Choosing software for a small firm: what to look for
Selection criteria for firms of 1 to 10 staff: pricing model, multi-administration management, automation, filing channel and data portability.
The short answer
For a firm of one to ten staff, seven criteria are decisive: the pricing model, multi-administration management, the degree of automation, the filing channel, e-invoicing readiness, data portability on departure and the quality of support. Vendor feature lists look alike; the difference shows in how those features hold up across fifty administrations at once instead of one.
A small firm is also not choosing for three years but effectively for ten: a package migration is so disruptive that you do not repeat it lightly. That justifies a few days of serious comparison.
Pricing model: per administration or per user
The two common models play out very differently for firms.
Per administration means costs grow with the portfolio. That is predictable and fair: a firm with eighty small administrations pays more than a firm with twenty. Do watch the volume tiers and what exactly counts as an "administration": does a dormant holding company count, and what does an administration cost that is only kept for the annual return?
Per user looks cheap for a small team but hides two catches. First, the amount grows with every new employee, including a part-time assistant who only does data entry. Second, it invites staff to share logins, and that undermines your audit trail: you want to be able to see per entry who made it.
Run both models against your current portfolio and against the portfolio you expect in three years. The outcome often differs more than the list prices suggest.
Multi-administration management
This is the criterion where packages built for business owners fall through. A business owner sits in one administration all day; your staff switch between dozens of them every day. Assess concretely:
- Is there one login for all administrations, with permissions per employee per client?
- Is there a practice overview showing status and backlog across all administrations, or do you have to open each one separately?
- Can you manage settings, charts of accounts and processing rules firm-wide, or do you configure everything again per administration?
- How fast is the switching itself? Three clicks and a loading screen per switch sounds harmless, but at a hundred switches a day it adds up to real time.
Degree of automation
The gross margin of a small firm is determined by how many administrations one employee can serve. That number depends almost entirely on the automation of routine work: recognition of purchase invoices, bank feeds with automated posting suggestions, recurring journal entries.
Look beyond the demo here. Ask how the package handles messy reality: a petrol station receipt, a credit note, an invoice in a foreign currency. And ask what happens after a correction: does the system learn from it, or do you make the same correction every month? For the considerations around AI-assisted bookkeeping, see AI in accounting firms.
Filing channel
For a firm, tax filing is not a side issue but a core process. Assess whether VAT returns, EC Sales Lists and corrections can be filed directly from the package via Digipoort, or whether a separate filing package or manual retyping is needed. Every manual hand-off between systems is a chance of error multiplied by the number of administrations multiplied by the number of periods. At fifty administrations per quarter, that difference is not comfort but capacity.
E-invoicing readiness
E-invoicing via Peppol is moving from exception to norm, and the pressure comes from several directions: large customers and public bodies demanding e-invoices, and European regulation moving the same way. For the software choice this means: can the package send and receive e-invoices via Peppol, and what does that cost per administration? A package that cannot do anything here yet hands you a problem in two years that you could have avoided now. How the network works is covered in Peppol explained for accountants.
Data portability on departure
The question nobody asks at purchase and everyone asks at departure: how do I get my data out? Assess this up front, because afterwards your negotiating position is gone:
- Can an audit file (XAF) be exported per administration?
- Can document attachments (invoices, receipts) be downloaded in bulk, linked to the entries?
- Do read-only rights remain for a period after cancellation, for the retention obligation?
A vendor that is vague about this is telling you something about the power balance you are entering into.
Support quality
A small firm has no IT department of its own; the vendor's support is your IT department. Test this before you sign: ask two substantive questions during the trial period and judge both the speed and the quality of the answers. A vendor that mainly serves firms recognises a question about reverse-charged VAT; a vendor that mainly serves business owners sends you an FAQ link.
Comparison table
| Criterion | What to look for | Sign that something is wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Calculation on your portfolio now and in 3 years | Unclear tiers, per-user costs that invite login sharing |
| Multi-administration | One practice overview, firm-wide settings | Opening each administration separately to see its status |
| Automation | Learns from corrections, high first-time-right score | Nice demo, no answer on messy real-world cases |
| Filing channel | Digipoort directly from the package | Retyping or a separate filing package needed |
| E-invoicing | Sending and receiving via Peppol | "It is on the roadmap" |
| Data portability | XAF export and bulk download of attachments | Vague answers about exports |
| Support | Fast, substantive, knows firms | FAQ links, chatbot only |
Who holds the licence?
Besides which package you choose, there is the question of who holds the licence: the firm or the client. It looks like a detail, but it determines the price, control over the setup and what happens when a client leaves. On top of that, more and more software is offered exclusively through firms. The full trade-off is set out in Licence holding: why it matters who holds the licence.
How to test in practice
Pick two or three candidates and set up the same real administration in each: a medium-sized client with a bank feed, purchase invoices and a VAT return. Have the employee who will work with it daily process a full month, including the close and the return. That costs a few half-days and yields more than ten demos, because you see the irritations that never surface in a demo. If you want to assess Giroo that way, book a demo with your own test administration.
Content reviewed: August 2026.