The Accounting Stack I’d Recommend at Every Stage (Pre-Seed to Series A)

Most founders overthink this. Or worse, they underthink it—defaulting to whatever their accountant friend mentioned once—and end up ripping out their entire finance stack 18 months later when it can’t handle revenue recognition or investor reporting.

Here’s the thing: your accounting software isn’t just a place to track expenses. It’s the foundation of every financial decision you’ll make, every board deck you’ll build, and every due diligence process you’ll survive.

I’ve seen founders waste months migrating from one system to another mid-fundraise. Don’t be that founder.

Let me walk you through what actually works at each stage—and when it’s time to upgrade.

Pre-Seed: Keep It Simple (You Have Bigger Problems)

The reality: You’re probably burning through savings or a small check from friends and family. You don’t need enterprise software. You need to not screw up your books so badly that a real accountant can’t fix them later.

My recommendation: Wave or QuickBooks Simple Start

Wave is free. Legitimately free—not “free trial” free. It handles invoicing, expense tracking, and basic financial reports. For a pre-revenue founder who’s mostly tracking burn and sending the occasional invoice, it’s more than enough.

The catch? Wave only works in the US and Canada, has no inventory management, and you’ll outgrow it fast. But at pre-seed, that’s fine. Your job is to build product and talk to customers, not optimize your chart of accounts.

QuickBooks Simple Start (~$30/month) is the safer bet if you want something you won’t have to abandon in 6 months. It’s the Honda Civic of accounting software—boring, reliable, gets you where you need to go.

What to avoid: Don’t let someone talk you into NetSuite or Sage Intacct at this stage. You don’t need a Ferrari to drive to the grocery store.

Seed: The Transition Point

The reality: You’ve raised real money. You have a runway to manage, maybe some early revenue, and investors who want to see actual financials—not a screenshot of your bank account.

My recommendation: QuickBooks Online (Plus or Advanced)

This is where QuickBooks earns its reputation. At the Plus tier (~$90/month), you get:

• Proper accrual accounting
• Project tracking
• Inventory management (if relevant)
• Integrations with basically everything—Stripe, Gusto, Ramp, Bill.com

More importantly, every bookkeeper and accountant on the planet knows QuickBooks. When you hire your first fractional CFO or outsourced bookkeeping firm, they won’t need to learn a new system.

The Xero alternative: If you’re operating internationally or dealing heavily with multiple currencies, Xero is worth considering. It handles multi-currency better than QuickBooks, offers unlimited users at every tier, and has a cleaner interface. But in the US, QuickBooks is king—and that ecosystem advantage matters.

What changes at this stage:

• You need to start thinking about accrual vs. cash accounting (hint: investors want accrual)
• Revenue recognition matters if you have subscriptions or contracts
• You should be producing monthly P&L and balance sheets, not just checking your bank balance

Pro tip: Set up your chart of accounts correctly now. The way you categorize expenses at seed will haunt you through Series A due diligence if you do it wrong. R&D expenses, COGS, G&A—get these buckets right from the start.

Series A: Time to Graduate

The reality: You’ve got real revenue, a growing team, probably multiple entities or plans for international expansion. Investors expect board-ready financials, clean audits, and metrics like ARR, MRR, burn rate, and runway—on demand.

This is where the “good enough” tools start to break.

My recommendation: Puzzle or Rillet

Puzzle (~$43-$250/month depending on plan) is built specifically for startups. It’s what QuickBooks would look like if it were invented in 2023 instead of 1993.

What makes it different:

• Real-time financial statements (not waiting until month-end close)
• Native SaaS metrics—burn rate, runway, ARR/MRR—baked into the dashboard
• Automated categorization that actually works (~85-95% accuracy)
• Simultaneous cash and accrual views
• Designed for founders who don’t have accounting degrees

The team behind Puzzle built it because they were frustrated with QuickBooks while running their own startups. That shows in the product.

Rillet is the heavier option—think of it as the “Series B and beyond” choice, but some well-funded Series A companies are adopting it early. Backed by Sequoia and a16z, Rillet is an AI-native ERP that’s gunning for NetSuite’s market.

Rillet makes sense if:

• You’re scaling fast and want to avoid another migration in 18 months
• You have complex revenue recognition needs (ASC 606)
• You’re planning for IPO-readiness (yes, some Series A companies think this far ahead)
• You want to close books in days, not weeks

The downside? It’s newer, so the third-party integration ecosystem isn’t as deep as QuickBooks. But it integrates natively with modern tools like Stripe, Brex, and Salesforce—which is probably most of your stack anyway.

The Migration Question Everyone Asks

“Should I just start with QuickBooks and migrate later?”

Honestly? Maybe. QuickBooks is the safe default. Your data is portable, everyone knows it, and the migration path to Puzzle or Rillet is well-documented.

But there’s a real cost to migration—typically 2-4 weeks of accounting limbo, potential for data discrepancies, and the cognitive overhead of retraining your team (or yourself).

If you’re raising a seed round and have any indication you’ll hit $1M+ ARR within 18 months, consider starting with Puzzle. The learning curve is similar to QuickBooks, and you won’t have to rip it out later.

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Quick Reference: My Recommendations by Stage

Stage	Primary Pick	Alternative	Estimated Cost
Pre-Seed	Wave	QuickBooks Simple Start	Free – $30/mo
Seed	QuickBooks Online Plus	Xero (if multi-currency)	$90-200/mo
Series A	Puzzle	Rillet (if scaling fast)	$43-500+/mo

What Actually Matters (More Than the Software)

Here’s what most “best accounting software” articles won’t tell you: the tool matters less than the discipline.

A founder with Wave who reconciles weekly and understands their burn rate will outperform a founder with Rillet who ignores their books for three months.

The software should make good financial hygiene easier, not replace the need for it entirely.

At minimum, you should know:

• Your monthly burn rate (without logging into anything)
• Your runway in months
• Your gross margin (if you have revenue)
• Whether you’re on track against the budget you gave investors

If you can’t answer these questions in under 30 seconds, the problem isn’t your accounting software.

One More Thing

Whatever you choose, make sure your books are clean enough to survive due diligence. That means:

• Proper accrual accounting (not cash basis dressed up as accrual)
• Revenue recognition that follows GAAP
• Clean categorization of expenses
• Documentation for anything unusual

The founders who close rounds fastest are the ones whose data rooms are ready before the term sheet arrives. Your accounting system is the foundation of that data room.

Choose accordingly.

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Need help thinking through your finance stack? Contact CentsIQ for a free consultation on building investor-ready financials.

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About the Author

Lam Nguyen is the founder of CentsIQ, a bookkeeping and fractional CFO firm helping startups and small businesses in Seattle and beyond build investor-ready financials. With decades of experience in finance and management consulting—including work with banks ranging from local institutions to global giants—Lam holds an MBA in Finance from Pace University’s Lubin School of Business. He believes financial information should be easy to understand and actually useful.