Which Small Business Accounting Software Should You Pick?

So, yes, if you live for challenges, you can keep your small business’s books with pen and paper. Or a spreadsheet like Excel. But for the rest of us who prefer an easier life, there’s small business accounting software to help us track our business’s finances. In fact, there are quite a lot of accounting software in the marketplace. We looked through a lot of them and picked a few that we think are particularly suited for small businesses. We profile them for you below.

A word about our product profiles: we don’t do affiliate marketing. This means we don’t get a commission from any of the software vendors we profile. Instead, our recommendations are based on your best interests. (You can help us keep going by making a one time donation or a recurring subscription. We appreciate every dollar!)

There’s Accounting Software and There’s Super Fancy Accounting Software

Modern accounting software can get pretty fancy. In fact, some of them are so integrated into the day-to-day running of a business that they’re barely recognizable as traditional accounting software. Instead, they’re called enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. These software tend to be super expensive and highly customized to specific businesses. The vendors in this market segment—vendors like Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft—don’t usually make small business accounting software.

We write for small businesses, so we’re not going to look at ERP systems. Instead, we’re going to look at vendors who make software specifically designed for small business use. A few of these vendors do make ERP systems, but their small business accounting software offerings truly are designed for small businesses. We did find a couple of them that can easily be turned into ERP software as you grow. We’ll point those out when we profile them.

Who Are the Big Accounting Software Makers?

According to the research firm Allied Marketing Research, the top accounting software providers regardless of target market’s business size include:

• Infor
• Intuit (maker of QuickBooks)
• Microsoft
• Oracle
• Sage
• SAP
• Thomson Reuters
• Xero
• Zeta
• Zoho

Of the above, only Intuit, Sage, Xero, and Zoho make medium and small business accounting software. We’ll profile these software makers—plus a few more—below.

Note that both Sage and Zoho also provide ERP systems. As a result, their small business accounting software are more modularized. This way, it’ll be easier for you to upgrade to their other modules like payroll, advanced job costing, workflow management, and advanced inventory management.

How We Picked the Accounting Software to Profile

At the end of the day, accounting software isn’t too tough to program. It just has to follow centuries-old basic accounting rules. So, it’s tough to recommend one accounting software over another because they all have the same core functions.

Still, we can distinguish one software from another based on the type of business and size of business. A service business might need, for example, job costing and maybe project management functions. A retail business, a wholesale business, and a manufacturing business all need inventory tracking but to different degrees of complexity. And, of course, a one-person business needs very different payroll functions compared to a business that uses contractors compared or a business that hires employees.

Businesses also grow, shrink, or change focus. So, just because a particular small business accounting software is perfect right now doesn’t mean it will remain perfect a few years from now.

Bearing all this in mind, we looked at the following factors when evaluating the accounting software in this article:

• Stability of the software maker
• Market penetration—i.e. whether your accountant might be familiar with the software
• Ease of data migration in case you need to switch providers
• Ease of expansion as your business changes or grows

Based on these criteria, we picked six small business accounting software to profile. Towards the end of this article, we’ll also include a couple of others we’ve heard of but don’t have the room to profile.

A word about pricing. Every software vendor here offers discounts for first time users. In the profiles, we only show you the software’s regular pricing because this is the true cost of the software for the long term.

The Best Small Business Accounting Software is the One Your CPA Recommends

Before you read further, we’re going to give you an easy answer first. The best accounting software is the one your CPA recommends. This is because most accounting software will let your CPA—if you have one—access your account remotely and download all the information they need to do work for you. So, it would be best if they’re already familiar with the software’s user interface.

This is why, if you have a CPA you use or plan to use, you should ask them for a recommendation before you spend any money. This will save you a lot of time later.

But not every small business has a CPA early on. In fact, some might not need one for a long time. So, we made sure that, for all the software we profile below, you can change vendors and migrate your data in the future if you need to. We can’t guarantee the migration will be easy. Just that the data will be migratable.

Typical Functionalities in Small Business Accounting Software

Because accounting is such an old concept, all the accounting software share a set of basic core functions. And, because accounting software is a competitive market niche, when one company comes up with a new function, all the other companies tend to quickly add something similar in their own software. So, the ultimate difference between the software often rests in user interface, and, sometimes, expandability.

