Free accounting software in Ireland: what you get and when to pay

Most vendors in Ireland offer a trial or a discounted first few months, after which the full price applies. A permanent free plan is different: it stays free as long as you stay within its limits. Read the terms to see which one you are signing up for. For a VAT-registered business, also check that Irish VAT rates and VAT3 figures are on the free tier rather than reserved for paid plans.

If any of these are missing, the plan is a demo rather than a tool.

• A proper ledger with a chart of accounts, not just an income and expense list.
• Bank activity imported, by connection or statement upload.
• Invoicing and receipt capture.
• Standard reports: profit and loss, balance sheet and aged debtors.
• Your data exportable at any time.

Transaction caps are the most common. A business with a few hundred transactions a year fits easily; a busy shop does not. User limits matter once a partner or bookkeeper needs access. VAT features are sometimes reserved for paid plans, which only matters once you register.

Remember that the cost of software is not only the subscription. A free tool that leaves you correcting categories by hand every month can cost more in time than a paid one that gets them right.

Upgrade when the free limits start shaping how you work: when you split one business across two tools to stay under a cap, when your accountant cannot get access, or when you need multi-currency for a UK customer. At that point a paid plan usually pays for itself in hours saved.

Free spreadsheets and basic income trackers look cheap but often cost more in the end. They rarely produce a proper balance sheet, cannot reconcile to the bank, and leave your accountant to rebuild the year in their own software, which shows up on their bill.

Before choosing, ask your accountant what format they want your records in. If they can log in to the same system you use, the free plan becomes far more valuable, because their review happens on your live books rather than on an export.

Spend an hour putting a real month through any free plan before you rely on it.

• Import one month of bank activity.
• Capture five receipts and match them.
• Raise two invoices with the right VAT rate.
• Run the profit and loss and check it makes sense.
• Export everything and confirm you could leave with your data.

The best free plans are the entry tier of a full product, so upgrading keeps the same ledger, history and settings. Avoid tools where outgrowing them means exporting to a different system, because the switch usually lands in the middle of a busy period. Check what the next tier up includes before you commit, so the path is clear when the business grows.

HelloBooks has a permanent Free plan with a real ledger, AI categorisation with Irish VAT rates, receipt capture and core reports, for up to 200 transactions in total (the count doesn’t reset each year) and two users. Paid plans add volume, users, multi-currency and more AI capacity.

In Ireland, direct bank connections are rolling out and statement upload works today. You enter VAT3 figures in ROS yourself, and Irish payroll is not included.