The Best CRM Software for Accountants

Our research shows that Zoho CRM is best for features, offering lots of lead capture and lead conversion features, including social listening and lead scoring. Its software is designed to integrate with existing accounting software, such as QuickBooks, giving you an easy way to figure out where your profits are coming from.

It can be integrated with its own accounting add-on, Zoho Books, which is a free, one-stop platform built for managing and organising anything accounting-related. This add-on also offers a 14-day free trial, making it a great CRM for small firms.

What's more, Zoho CRM offers onboarding features, which allow you to set up new customer profiles and customise the system to match your business processes with data migration and setup support features. However, setup support is an add-on and requires an additional charge.

Connecting with your clients is crucial in the accounting world, it’s unfortunate that Zoho CRM offers very few lead communication features, which means less opportunities to engage with customers. It only has email templates available on all of its plans. Freshsales, on the other hand, offers more options for communicating with leads with website live chat and native VoIP features, which give you more chances to track client communication histories that can help you improve customer interactions and deliver enhanced customer service. However, it doesn’t offer social listening, while Zoho offers that on all of its paid plans.

Our research shows that Freshsales is the best for tracking communications with clients. All of its plans come with website live chat and native VoIP, enabling you to connect with potential customers right away. Aside from this, its system can be integrated with other accounting apps, such as Xero, but it doesn’t come with its own accounting add-on. Meanwhile, Zoho CRM comes with its own accounting add-on, Zoho Books. It’s a complete accounting CRM software which also offers a free trial period and a free plan.

However, Freshsales offers onboarding features on all of its plans, such as data migration, which will make it easy for short-staffed CPA firms to tackle tedious tasks because this feature enables you to move massive amounts of data to another system without complications.

HubSpot is best for customisation in our research. Its comprehensive sales CRM platform can be customised to fit your accounting needs. The software can be integrated with accounting applications from A to Z, by that, we mean, from Akaunting to Zoho Books.

In addition, its highly scalable platform offers custom automated workflows that can easily be set up with the features it has, including email templates, calendar, and fully editable forms. This way, your admin-heavy tasks can be automated and, at the same time, your business goals can easily be accomplished. To make digital engagement easier, it offers lead communication features, such as website live chat, email template, and native VoIP.

However, its plans don’t come with instant messaging apps and auto response. Meanwhile, Salesmate’s plans come with more lead communication features, including everything that HubSpot has as well as instant messaging apps and auto response.

But, HubSpot gives you the option to build a customised onboarding plan, which Salesmate doesn’t offer. Its experts will help you customise it according to your priorities, the size and complexity of your organisation, and check if the technology you use integrates with the system. However, this requires a one-time fee, and you must call its customer service for quotation.

Pipedrive is best for data protection because it’s one of the cheapest CRM systems to offer extensive security settings, which is great for accounting firms working with tons of confidential data.

However, when it comes to  integration options, it doesn’t have its own accounting add-on, but it can be integrated with a number of accounting apps, such as Stripe or Pipedrive. Its plans come with a custom automation builder feature that can help you automate tedious manual tasks. Aside from that, tracking leads is easy because the website live chat feature is available on every plan, which enables agents to track customer chat history, such as the number of times the same visitor accessed the website or which operators assisted the customer in real-time which allows operators to take personalised support to a higher level. However, this lead communication feature comes as a paid-for add-on.

Its onboarding service is practically non-existent. It only offers setup support on its most expensive Enterprise plan. Meanwhile, Zoho CRM’s plans offer free onboarding support, such as data migration on all of its plans.

You get value for money with FibreCRM because it offers a service that’s a combination of quality and sustainability, making it the best CRM for small accounting firms. FibreCRM’s system can be integrated with commonly-used accounting applications, such as Xero, and it offers a custom fields feature, allowing you to input unlimited data about your leads into your system.

What’s even better is that it can be integrated with its own onboarding service. This is an optional onboarding solution that helps you integrate a new client into your organisation. It also has features that help you comply with money laundering regulations, such as risk assessment forms, workflow management, and automation. It's a complete accounting process that provides a comprehensive yet simplified service that allows you to focus more on generating value for your clients. This plan, however, is £750 per user, per month.

While FibreCRM comes with lead management service, it doesn’t come with lead communication features such as website live chat and native VoIP, which are both available across Freshsales plans, allowing you more opportunities to track leads.