A company of one needs four things running behind it: invoices that go out on time, books that match the bank, a way to take card payments, and one place for business email and files. Three of those can start at no monthly cost, and the fourth starts at $7.00 per user/month on the US price page we read. Every figure below comes from the vendor's own pricing or fees page, read on 1 October 2026.
Start with the invoicing limit, not the feature list
Free and entry-level accounting plans rarely fail on features. They fail on volume caps — how many invoices you can send, or how many clients you can bill. Read that number first.
Wave sells a Starter plan at $0 that covers unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping records, with optional online card payments at 2.9% + $0.60 per credit card transaction on its USD pricing page. Wave Pro is $19 USD/month billed monthly; the same page showed a promotional rate of $9.50 USD/month for the first 3 months.
For a paid starting point, Xero's US pricing page describes Xero as small-business accounting software with plans that include sending invoices and quotes and reconciling bank transactions. Regular monthly prices in USD are $25 (Early), $55 (Growing) and $90 (Established), and the Early plan is limited to 20 invoices. The page was still displaying a 90%-off-for-6-months new-customer offer tied to purchasing by 30 September 2026 when we read it on 1 October 2026, so treat that discount as possibly expired rather than as a live price.
| Plan read on 1 Oct 2026 | Monthly price | Invoicing limit stated on the page |
|---|---|---|
| Wave Starter | $0 | Unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping records |
| Wave Pro | $19 USD/month billed monthly | Not stated on the plan description we read |
| Xero Early (US) | $25 | 20 invoices |
| Xero Growing (US) | $55 | Not stated for this plan |
| Xero Established (US) | $90 | Not stated for this plan |
If your monthly invoice count is in single digits and you issue them in one currency, the $0 tier removes the decision entirely. Move to a paid plan when the cap, multi-currency billing or accountant access becomes the constraint — not before.
Getting paid: compare the transaction rate, not the monthly fee
Payment providers mostly charge nothing to sit there and take a cut of each transaction, so your real cost depends on how clients pay you. Two US fee pages give a clear contrast.
On its US merchant fee page, PayPal lists PayPal Checkout at 3.49% plus a fixed fee, and standard credit and debit card payments at 2.99% plus a fixed fee. The fixed fee for commercial transactions received in US dollars is 0.49 USD.
Square's US pricing page puts online card payments — including payments made through an invoice — at 3.3% + 30¢ or 2.9% + 30¢ depending on plan tier, and in-person tap, dip or swipe at 2.6%–2.4% + 15¢. Square's subscription plan prices were not rendered in the page we captured, so we only record the processing rates here.
Two practical notes follow from that. Invoiced card payments generally sit in the higher online band rather than the cheaper in-person band, so if most clients pay by invoice the online rate is the one to compare. And because these are per-transaction rates, a handful of large invoices costs you far less than many small ones, which makes payment terms worth thinking about alongside the software choice. Payment pricing is published per country, so read the fee page for your own country rather than assuming a rate you saw quoted elsewhere applies to you.
Email and file storage: read storage per user, then the tax line
A custom-domain email address and a single, searchable place for contracts and receipts is usually the piece solo founders postpone longest, and the one that hurts most in an audit or a dispute.
Per Google Workspace's pricing page, Business Starter includes custom business email, 30 GB pooled storage per person and video meetings for 100 participants; Business Standard includes 2 TB and Business Plus 5 TB of pooled storage per user. The page served to us from Australia priced Business Starter at A$9.90 per user/month excluding tax, with an introductory discount shown for new customers — that figure is Australian dollars, not US dollars.
On the Microsoft US (en-us) business page, Microsoft 365 Business Basic costs $7.00 per user/month paid yearly and includes web and mobile Office apps, custom business email, Teams and 1 TB of cloud storage per user. The same page lists Business Standard with Copilot at $23.50 and Business Premium with Copilot at $32.00 per user/month, paid yearly on an annual subscription that auto-renews.
Storage-per-user numbers are not directly comparable across vendors in the way they look: Google's are pooled across users on a plan, Microsoft's are per user. At one person, pooled and per-user come to roughly the same thing, so compare the entry price and whether you need desktop Office apps rather than doing arithmetic on the tiers.
Where the tools stop and the law starts
None of these pages tell you what your country requires. Invoice content rules, how long records must be kept, and the turnover threshold at which VAT, GST or sales tax registration kicks in are all set nationally, and they differ enough that a workflow copied from another country's guide can leave you non-compliant. Check the requirement against your own tax authority's published guidance, then configure the tool to produce what that guidance asks for. Countries also differ on whether accounting software must meet a specific certification or reporting scheme, which is another reason to confirm local requirements before committing to a platform.
A working minimum
- Invoicing and books: start on Wave's $0 Starter if the caps fit; move to Xero's $25 Early plan when you need features beyond unlimited invoicing and bookkeeping records.
- Payments: pick between PayPal's 3.49% + fixed fee checkout rate and 2.99% + fixed fee card rate structure, and Square's online invoice rate of 3.3% + 30¢ or 2.9% + 30¢, based on how clients actually pay you.
- Email and files: Microsoft 365 Business Basic at $7.00 per user/month paid yearly (US page) or Google Workspace Business Starter, checking whether the price shown to you is in your own currency and includes tax.
- Review cadence: re-read the pricing pages once a year. Entry tiers, caps and promotional rates on the pages above were changing, and one of them was already showing an expired-by-days discount.
Prices and promos change, and several vendors show different pages by location, so the number to trust is the one on the page served in your own country on the day you sign up.