Lendio Accounting Review: Features & Pricing for 2023
Tim is a Certified QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) Pro, QuickBooks ProAdvisor, and CPA with 25 years of experience. He brings his expertise to Fit Small Business’s accounting content.
Eric is a staff writer at Fit Small Business and CPA focusing on accounting content. He spends most of his time researching and studying to give the best answer to everyone.
This article is part of a larger series on Accounting Software.
Lendio Accounting (formerly Sunrise) is a free cloud-based accounting software program that helps you create quotes and estimates, track expenses, and simplify tax filing. It has invoicing, billing, financial reporting, and payroll integration with Gusto. It offers a free Basic plan for a single user and a paid plan that costs $19.99 per month for unlimited users.
Overall Score:
3.23 / 5
What We Like
- Free plan has excellent features, including the mobile app
- Mobile app lets you send invoices, enter bill payments, and categorize bank transactions
- Create recurring invoices and accept short payments
- Responsive customer support via email or chat
What's Missing
- Unable to print checks
- Can’t track inventory or cost of goods sold (COGS)
- Weak bank account reconciliation
- Can’t track billable time
When To Use Lendio Accounting
When To Use Lendio Accounting
- Businesses seeking free accounting software: It has a free Basic plan that contains many outstanding features, making it our overall best free accounting software.
- Freelancers: Lendio offers expense tracking and recurring invoicing. It also has a capable mobile app that lets you send invoices, enter bill payments, and categorize bank transactions. With these features, Lendio Accounting made it to our lists of the leading accounting software for freelancers and mobile accounting apps.
- Farmers selling directly to consumers: It has excellent invoicing features, which can be useful for farmers who sell products and services to consumers.
- Businesses looking for an alternative to QuickBooks: If you find QuickBooks expensive or hard to use, Lendio Accounting is one of our best QuickBooks alternatives. It offers most of the important accounting features in QuickBooks, such as accounts receivables (A/R) and accounts payable (A/P) management and sales tax tracking.
When To Use Something Else
- Ecommerce companies: It lacks features designed to support ecommerce businesses, such as inventory management, point-of-sale (POS) functions, and Shopify integration. If you need a budget-friendly accounting app for your ecommerce shop, consider Xero, or explore our list of the top ecommerce accounting software.
- Companies with inventory: There’s no way to track the cost of your inventory or goods sold. If you need this function, we recommend more powerful accounting software like QuickBooks Online.
- Construction companies: It doesn’t allow you to track costs by project. QuickBooks Premier Contractor Edition is a great low-cost choice for contractors that allows project costing and comparison between estimated and actual costs.
- Businesses that bill by hour: It doesn’t track billable time. FreshBooks allows you to track time, assign it to a customer or project, and add it to a customer invoice automatically.
Are you looking for something different? Read our guide to the best small business accounting software.
Lendio Accounting Deciding Factors
Supported Business Types | Freelancers and very small service businesses with little or no inventory |
Pricing |
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Free Trial | 14 days with no credit card required |
Payroll | Gusto Integration |
Standout Features |
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Customer Support | Chat bot, live chat, email, and self-help library |
Lendio Accounting New Features for 2023
- Create tax rules: You can create a specific set of rules that will help Lendio determine which sales tax should be applied to a customer invoice. For instance, you could create a rule that any invoices sent to customers with New York addresses should include New York sales tax.
- Set lock date: Prior period data can now be protected by setting a lock date within the tax settings to avoid accidental changes to prior period data.
- Record partial payments: Lendio lets you make partial payments on vendor invoices and keep track of prior partial payments so that you always know the amount left to pay the bill in full.
Lendio Accounting Alternatives
 |  | |
|---|---|---|
Best for: Businesses that need inventory and time tracking | Best for: Businesses with no inventory that bill customers by the hour | Best for: Businesses that want to track income and expenses by project or customer |
Starts at: $85 per month with inventory accounting and five users | Starts at: $30 per month for 50 clients and one user | Starts at: $799 per year for one user |
Read our QuickBooks Online review | Read our FreshBooks review | Read our QuickBooks Premier review |
- Free: Lendio Accounting has a free plan that includes most of the features in the paid plan, even an unlimited number of bank and credit card connections. Its major drawback is that it can only be used to keep the books of one company by one user.
