Streamline Your Finances: Best Tools

As the owner of a service-based business, your expertise is your bread and butter, not necessarily in managing your back-office operations. Yet precise bookkeeping is the backbone of any successful business. I’ve spent years watching owners struggle with outdated spreadsheets and manual processes when there are incredible tools that could save them hours every week.

Let’s cut through the noise. Here’s my field-tested toolkit for those that want to spend less time reconciling accounts and more time with clients.

Cloud-Based Accounting Software: Your Foundation

If you’re still using desktop accounting software (or worse, spreadsheets), you’re leaving efficiency on the table. Cloud-based platforms have revolutionized bookkeeping for advisors:

FreshBooks has become increasingly popular among service-based advisors. Its time tracking integration automatically captures billable hours, and its client portal capabilities are intuitive enough for most practices. The key advantage? The user interface is so clean that clients actually engage with their invoices and payments, improving cash flow.

QuickBooks Online remains the industry standard for many. Its bank feed integration automatically pulls in transactions, and its reporting capabilities are robust enough for most businesses. The key advantage? Nearly every accountant knows how to use it, smoothing tax season transitions.

Pro tip: Whichever platform you choose, set up a chart of accounts specifically designed for financial advisory firms. Generic templates won’t capture the industry’s unique revenue streams and expenses.

Expense Management & Receipt Tracking

The days of hoarding physical receipts should be long behind us:

Expensify or Dext (formerly Receipt Bank) have mobile apps that let you snap a photo of receipts on the go. The OCR technology extracts vendor, date, and amount information automatically and syncs with your accounting software. I’ve seen advisors recover 2-3 hours weekly just by implementing this simple technology.

Payroll and HR Management

For multi-advisor practices:

Gusto has become the gold standard for payroll. Beyond the basics, it handles the complexity of split compensation models (salary + revenue share) that many growing firms implement. Its self-onboarding features for new employees drastically reduce administrative overhead.

Time Tracking for Billing Transparency

For billing hourly or tracking time against retainers:

Time tracking in FreshBooks transforms how service-based businesses capture revenue. Its one-click timer automatically logs billable hours as you work, and its project-based organization ensures nothing falls through the cracks. The key advantage? You can track time directly from any device, then convert those hours into invoices with a single click, eliminating the revenue leakage that kills profitability.

Toggl or Harvest provides simple interfaces for tracking time spent on different clients and projects. The reporting helps identify which clients are profitable and which might be consuming more resources than their revenue justifies.

The Integration Factor

Here’s what separates average firms from exceptional ones: integration. Each tool above is powerful, but when they talk to each other, the efficiency multiplies.
For example, when FreshBooks connects with Gusto for payroll you create an ecosystem where data flows without manual intervention.

Getting Started: Your Next Steps

• Audit your current processes – Where are the bottlenecks? Which tasks consume disproportionate time?
• Start with one core system – Usually your accounting software
• Add integrations progressively – Don’t overhaul everything at once
• Document your new procedures – Critical for staff training and consistency
• Schedule quarterly reviews – Technology evolves rapidly; your toolkit should too

The right bookkeeping toolkit isn’t just about efficiency—it’s about creating capacity for what truly matters: serving your clients and growing your business. The hours recovered from streamlined bookkeeping translate directly into more client meetings, deeper financial planning work, or maybe just a better work-life balance.

What bookkeeping tools have transformed your practice? I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments.

Need help cleaning up your books or setting up systems that make compliance easier? That’s what I do at Becker & Ledger. Let’s talk.