Typical Functionalities in All Modern Accounting Software

A typical small business accounting software usually has the following functionalities:

• Selectable between cash or accrual accounting methods
• Track income and expenses (through manual and automatic entries)
• Invoice and accept payments
• Sync with bank accounts and reconcile payments
• Run financial reports
• Capture and organize receipts
• Track mileage
• Calculate and track sales and use taxes and segregate (but not remit)
• Send estimates and convert to invoice
• Set up (and file, for an extra fee) 1099 forms
• Payroll
• Connect with online sales channels for auto syncing (usually through an integration service like Zapier)
• Time tracking
• Inventory tracking
• Guided setup
• Migratable to software from other accounting software providers
• Remote access by accountant

The Software Have Some Shared Limitations Too

Some of the services above are available only if you have a higher tier product or pay an extra fee. Typical examples include payment processing, payroll, and automated inventory tracking. You can manually make a lot of these entries if you do not wish to pay extra for automation.

For sales taxes, all the software profiled will help you calculate, segregate, and track your sales taxes. But you have to enter the tax rates manually, and you have to remit the taxes yourself.

There are companies that will take care of calculating, collecting, and remitting sales taxes for you. They don’t do this for free, of course. All of the software we profile below will integrate with such companies (e.g. Avalara, TaxJar) either directly or through a software automation service called Zapier.

When you read the profile below, assume that the software will have all the functionalities listed above. If there’s anything different, we’ll point it out in the applicable section.

We’ll first start with the market leader for small business accounting software: QuickBooks. Then we’ll look at two free software. And then three more well-regarded software.

QuickBooks Has the Biggest Market Share for Small Businesses Accounting Software

Intuit is a US-based business that owns QuickBooks, Turbo Tax, Mint, and some other well-known software. It’s been around a long time.

QuickBooks is the umbrella brand for Intuit’s small business accounting software. Intuit makes several products under QuickBooks, some of which are cloud-based and others are desktop only. These products include:

• QuickBooks Online
• QuickBooks Desktop
• QuickBooks Self-Employed

QuickBooks has its own payroll, payment processing, and tax filing services that sync up with their products. These are all offered for an extra fee.

We’ll talk about each product separately below.

QuickBooks Online

As its name says, QuickBooks Online lives in the cloud. You use a web browser or an app to access it, so there’s no code that lives on your computer. If you subscribe to QuickBooks Online, you’ll have access to a mobile app as well.

QuickBooks Online Tiers and Pricing

There are four tiers of QuickBooks Online. These are:

• Simple Start at $30/month
• Essentials at $55/month
• Plus at $85/month
• Advanced at $200/month

The higher priced tiers have more features and functionalities than the lower priced tiers. But they all have the basic accounting functionalities we listed in the earlier section. Here’s QuickBooks Online’s full feature list for each tier, if you wish to do a closer comparison.

Other QuickBooks Online Functionalities

Because QuickBooks Online is cloud-based, there are a few things you can do that you can’t with the desktop version. These include:

• Allow your customers to pay invoices online
• Allow your accountant to access your account online (they have to subscribe to QuickBooks Online Accountant)
• Generate and e-file contractor 1099s
• Make online bill payments
• Make online bank transfers
• Automatically backup and recover data (recovery is for Advanced tier but backup is for all tiers)
• Sync with POS or popular marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Shopify, etc. and match payments, fees, taxes, inventory, and similar; number of channels depends on your pricing tier

To enable online payments, you’ll need to sign up to QuickBooks Payments. It seems to be a merchant account and requires a credit check before you can set this up. The QuickBooks Payments rates are:

• Online: 2.9% + $0.25 per transaction
• In Person: 2.4% + $0.25 per transaction
• Keyed (manually entered): 3.4% + $0.25 per transaction
• ACH: 1% capped at $10 per transaction

This is more-or-less comparable to other payment aggregators’ fees.

If you wish for QuickBooks to file your contractor’s 1099’s, these cost:

• $4.99 for first 3 forms
• $3.99 for 4-20 forms
• $1.99 for 21 forms and up

Online bill pay (for you to pay your bills) is through Melio. Their charges apply.

QuickBooks Online lets you connect with your online sales channels like Amazon, Shopify, etc. to sync your sales and inventory. They seem to have hard coded this function into their software. But you can do the same thing with the other software we profile in this article. You just have to find the correct integration/app and manually connect it to your accounting software. It’s not hard.

