automating reports to be generated on a recurring basis
  • Exporting reports to Excel, CSV, or PDF formats for additional analysis

With flexible reporting options, small businesses can generate financial reports tailored to their unique needs.

Dashboards

Kashoo provides real-time financial dashboards that act as control centers, displaying:

  • Key metrics like profits, revenue, expenses
  • Graphs and charts summarizing financial KPIs
  • Comparison views of month-over-month or year-over-year data

The dashboards offer an at-a-glance overview of financial performance, helping small businesses track trends and quickly spot anomalies.

With its combination of standard and customizable reporting along with real-time dashboards, Kashoo provides robust analytics to help small businesses better understand their finances.

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Banking & Payments

Kashoo offers several features to connect your bank accounts and manage financial transactions.

Bank Feeds

You can automatically import your latest bank and credit card transactions into Kashoo by connecting your financial accounts. This saves you time from manually entering transactions.

To enable bank feeds, you first need to connect your bank account or credit card within Kashoo. The platform supports connections to thousands of financial institutions. Once connected, Kashoo will regularly pull in new transactions through a secure read-only connection.

New transactions will appear as uncategorized by default. You can assign income, expense, and tax categories to transactions for accurate reporting. Recurring rules can also be set up to auto-categorize common transactions like rent or payroll.

Overall, bank feeds eliminate double entry and ensure your books stay up-to-date automatically. This gives you real-time visibility into your cash flow.

Online Bill Pay

Kashoo allows you to securely pay bills directly from within the software. Supported billers include vendors, contractors, rent, utilities, and other expenses.

To leverage online bill pay:

  1. Connect the bank account(s) you want to make payments from
  2. Add billers by searching Kashoo's database or entering details manually
  3. Review upcoming bills and make one-time or recurring payments

Funds will be debited from your linked bank account and payments will process through Kashoo's integrated payment network. You receive instant confirmation when bills are paid.

The key benefit of managing bill payments through Kashoo is consolidation. Rather than logging into multiple sites to pay bills, you can view and pay all expenses from a single dashboard. This saves considerable time and administrative effort.

Online bill payment also helps you avoid late fees by setting payment reminders and automating recurring payments. Overall, it brings simplicity and organization to your financial workflows.

Pricing & Plans

Kashoo does not publicly disclose pricing information for their accounting software products. However, based on research into customer reviews and third-party analysis, some insights can be shared to summarize the likely structure of their plans.

Starter

The Starter plan seems to target very small businesses and solopreneurs. It likely has a free option with basic features for simple expense tracking and invoicing. There are probably limitations on the number of transactions, invoices, and reports.

Key capabilities may include:

  • Connect up to 2 bank accounts
  • Create and send professional invoices
  • Track income and expenses
  • Generate basic financial reports

This entry-level tier enables users to get started with Kashoo for free to meet basic accounting needs. Upgrading unlocks more advanced capabilities.

Plus

For growing small businesses, Kashoo appears to offer a mid-tier Plus plan with additional features beyond basic accounting. This likely enables connecting more bank accounts, higher transaction volumes, multiple users, and some light analytics.

Potential key upgrades over Starter include:

  • Connect up to 4 bank accounts
  • Additional users with restricted permissions
  • Send estimates to win new business
  • Customizable reports and dashboards

This plan adds capabilities suited for established small businesses managing higher complexity and users. It delivers expanded functionality at an affordable price.

Premium

Kashoo seems to have a Premium tier for sophisticated users that unlocks the full suite of features. This high-end plan probably supports unlimited transactions, custom fields, users, advanced reporting, and integrations.

Some differentiating benefits over lower tiers potentially include:

  • Unlimited everything
  • Advanced customization
  • Automations and workflows
  • API access and accounting integrations
  • Priority support

The Premium plan likely caters to complex small business needs with maximum flexibility. For those requiring specialized configurations and integrations, this top-tier option delivers Kashoo's complete capabilities.

