The Accounting Tech Stack We Rely On (and Why)
Choosing new software can overwhelm any accountant. The options feel endless, and each one costs real time and money to test. Building the right accounting tech stack takes years of trial and error. We know, because we have spent over a decade doing exactly that. Our firm has been fully remote since 2012.
That means we have tested, rejected, and adopted these tools inside real client work. Here is the stack we trust, so you can skip the guessing. You will notice we left AI off this list. We use it where it helps, but that is a topic for another day.
QuickBooks Online - Flexibility in Your Accounting Tech Stack
We tested Xero, NetSuite, and several other newer ledgers. Each one had real strengths. Each one also had weaknesses we could not live with. Some could not switch between accrual and cash methods. Others lacked invoicing or bill pay.
QuickBooks Online has its own quirks, and users will happily tell you about them. Still, its flexibility makes up for a lot. It remains the foundation of everything we build.
Avalara - Accuracy in Your Accounting Tech Stack
Avalara keeps our invoice calculations accurate on every job. It connects with QuickBooks Online cleanly. The correct line item lands on the invoice automatically.
QuickBooks can handle this too, but we have caught too many errors to rely on it. Accuracy, connectivity, and ease of use make this an easy pick for us.
Bill.com
Once you handle more than a few bills a month, manual payments slow you down. Bill.com runs the accounts payable side for us. It offers approval routing, a clean audit trail, and a QuickBooks sync we trust.
For a remote firm, the approval workflow is a huge win. Partners review and approve from anywhere. No one ever touches a paper check. We lean on it for higher-volume AP with multi-step approvals.
Financial Cents
Financial Cents is the tool that runs our firm. It handles practice management from top to bottom. Every client, task, deadline, and document request lives in one place. We use the proposal system too. Proposals and engagement letters sit right next to the work itself. When you have no office to walk across, you need one source of truth. The secure client document request feature is a bonus we love.
Gusto
Clients assume payroll is simple. It rarely is. We landed on Gusto because everything else turned into a headache. Some payroll tools would not sync to QuickBooks, which left us fixing entries by hand. Others offered poor support when problems came up. Gusto syncs cleanly, and its support shows up when we need it. Running payroll and benefits feels painless. That matters when we onboard clients remotely.
Ramp
Ramp is the tool we get most excited about. The entry tier is free, and it includes bill pay comparable to Bill.com. The cost argument alone is strong. The real win is the corporate cards. Every employee gets one, and managers set spend controls by amount and category.
Here is why the cards stand out for us:
- Managers can block specific purchase types, so a rule against alcohol simply stops that charge from going through.
- Receipt capture happens automatically, or a user can text a photo to Ramp to submit it in seconds.
We reserve Ramp's bill pay for simpler needs already bundled with the cards. Taking the monthly expense scramble off everyone's plate is a quiet game changer.
Practice Protect
A fully remote firm carries one big responsibility. We protect client financial data across a team that never shares a room. Practice Protect manages access control, identity, and login security. It is the least glamorous tool here. It is also the one we would never drop. A single compromised login in this field is a disaster. This is how we sleep at night.
Honorable Mentions
A few smaller tools earn a spot for the specific jobs they do well.
Grasshopper
Grasshopper gives us a real business phone number that rings anywhere. We have no office, yet clients still reach a professional line with proper call handling.
Zapier
Zapier is the glue of our stack. When two tools will not talk natively, it connects them. It automates the repetitive handoffs, so no one copies data by hand. Its CoPilot feature even helps build automations faster.
Ready to Put Your Accounting Tech Stack on Solid Ground?
The right tools only matter when the right team runs them. We are First Steps Financial, a fully remote fractional accounting department for service businesses earning $1M to $25M in revenue. We handle your books through controller-level reporting and analysis. Your revenue comes from labor and expertise, so we track the levers that decide your margins.
Think capacity, utilization, project profitability, and AR management. You never outgrow your books, and we make sure they scale with you. Reach out today, and let us build the financial foundation everything else sits on.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often should we review our accounting tools?
Review your stack at least once a year. Your needs shift as you grow. A tool that fit at $1M may strain at $10M. An annual check keeps your systems matched to your size.
Do these tools work for teams that still use an office?
Yes. We chose them for remote work, but they help any team. Cloud access, clean audit trails, and automation benefit everyone. An office does not change their value.
Will more software replace the need for a skilled accountant?
No. Tools speed up the work, but they do not interpret it. Someone still needs to read the numbers and guide decisions. Good software makes a good accountant faster, not optional.
How hard is it to switch from one platform to another?
It depends on your data and history. A clean migration takes planning and testing. Rushing it risks lost records and messy balances. We suggest mapping every account before you move anything.
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