QuickBooks Desktop

Traditionally, QuickBooks offered desktop products. But now, it’s pushing its online products. You have to try hard to find information about their desktop products. And, even then, they show QuickBooks Online next to the desktop pricing.

There are only 2 versions of the desktop products now. One version is basically subscription based because a lot of the features are enabled only in the cloud. These versions are:

• QuickBooks Desktop Premier Plus: $799/year for 5 users. It’s not clear to us why you’d need to pay for a 2nd year because the features of the product don’t seem to need online connections.
• QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise: $1,410/year for 10 users. You can add up to 40 users for an extra fee. This is a subscription product. If you cancel your subscription, you’ll still be able to access some data but not all your data and some of the features will be disabled.

QuickBooks Desktop is good for businesses with large inventories. Pricing-wise, the entry level product is less expensive than the QuickBooks Online Plus tier. The major Desktop features are similar to the major Online features. But, of course, with Desktop, your license is your license and you might not have to pay extra the next year.

QuickBooks Desktop products are some of the best small business accounting software in the marketplace. Unfortunately, QuickBooks is now making it difficult to use these products without a subscription.

QuickBooks Self-Employed

QuickBooks Self-Employed is suited only for freelancers, independent contractors, and single member LLC one person businesses. It has limited features compared to other QuickBooks products.

QuickBooks Self-Employed uses the cash accounting method. There is no way to switch to the accrual accounting method unless you upgrade. It’s also difficult to migrate data from QuickBooks Self-Employed to accounting software from another vendor. But, if you wish to upgrade to another QuickBooks product, QuickBooks can help you do so.

If you hire contractors, you can still use QuickBooks Self-Employed (you’ll need to tag it correctly). But if you have actual employees—unless it’s just yourself—you’ll need to upgrade.

You can’t download payment records by syncing to online platforms like Upwork and Patreon. But you can enter these transactions manually or download a data file from the platforms and then manually upload the file.

The best feature in QuickBooks Self-Employed is its quarterly taxes feature. It calculates your quarterly taxes in real time so you always know how much you have to pay at the end of every quarter.

Given that freelancers tend to have uneven income throughout the year, we think this feature is the number one reason to use QuickBooks Self-Employed. While you can do this calculation yourself by following the directions in IRS Publication 505, under Annualized Income Installment Method, the process is complicated. QuickBooks Self-Employed will calculate everything automatically for you.

QuickBooks Self-Employed costs $15/month. You can add different Turbo Tax bundles for federal and state taxes. The tax products will file your taxes directly for you (but you can do it yourself for free).

WAVE Accounting is a Free Full-Featured Small Business Accounting Software

WAVE Accounting is free. It makes money through ancillary services that you can sign up for. These services include:

• Payroll
• Payment processing
• Accounting Advisors/support

WAVE supports both cash and accrual accounting methods. It defaults to the accrual method, but you can toggle to the cash method in your account settings.

Unlike the other companies, WAVE lets you give an unlimited number of users the ability to access the software.

Payroll

WAVE has two types of charges for its payroll services in the US:

• There are 14 states (as of this writing) where WAVE will automatically file all the employee withholdings for you. For these states, the base charge is $40/month. Then, add $6/month for each employee or independent contractor you wish to file for.
• For the rest of the states, the base charge is $20/month. WAVE will help you track all the payroll taxes for you. But you’ll have to pay and file the paperwork yourself. You still pay $6/month for each employee or independent contractor.

Here’s WAVE’s payroll page if you wish to dig into the details. WAVE’s payroll service is available for both their US and Canadian customers.

Payment Processing

You can let your customers pay your invoice with a click by signing up to WAVE’s payment processing services. WAVE supports credit cards, bank transfers, and Apple Pay. It can also handle recurring billing and automatically syncs payments to the accounting software.

WAVE’s credit card processing costs 2.9% + $0.60 per transaction (Amex is 3.4% + $0.60). Bank transfers cost 1% with a minimum fee of $1 and no caps. This is on the higher end of processing fees but not outrageously high.

Accounting Advisors

WAVE’s Accounting Advisors service costs $149/month. They offer payroll coaching as well, and this service has a one time fee of $379.