Ease of Use

Intuitive Workflow

Kashoo is designed to follow an intuitive accounting workflow that mirrors how most businesses operate. When you first log in, you are presented with a clean dashboard showing key financial metrics and summaries. From there, you can easily create new invoices, record expenses, manage bills and payments, reconcile bank accounts, and generate reports. The layout is logical and easy to navigate. Key modules are accessible from the main menu, guiding you through a natural order of accounting tasks.

Overall, Kashoo makes it simple to manage day-to-day finances by eliminating accounting complexity. The workflow is streamlined so you don't have to jump through hoops to record transactions, pay bills, or invoice customers.

Onboarding

Getting started with Kashoo is straightforward thanks to their helpful setup wizard. When you first create your account, it walks you through the initial configuration step-by-step. This includes customizing invoice templates, connecting bank accounts, setting up chart of accounts, inviting team members, and entering historical transactions if needed. Instructions are clear and the process is intuitive.

Kashoo also provides tips and guidance during the first few times you use key features. For example, when you go to create your first invoice, it gives a quick tutorial on how to add line items, customize the look, apply tax rates, and send to customers. These little onboarding touches help flatten the learning curve.

Ongoing Use

After the initial setup, using Kashoo for daily tasks is very simple. The interface uses clean designs, helpful icons, and clear labeling so you can quickly record transactions without confusion. Key info is displayed upfront while advanced options are tucked away so they don't clutter the screen.

Little conveniences also make the accounting process faster. For example, you can save custom templates, create recurring invoices and bills, upload receipts in bulk, duplicate past entries, tag transactions for reporting, and more. These shortcuts reduce repetitive data entry.

The workflow is flexible enough to match your existing processes without forcing you to conform. Whether you manage tasks on the go with mobile apps or through the web dashboard, Kashoo lets you complete core accounting functions rapidly.

Customer Support

Kashoo provides a few options for getting customer support if issues arise.

Knowledge Base

Kashoo has an extensive knowledge base available on their website that covers common questions and troubleshooting steps. Some key things you can find help for in their knowledge base include:

  • Getting started guides for new users
  • Step-by-step instructions for key features
  • Fixes for common errors and bugs
  • FAQs on billing, account management, and more

The search functionality makes it easy to quickly find answers to specific questions. The articles are well-organized by topic as well.

Overall, Kashoo's knowledge base provides helpful self-service support resources.

Direct Support

If you can't resolve an issue using the knowledge base, Kashoo offers direct customer support through the following channels:

  • Email Support: Submit a ticket through their help desk system and typically get a response within 24 hours.
  • Phone Support: Available during normal US business hours if you need urgent real-time help.
  • Live Chat: Get instant answers to quick questions through their chat widget. Agents are available during business hours.

Kashoo's direct support options ensure you can get personalized assistance when needed. Response times are generally fast and the agents are knowledgeable regarding the product.

So between the extensive knowledge base and responsive direct support channels, Kashoo provides solid customer service resources to users.

Conclusion & Recommendation

Pros & Cons

Kashoo offers several key strengths as an accounting software for small businesses:

  • User-friendly interface and intuitive workflows
  • Robust reporting and analytics features
  • Integration with bank accounts for seamless data imports
  • Mobile app allows access and data entry on-the-go

However, there are some downsides to consider:

  • Limited customization options compared to advanced platforms
  • Can feel lightweight for larger or more complex small businesses
  • Lacks some features like inventory management or POS integration

Ideal Users

Kashoo is best suited for solopreneurs, freelancers, and very small business with simpler needs. Service-based businesses and those without significant inventory demands will get the most value. It covers core accounting necessities without advanced capabilities that add cost and complexity.

Final Verdict

Kashoo is an excellent cloud accounting solution for micro businesses and lean teams that want simple tools to manage finances and reporting. For larger or more complex needs, QuickBooks and Xero offer more customization and integration capabilities. But for basic users focused on core money management and analytics, Kashoo provides tremendous value and ease-of-use.

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