- Plus: This costs $19.99 per month for unlimited companies and unlimited users. Other upgrades from the free plan include:
- Cash flow insights and alerts
- Ability to auto-categorize expenses coming through bank feeds
- Payment integrations from Stripe, Square, and PayPal
- Discount on payments processed by Lendio
In addition to the payment integrations available to Plus subscribers, all Lendio users can collect payments from customers through Lendio’s own payment processing system.
Fees | Free Plan | Plus Plan |
|---|---|---|
Credit Card Transactions | 3.55% plus 30 cents | 2.55% plus 30 cents |
ACH Transactions | 1.5% plus 30 cents | 0.5% plus 30 cents |
Lendio Accounting Case Study
To see how Lendio Accounting stacks up against similar software, we compare it to Wave and QuickBooks Online across 11 categories based on our internally developed, in-depth case study.
Sunrise vs Competitors FSB Case Study
Touch the graph above to interact Click on the graphs above to interact
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Lendio Accounting: FREE
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Wave: FREE
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QuickBooks Online Plus: Starts at $30, $85 as tested
Lendio Accounting beats Wave in most categories and excels with its customer service and mobile app. While Wave users only have self-service information when they have questions, Lendio Accounting allows users to chat with a live person to receive immediate help.
The major shortcomings of Lendio Accounting are inventory accounting and project accounting. If you need either of these features, you should invest in QuickBooks Online. We also recommend QuickBooks Online if you want to print checks from your computer. We provide more information about how Lendio Accounting performed within each category in our features section below.
Lendio Accounting Features
Its free Basic plan is packed with good features for many users, but there are some missing features, as noted below. For a more in-depth Lendio Accounting review, watch our accounting expert’s evaluation in the videos within each section.
Lendio Accounting is easy to get set up. You can either modify its default chart of accounts or import your own chart of accounts. Beginning balances for each account can be recorded directly into the chart of accounts rather than having to make a journal entry. At the end of your accounting period, you can make adjusting journal entries and share access with your external bookkeeper or tax preparer.
Lendio Accounting General Video
Like most cloud-based accounting software, it’s straightforward to connect your bank accounts to Lendio Accounting to transfer transactions automatically into the program. Once transferred, you’ll need to assign the transactions to your chart of accounts and accept them. With the Plus version, Lendio Accounting will make account suggestions that you can accept or edit automatically.
However, it’s missing a couple of banking features:
- Check printing: You can’t print checks directly from Lendio Accounting. You’ll need to enter the checks as expenses after you write them by hand.
- Bank reconciliation: Lendio Accounting doesn’t allow users to reconcile their bank and credit card accounts when there are timing differences, such as checks recorded that haven’t yet cleared the bank. As bank recs are the cornerstone of good bookkeeping, you’ll need to do these by hand or with this Excel template.
Lendio Accounting Cash Management & Banking Video
Lendio Accounting does a good job of managing your unpaid bills, making it one of our best accounts payable software. From the Expenses screen, you can record new bills and view all unpaid bills or past due bills.
Expense Screen in Sunrise
A. Record Expenses: Click here to navigate to the Expenses screen to enter new bills or view and pay previously entered bills
B. Expenses: View both paid and unpaid bills
C. Past Due: View all unpaid bills that are past due
D. Unpaid: View all unpaid bills, including overdue bills
E. Paid: View all bills that have been paid
You can record the payment of a bill by clicking on the unpaid bill on the screen shown above. You can also attach a receipt to any expense.
Lendio Accounting has a capable bill management system. However, it doesn’t allow you to apply vendor credits to unpaid bills and create a recurring bill.
Lendio Accounting A/P Video
Managing customer invoices is Lendio Accounting’s strongest feature. You can do the basics of issuing invoices and collecting payments easily.
Invoices Screen in Sunrise
A. Invoices: Click here to view the Invoices screen
B. All invoices: View both paid and unpaid invoices
C. Draft: View drafts of invoices not yet finalized and sent
D. Unpaid: View all unpaid invoices
E. Paid: View all paid invoices
From the Action column on the left side of the screen, you can initiate transactions such as receiving payment on an unpaid invoice or sending a reminder to your customer.