Integrations

Unlike, for example, QuickBooks, WAVE doesn’t offer a lot of automated features like automatically importing your online sales and inventory data from your online store. However, you might still be able to do the same thing through a service called Zapier.

You can find Zapier’s WAVE integrations on the WAVE app store. Zapier has a forever free plan. Their paid plans go from $19.99/month to $799/month and month-to-month pricing goes from $29.99/month to $1,198.50/month.

Zoho Books is a Modular System That Can be Expanded into an ERP System

Zoho is a software company that makes a lot of business software. Their software are broken down to modules, and you can connect the modules to eventually scale up to a full ERP system. Zoho Books is one of the modules.

If your business remains small and has no need to scale up, Zoho Books is a perfectly good stand-alone small business accounting software as well.

Zoho Tiers and Pricing

Zoho Books is priced at 6 different tiers. They offer a completely free tier for those businesses making $50k or less in annual revenue.

The Zoho Books tiers are:

• Free: 1 user and 1 accountant
• Standard: $20/month or $15/month paid yearly, for 3 users
• Professional: $50/month or $40/month paid yearly, for 5 users
• Premium: $70/month or $60/month paid yearly, for 10 users
• Elite: $150/month or $120/month paid yearly, for 10 users
• Ultimate: $275/month or $240/month paid yearly, for 25 users

Some of the services on Zoho’s Free tier are limited. For instance, you can’t link up, automatically sync, and reconcile payments with your bank and credit card accounts. But you can connect your bank, download all the information manually, and then reconcile the payments manually.

If you’re a service business, you can keep your project time sheets and convert the information to an invoice to bill your work. But this isn’t available for the Free tier.

You can automatically track and segregate your sales tax so you know how much you have to pay when the taxes are due. But, again, this isn’t available for the Free tier. (You can still track everything manually.)

Other Zoho Functionalities

Zoho lets you connect to Stripe and PayPal for payment processing. The higher tiers have additional payment processor choices. Zoho does have a nifty feature that lets you generate a link so that you can embed it on your website or invoice. Then, your customer can click the link to pay you online. Zoho Books automatically tracks payments made this way.

Because Zoho Books is somewhat modular and can connect up to some of Zoho’s other services (e.g. payroll services), they have less integrations with third party services. However, Zoho does integrate with Zapier, and Zapier, in turn, opens up a lot of other third-party apps for you to integrate with.

Zoho Books comes with simple inventory tracking. But if you have a lot of different types of inventory, the Elite and Ultimate tiers will give you advanced inventory tracking. This way, you can see a lot more details in, for example, your manufacturing process. But note Zoho has its own advanced inventory tracking software that even the Free tier can use. This inventory tracking software also has a Free tier that lets you fulfill up to 50 orders a month.

For additional information, here’s a list of Zoho Books’ pricing and features information. If you wish to dig more into the Zoho Books’ full capabilities, here’s their information page on how to use the software.

Sage is a Big ERP Player that Also Provides Small Business Accounting Software

Sage runs with the ERP crowd and competes with Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, and similar. So, Sage’s most powerful accounting products aren’t made for small businesses.

But Sage does offer two products specifically designed for small and medium businesses: Sage Accounting and Sage 50cloud. These are very well regarded products, and that’s why we’re covering them in this article.

However, after looking at the products, we think Sage’s small business accounting software aren’t made for true beginners in accounting. We suspect Sage tried to adapt and simplify a very robust accounting software to smaller businesses that do not always need to follow rigorous accounting practices. The result is a product loved by folks with at least some accounting background but can be confusing to those with no accounting experience.

Instead of connecting to Sage’s complex ERP software, Sage Accounting and Sage 50cloud also rely on a lot of third-party integrations to automate various tasks. So, before using Sage, look carefully into what integrations you need. Then, price those integrations into the total cost of the product before making a final decision.

Sage Accounting

Sage Accounting is Sage’s entry-level product. It’s designed for one person or very small businesses.

There are two tiers of Sage Accounting products:

• Sage Accounting Start: $10/month
• Sage Accounting: $25/month

The Start tier allows only 1 user plus one accountant. The Accounting tier allows unlimited users and accountant access. To access your account, the accountant must subscribe to Sage’s Accounting Partner Edition software.

