If you run a small bookkeeping practice, your software bill is probably your second-largest expense after rent. Most cloud platforms charge per client file, per month, forever - so a 25-client book of business costs you $7,500 to $15,000 a year in subscriptions you can only partially pass through. Meanwhile you're juggling logins, waiting on browser refreshes, and explaining to clients why their portal looks different this quarter. FreshLedger Pro takes the opposite approach: one $799 Windows license, unlimited client files, and a Free Accountant Edition you can send to the CPA at year-end. Each client is a single file on your hard drive. Switching from a landscaper's books to a dental practice's books takes about two seconds. Backups are a right-click copy. It's a real double-entry system with full payroll and MACRS depreciation - built for bookkeepers who actually know debits from credits.
**Single file per client, unlimited files.** Each client's books live in one .flp file on your machine. Want to take on a new client? Create a new file. No per-client billing event, no seat upgrade, no waiting for sales to provision anything. A practice running 40 clients pays the same $799 as a practice running 4. **Fast file switching.** FreshLedger Pro is a native Windows desktop app, so opening a different client file is a File > Open operation that completes in under two seconds on typical SSD hardware. No browser tabs, no re-authentication, no spinner. If you batch work (all the bank recs Monday, all the payroll Tuesday), this matters several hundred times a week. **Backups are file copies.** Because the entire client book is one file, your backup workflow is: copy the file. Drop it on a USB drive, a NAS, OneDrive, Dropbox, or a dated folder. Restoring a corrupted or misposted file is just replacing it. No proprietary backup format, no cloud-export queue, no "contact support to retrieve your data." **Free Accountant Edition for the CPA.** At year-end, send your client's CPA a link to download the Free Accountant Edition. They open the same .flp file you've been working in, run their adjusting journal entries, and send it back. No "accountant's copy" merge conflicts, no version mismatches, no asking the client to upgrade their subscription tier so the CPA can get in. **Full double-entry with payroll and MACRS depreciation built in.** You're not bolting on a payroll add-on or a fixed-asset module. Form 941, Form 940, W-2s, 1099-NECs, and a real fixed-asset register with half-year, mid-quarter, and mid-month conventions are in the box. For a bookkeeper who handles small S-corps and Schedule E rental owners, that means you don't have to kick depreciation back to the CPA every December. **Chart of accounts templates.** Start a new client from a service-business, retail, rental real estate, or contractor template, then customize. Cuts new-client setup from an afternoon to about twenty minutes.
**Workflow 1: Monthly close for a 12-client batch.** Monday morning you open Client A's file, import the bank OFX you downloaded from their business checking, run the bank rec against the imported transactions, post the recurring journal entries (rent accrual, depreciation, owner draws), and run a P&L and balance sheet. File > Close. File > Open Client B. Repeat. Because there's no network round-trip and no per-client login, a clean 12-client month-end batch is realistically a one-day exercise. At the end you copy the 12 updated files to a dated backup folder. **Workflow 2: S-corp owner payroll, quarterly.** Your client is a one-shareholder S-corp paying themselves a $60,000 reasonable salary, semi-monthly. You enter the gross, FreshLedger calculates federal withholding from the W-4 (2020+ redesign) on file, Social Security and Medicare at 6.2% and 1.45% employer/employee, and any state withholding. At quarter-end you generate Form 941 with wages on line 2, federal income tax withheld on line 3, and Social Security/Medicare on lines 5a-5d. At year-end you produce the W-2 with Box 1, 3, and 5 wages reconciled, and Form 940 for FUTA. If the owner took distributions in addition to salary, those post to equity, not wages - the software keeps them separate. **Workflow 3: Schedule E rental property depreciation.** Your client buys a residential rental for $310,000, with $60,000 allocated to land. You add the building to the fixed-asset register: $250,000 basis, 27.5-year residential rental real property, mid-month convention, placed in service in August. FreshLedger calculates the first-year depreciation correctly (4.5 months of the half-month August + remaining months), generates the depreciation schedule for the life of the asset, and posts the monthly entry. When they add a $14,000 HVAC replacement, you decide whether it's a Section 179 candidate or 15-year/27.5-year property and the register handles it from there. The CPA gets a clean fixed-asset report at year-end tied to Form 4562.
Small-practice bookkeepers live and die by tax-form accuracy. FreshLedger Pro is built around the actual forms your clients' CPAs will sign: **Form 941** quarterly with correct treatment of the Social Security wage base ($168,600 for 2024), Medicare with no cap, and Additional Medicare Tax withholding at 0.9% above $200,000 in wages. **Form 940** annual FUTA at 6.0% on the first $7,000, with the standard 5.4% state credit netting to 0.6%. **W-2** generation with proper Box 12 codes (D for 401(k), DD for employer health, W for HSA). **1099-NEC** for nonemployee compensation $600+, with the January 31 filing deadline. **Form 4562** depreciation reporting tied to the asset register. On the depreciation side, the engine follows IRS Pub 946: half-year convention as default for personal property, automatic switch to mid-quarter when more than 40% of basis is placed in service in Q4, mid-month for real property. Real MACRS classes are present: 5-year (vehicles, computers), 7-year (office furniture, most equipment), 15-year (qualified improvement property, land improvements), 27.5-year residential rental, 39-year nonresidential real. Section 179 election with the 2024 $1,160,000 cap and $2,890,000 phaseout threshold, plus bonus depreciation at the current-year percentage (60% for property placed in service in 2024, scheduled to step down). Listed-property rules and the business-use percentage for vehicles are tracked separately.
Run the math against a typical 20-client practice. A subscription competitor's accountant-tier pricing at roughly $25-50 per client per month works out to $6,000-$12,000 per year, every year, forever. FreshLedger Pro is $799 once, plus an optional $99/year if you want updated payroll tax tables (you do, if you're running payroll for clients). Year one: $898. Year two: $99. Year five total: $1,294. That's a one-time break-even inside the first two months versus the cheapest subscription tier, and the gap widens every year. If you don't run payroll - say you sub it out to a payroll bureau - you can skip the $99 entirely and the depreciation, GL, and reporting features keep working indefinitely on the version you bought.
FreshLedger Pro is not the right tool if your practice model depends on real-time multi-user access - say, you and a staff bookkeeper need to be in the same client file simultaneously over a network. The file is single-user at a time. It's also not right if you've sold clients on a mobile-first experience: there is no native iOS or Android app, and on macOS you'd run it inside Parallels or a similar VM. And if your value proposition to clients is "I never touch a CSV - everything auto-syncs from the bank," be aware that FreshLedger imports transactions via OFX/QFX/QBO/CSV download rather than live bank feeds. For practices that want hands-on control and don't mind a five-minute-per-client download step, that's fine. For practices selling pure automation, it isn't.
One-time-purchase accounting software with built-in payroll, full depreciation handling, and a free Accountant Edition for your CPA.
Buy FreshLedger Pro — $799One-time purchase. No subscription. Free Accountant Edition included.