Feature

No Subscription, Ever in FreshLedger Pro

FreshLedger Pro is a full double-entry accounting system you buy once and own forever. The price is $799, paid one time, with no expiring license, no feature lockouts when a renewal date passes, and no cloud account that can be downgraded or canceled by the vendor. The only ongoing cost is optional: $99 per year if you want the payroll tax-table update so federal and state withholding stays current. If you do not run payroll, or you are comfortable updating rates yourself, you never owe another dollar. For owners who have watched QuickBooks Online creep from $30 a month to $90+ a month per company file, or who have been forced off perpetual QuickBooks Desktop into the subscription-only Desktop plans, this matters. You get a stable cost, a local file you control, and accounting software that still works in year ten exactly the way it worked on day one.

Buy FreshLedger Pro — $799

How it works

The purchase flow is deliberately boring. You pay $799 on the checkout page, you receive a license key and a Windows installer by email, and you activate the software on your PC. The license is perpetual. There is no annual reactivation, no "phone home" check that disables the program if our servers are down, and no per-company-file surcharge. You can open as many company files as you need - one for your operating company, one for a rental property LLC, one for a side business - all under the same license on the same machine. Once installed, FreshLedger Pro runs entirely on your hardware. Your chart of accounts, general ledger, accounts receivable and accounts payable subledgers, fixed-asset register, and payroll records live in a local company file you back up yourself (or to a network drive, or to OneDrive/Dropbox - your choice). Updates to the core application - bug fixes and minor feature releases for your major version - are downloaded from our site and installed manually. They do not require an active subscription. The one piece that legitimately needs annual maintenance is the payroll tax engine. Federal income-tax withholding tables, Social Security and Medicare wage bases, FUTA and SUTA rates, and state withholding formulas change every January. If you run payroll inside FreshLedger Pro and want us to ship those updated tables, you opt into the $99/year payroll update plan. That subscription delivers refreshed withholding tables, updated Form 941 and Form 940 layouts, current-year W-2 and W-4 (2020+) handling, and 1099-NEC thresholds. If you skip the renewal, payroll still runs - it just runs on last year's tables, which we clearly warn you about on the payroll screen.

Why it matters

Accounting data has a long tail. The IRS expects you to keep records supporting your return for at least three years under the standard statute of limitations, six years if income was substantially understated, and indefinitely for fraud or unfiled returns. Property and depreciation records (MACRS 5-year, 7-year, 15-year, 27.5-year residential, 39-year commercial, plus Section 179 and bonus depreciation elections) need to survive until well after the asset is disposed of. Subscription accounting software puts that history behind a recurring payment - stop paying, and read access to your own ledger can become read-only, exported-only, or gone. A perpetual-license, locally stored system removes that risk. Your 2019 trial balance is still openable in 2031 on the same software that produced it. When an auditor asks for the detail behind a depreciation schedule using the half-year or mid-quarter convention from IRS Pub 946, you can produce it without paying a reactivation fee to a vendor. The cost math also matters. QuickBooks Online Plus is currently around $99/month, roughly $1,188 per year, every year, forever. FreshLedger Pro at $799 once is paid back in roughly eight months versus that single subscription tier - and after month eight, you are simply not spending money on accounting software anymore. Even if you opt into the $99/year payroll update, your year-two-and-beyond cost is under one-tenth of the QBO equivalent. For a small business, that is real margin.

Compared to other accounting software

QuickBooks Online is subscription-only. Simple Start, Essentials, Plus, and Advanced are all monthly plans; if you stop paying, you lose write access and eventually live access to your file. QuickBooks Desktop, which used to be sold as a perpetual license, is now sold as QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise on an annual subscription as well - Intuit discontinued the one-time-purchase Pro and Premier SKUs for new buyers. Renewing is no longer optional if you want to keep using the product. Xero is subscription-only, billed monthly per organization, with Starter, Growing, and Established tiers. There is no perpetual-license option and no offline desktop version - the file lives in Xero's cloud. Wave is free for core accounting and invoicing, which is genuinely attractive for very small operators, but Wave charges per-transaction for payments and per-month for payroll, and the product is cloud-only with limited inventory, limited fixed-asset handling, and no true desktop file you control. FreshLedger Pro is the only one of these that you actually buy. You pay $799 once, the binary runs on your Windows machine, the company file sits on your drive, and the vendor cannot revoke access by changing a billing plan. The trade-off is honest: it is Windows-only (runs in a VM on macOS), it does not have automatic bank feeds, and the file is single-user at a time.