The Start tier offers very minimum services. In fact, instead of pointing out what the Start tier doesn’t have, it’s easier to list what it does have:

• Select from cash or accrual accounting methods
• Sync to bank accounts
• Set up/customize chart of accounts
• Create invoices (sync with Stripe for online payments, but Stripe’s fees apply)
• Helps track sales taxes
• Track 1099 contractors but you have to file the 1099s manually
• Option to add AutoEntry (Sage’s receipt scanning software) for extra fee

With the Sage Accounting tier, you get everything in Start, plus:

• Create estimates that can be turned into invoices
• Inventory management

Like we said, Sage Accounting is Sage’s entry-level product. It has enough features to run a very small business but not much more. If you want a better feel for what Sage Accounting can do, see Sage’s help pages that go through the details.

Sage 50cloud

Sage 50cloud is Sage’s more robust small business accounting software. It’s a better fit for businesses that manage a large inventory or manufacture products.

Despite its name, Sage 50cloud is a desktop product. The cloud merely means you have to connect to the cloud to enable some of the software’s functions.

There are three tiers of Sage 50cloud software. These are:

• Pro: $578/year or $57.17/month for 1 user
• Premium: $924/year or $92/month for up to 5 users
• Quantum: $1,533/year or $152.42/month for up to 40 users

If you’re a service business, Sage 50cloud can cost out jobs and track time so you can monitor the status of each project.

You can connect to sales tax services, payroll, and payment processing services through integrations. Sage 50cloud can connect with PayPal and Stripe and automatically download transactions into the software.

You can also capture your receipts with Sage’s AutoEntry service, for an extra fee. (It seems that, if you want to keep an electronic image of your receipts, you have to use AutoEntry.)

Sage 50cloud doesn’t offer mileage tracking. So, if this is important to you, be aware that you might have to enter your mileage by hand.

For details on all the functionalities of Sage 50cloud, see this help section.

Sage Marketplace

You can find a lot of third-party integrations for Sage’s software to help you automate your bookkeeping. These can be found at the Sage Marketplace. Most of these services cost extra, but the vendors do not always disclose the pricing on the app’s information page.  

FreshBooks’s Software is Accrual Basis Only

FreshBooks specializes in small business accounting software. They’re a direct competitor of QuickBooks.

FreshBooks Tiers and Pricing

FreshBooks has 3 standard plans and one customized plan. Their standard plans are:

• Lite: $15 or $180/year with up to 5 client accounts
• Plus: $30 or $360/year with up to 50 client accounts
• Premium: $55/month or $660/year with unlimited client accounts

FreshBooks’ pricing tiers are based on the number of clients you have. Specifically, this is the number of clients you have that you plan to send invoices through FreshBooks. So, if you’re a service or wholesale business that deal directly with clients or customers, you should estimate your needs before deciding on a plan.

But, if you retail goods, work through online marketplaces, or are paid without having to send an invoice (e.g. you’re an YouTube creator paid through the platform), then the client count might not be very important. You can enter these transactions manually or automate recording the payments through an integrated app.

The clients are active clients. If you’re no longer working with a client, you can delete the client to free up a spot. The data for the deleted client won’t go away. So, we see no reason why you can’t link and unlink as needed if you have, say, 6 clients and do not wish to upgrade to the Plus tier.

Other FreshBooks Functionalities

We looked hard, and it seems that FreshBooks only uses the accrual accounting method. So, if you’re currently using cash basis, you’ll have to wait until the end of your fiscal year to make the switch (per IRS rules).

FreshBooks gives you something called checkout links. These are links that you create for items with a specific price and a sales tax amount. Each link is associated with a client. The link can be embedded on your website or even in an email or text. The client can click on the link and enter their payment information. As of right now, checkout links can only be linked to WePay, Stripe, and PayPal.

You can also use WePay, Stripe, PayPal, and Barclays on your invoices. FreshBooks’ default payment processor is WePay, which is a service from Chase. WePay’s rates are:

• Payment processing: 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction (Amex is 3.5% + $0.30)
• ACH: 1%

FreshBooks integrates with Gusto for payroll. (Gusto is one of the leading payroll management services. Their services cost about the same as WAVE’s payroll services.)