Beyond the basics, Lendio Accounting has some surprising invoicing features for a free software program, including:
- Creating recurring invoices
- Collecting and tracking sales tax by jurisdiction
- Creating a customized invoice with your logo, colors, and a personal message
- Accepting short payments from customers
- Issuing credit memos to customers
The biggest invoicing feature missing is the ability to designate expenses as billable and then add them to a customer invoice.
Lendio Accounting A/R Video
If you deal with inventory regularly, you should look elsewhere for a bookkeeping program. At the very least, your bookkeeping program needs to help you allocate the cost of your inventory purchases to ending inventory and COGS—and Lendio Accounting cannot make this calculation. Both QuickBooks Online and Xero have good inventory accounting features.
Our assessment of Inventory doesn’t have its own video as it was assessed along with A/R and A/P. You can watch those videos for details regarding inventory capabilities.
Aside from allowing you to create and send estimates to potential customers, Lendio Accounting doesn’t offer much for companies whose business consists of projects, such as contractors. Good project management requires a business to track expenses by project and then compare those actual expenses to estimated costs. You can check out our picks for the best contractor accounting software for a list of accounting solutions with strong project management features.
Lendio Accounting Project Accounting Video
As one of our best recurring billing software, Lendio Accounting allows you to create multiple sales tax items that can be added to invoices depending on the jurisdiction of the customer. The tax will be accumulated by item so that you can pay the correct amount when your sales tax return is due. However, the program won’t help you pay your sales tax or file your return.
Lendio will also allow you to track amounts paid to independent contractors so that you have the information needed to file the required 1099, but it won’t help you prepare Form 1099.
Its sales and income tax features were assessed throughout our case study, so no separate video is available.
Lendio Accounting has a good reporting capability. You can generate fundamental reports like cash flow statements, profit and loss (P&L) statements, balance sheets, trial balance, A/R, A/P, and sales tax reports. Custom reports, like transaction lists by customer and expenses by vendor, are also available. If you want more flexibility in your financial reports, we strongly recommend QuickBooks Online.
Lendio Accounting Reporting Video
Lendio Accounting has better customer service for free users than many paid accounting programs. You can call customer service by phone—or they’ll call you in case you need help. Alternatively, you start a chat session with a bot for quick solutions but can request to chat with a representative if the bot can’t provide relevant resources to your problem.
We’ve done this several times, and it generally takes less than a minute for the representative to respond. You may also submit your questions via email. When we tested the email feature, we received a response in four minutes from an actual person who answered our questions directly.
However, Lendio Accounting falls short in providing a support network of accountants who can assist you with your bookkeeping. It lacks advisor programs similar to QuickBooks ProAdvisor or Xero Advisor where you can access support from experts. You’ll also find it difficult to find a local bookkeeper with any Lendio Accounting experience or expertise. What’s more, there’s no community support to provide a channel for users to raise questions and concerns to the software community.
Lendio Accounting Customer Service Video
Lendio Accounting has a capable mobile app included in the free subscription. It can perform many tasks, from sending invoices to entering bill payments and categorizing bank feed transactions. On the downside, it lacks important features, such as time tracking, reporting, project management, and mobile reporting.
Lendio Accounting Mobile App Video
There are very few Lendio Accounting reviews online. However, with the recent change in branding, it’s possible that some users might still be unaware of the software and only those who have been using Lendio are aware of the rebranding:
- GetApp: 4.5 out of 5 stars based on more than 210 reviews
- G2.com: 4.0 out of 5 stars based on more than 160 reviews
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is Lendio Accounting?
Lendio Accounting (formerly Sunrise by Lendio) is an excellent free accounting software for small businesses.
Do I need to get the Lendio Accounting Plus plan?
You’ll need the Plus plan if you require more than one user or want to keep the books of more than one company. It also provides integrations to payment providers like Stripe, Square, and PayPal.
Bottom Line
Lendio Accounting is an ideal accounting software for budget-conscious small businesses that are willing to give up extra features like inventory tracking and project management. If you’re a solopreneur needing to track income and expenses and send invoices for free, then its free Basic plan is a great option. If you’re a small business owner wanting to add more users or companies, upgrading to the Plus plan is highly recommended.