Honest limitations

Buying once does not buy everything. FreshLedger Pro is a Windows desktop application; there is no native macOS build and no mobile app, though it runs fine in a Windows VM on a Mac. It does not include automatic bank feeds - you import transactions by downloading CSV, OFX, QFX, or QBO files from your bank's website. The company file is single-user at a time; two people cannot edit the same file simultaneously over a network. The $799 license covers the core accounting application and current-year payroll tax tables at the time of purchase, but it does not include free payroll table updates in future years - that is the optional $99/year add-on. And because this is a true double-entry general ledger, expect a real learning curve if you are coming from invoice-only tools.

Ready to own your books?

One-time-purchase accounting software with built-in payroll, full depreciation handling, and a free Accountant Edition for your CPA.

Buy FreshLedger Pro — $799

One-time purchase. No subscription. Free Accountant Edition included.

Frequently asked questions

Is the $799 really the only required payment?
Yes. $799 buys a perpetual license to FreshLedger Pro for Windows. There is no annual reactivation, no per-company-file fee, and no forced upgrade. The only optional recurring charge is $99/year for refreshed payroll tax tables - federal withholding, FICA wage bases, FUTA/SUTA, and updated Form 941, Form 940, W-2, W-4, and 1099-NEC handling. If you do not run payroll, or you maintain rates yourself, you never pay that $99. The software continues to run either way; payroll just uses last-year tables if you skip the update, and we flag that on screen.
What happens to my data if I stop paying the optional $99/year?
Nothing. Your company file, chart of accounts, general ledger, AR/AP subledgers, fixed-asset register, and historical payroll records stay fully accessible. FreshLedger Pro is a local Windows application reading a local file - there is no cloud server that can revoke access. Skipping the $99 payroll renewal only means new payroll runs use the prior year's withholding tables, which is usually fine mid-year but should be corrected before January. You can resume the update plan any later year without backpay; you just buy that year's tables when you need them.
How does this compare to QuickBooks Desktop's old perpetual license?
QuickBooks Desktop Pro and Premier were sold as perpetual licenses for years, with Intuit imposing a three-year "sunset" on services like payroll and bank feeds. Intuit has since moved Desktop to subscription-only for new buyers under the Enterprise SKU. FreshLedger Pro behaves like the old Desktop license in spirit: you own the version you bought, it does not sunset, and core accounting keeps working indefinitely. The only piece that genuinely needs annual refresh is payroll tax tables, and that is opt-in at $99/year rather than a bundled forced renewal.
Can I install FreshLedger Pro on more than one computer?
The $799 license covers installation on your primary Windows PC plus one additional machine for the same user - for example, an office desktop and a laptop - provided the software is not run on both simultaneously against the same company file. The file itself is single-user at a time. If multiple staff members need to post entries concurrently from different workstations, FreshLedger Pro is not the right fit; that workflow requires QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise, QuickBooks Online, or Xero, all of which are subscription products.
What if you go out of business? Will my software stop working?
No. Because FreshLedger Pro is a locally installed Windows application with a perpetual license and a local company file, the software does not check in with our servers to run. If our company disappeared tomorrow, your installed copy would continue to open, post journal entries, run financials, depreciate assets under MACRS, and print 1099-NECs on the tax tables you already have. You would lose access to future payroll table updates and future bug-fix releases, but you would not lose access to your books - which is the central problem with subscription accounting software.