Some FreshBooks functionalities are not available to all tiers. You can allow your CPA to access your account for all tiers except the Lite tier. You can use a camera to automatically capture the information on bills and receipts (for expenses). But this isn’t available for the Lite tier. With the Pro tier, you can capture receipts but not bills.

FreshBooks has an app store, if you’re interested in seeing their available integrations. Their Help section also explains the features and functionalities of FreshBooks in detail.

Xero Has a Large International Presence

Xero is another small business accounting software maker and a well-known competitor of QuickBooks. It’s headquartered in New Zealand and has a strong international customer base.

Xero Tiers and Pricing

Xero offers three tiers of accounting software:

• Early: $13/month. Can only send 20 invoices and enter 5 bills.
• Growing: $37/month.
• Established: $70/month.

All Xero plans are billed month-to-month.

We think Xero’s Early tier is too limited for even the smallest of small businesses. It’s true that not all businesses need to send out invoices. But every business has bills to pay, and they tend to be more than 5 per month. If you’re a very small business, you might wish to look at the other companies profiled here before deciding to go with Xero.

As to the Growing and Established tiers, Xero’s pricing are a little higher than their competitors’. Only the Established tier lets you track projects, lets employees claim expenses, and supports multiple currencies.

Other Xero Functionalities

Xero uses the accrual accounting method. But, if you have been using the cash method, you can run your financial reports on the cash basis.

Xero’s software offers features similar to the other small business accounting software already profiled here. They’re working on an integration with Avalara so you can pay Avalara to set, track, and remit sales and VAT taxes for you.

If you wish to engage a payroll service, Xero integrates with Gusto.

Xero offers other third-party integrations. Check their marketplace to find whether Xero integrates with the other services you use.

If you wish to let your customers pay your invoices online, you can connect the invoice to a payment processor. Xero uses Stripe for card payments and GoCardless for ACH payments. (GoCardless is a London-based fintech.)

If you use Stripe, their standard payment rates apply. GoCardless charges 1% + $0.25 per transaction, capped at $2.50, for US domestic ACH transfers. For international money transfers, GoCardless charges 2% + $0.25 and uses Wise’s exchange rates. (See our article on wire transfers to learn more about Wise.)

Other Small Business Accounting Software You Might Wish to Explore

If you tried all the above software and don’t like any of them, there are plenty of other small business accounting software providers. Here are a few names that we collected over the course of the past couple of years:

Manager

Manager is based in Australia. They have a forever free desktop version you can download. Their paid version is a cloud-based software. The software’s feature list is pretty robust, and it can do both cash and accrual accounting.

We can’t find much information about the company. But they do seem to have been in business for quite a while.

Kashoo

Kashoo is a Canadian company. They have two products: TrulySmall Accounting and Kashoo Accounting. TrulySmall is an entry level product and seems to target freelancers as users. Kashoo is more suitable for small to midsized businesses.

Kashoo’s first year pricing is heavily discounted, but their regular pricing is higher than comparable software.

Surf

Surf is a part of Bright Software Group, which is based in Ireland. As of this writing, Surf’s pricing isn’t competitive and their website isn’t very informative. Our guess is that Bright recently bought Surf and is in the process of integrating the software into a part of Bright’s regular offerings.

GnuCash

GnuCash is open source software that’s completely free to use. It has all the basic accounting functionalities, but the user interface is a little old-fashioned. GnuCash is free to download and runs locally on your computer.

Before You Decide, Try the Software to See if You Like the User Interface

All six small business accounting software we profiled in this article offer a free trial period, a few months of highly discounted pricing, or even a dummy account. They make it easy for you to try the software to see if it fits your business’s needs. Given that all accounting software share similar core functions, one way to distinguish one software from another is through its user interface.

And user interface is a personal preference. The on-screen buttons and overall layout might make complete sense to you but might be quite puzzling to someone else.

So, before you commit to a system that you’ll have to use for at least the next few years, try the system out for as long as possible. See if you like the way you have to enter data. And understand whether the software can (or can’t) sync with your sales numbers and maybe inventory counts. Make sure you’re happy with the software. Yes, you can migrate your data between all the software we profile here. We checked. Still, you probably won’t want to do this migration too often. And, given you’ll need to use your accounting software at least once a week, you need to be happy with it before you send them your money.

Interested in starting and running a small business? Here’s the beginning of our step-by-step guide: What to do right after getting that great business idea.