Custom Accounting App Development Costs

Accounting applications represent unique solutions for businesses and individuals to track their financial operations. Day-to-day maintenance, affordability, processing of the real data, and development of the financial reporting determine the rise in demand for the identified applications within the multiple business sectors (non-profit organizations, real estate, retail, and E-commerce, etc).

Although integrating a custom accounting app into business operations represents one of the promising business software solutions, it is still important to explore the financial aspect of its development. In this article, we discuss the core factors, duration, and importance of choosing the right development team that affect the cost to build custom accounting app.

Factors Influencing Development Cost

Evaluating the ultimate cost of the final accounting product is a complicated assignment, considering the versatility of factors that directly affect its development. Feature complexity, platform choice (iOS, Android, web), design requirements, and backend infrastructure are those factors that can diversify the final price of the analyzed app.

Feature Complexity

Each fintech-relevant application, like an accounting platform, loan app, or peer-to-peer lending program, is composed of the elements that determine its functionality and operational capabilities. Speaking about the digital accounting platforms, those features can be divided into core (basic) and complex.

Core Features 

Simple features are elements of an accounting app that ensure its basic spectrum of functions, like basic transaction tracking, simple financial reporting activities, invoicing & basic expense checking. 

• Transaction Tracking

tracking of transitions represents recording all financial activities made in the account. These can be money transfers, income, and expenses that the application transmits into the accounting systems. 

The additional characteristic of this simple feature is tracking the amount. In other words, the simple accounting application can check the monetary value of any transaction done on the platform. 

• Simple Financial Reporting

Simple financial reporting refers to the documenting of financial activities per specific time period (quarterly or annually). There are the following types of simple reporting the accounting platform provides: 

Balance sheets are applied to the companies and show their assets, liabilities, and shareholders’ equity.

Income statement is a recap of the overall financial performance where the basic accounting application elucidates revenue and expenses. 

Cash flow statement reflects the overall circulation of finances via the organization. Cash flow statements can be operating (focusing on the business-relevant activities), investing (like purchasing/selling assets), and financing (from debts). 

• Invoices

Invoicing is a simple feature of a basic accounting app, which represents the creation of commercialized documents regarding the payment terms and list of products delivered to the customer, etc.

Complex Features

Complex features enhance the ultimate cost of the accounting platform by providing the product with sophisticated technological opportunities. 

• Tax Management

This complex feature might require additional payment for the development as it enables the accounting application to automate tax calculations and benefit in compliance. 

• Automated Reconciliation with Banks

This complex feature provides the automatic connection of the transaction with the bank statement. 

• Audit Trail

The feature of audit trail aims to improve the business’s or individual’s accountability by promoting an in-depth report on all the financial activities. 

• Support of Multiple Currencies

Multi-currency support is an advanced feature that enables the accounting app to maintain transactions and reporting in different currencies. 

Platform Selection

Another factor that affects the cost of crafting an accounting app is platform selection due to its development complexity, cross-platform or native solutions, and platform-relevant elements. 

• Development Complexity 

The factor of development complexity implies that versatile platforms, like iOS, Android, and Web, can require different tools and programming languages that can affect the ultimate price of the accounting platform creation. 

• Cross-Platform versus Native Development Options

The cross-platform option might benefit the accounting app development if the client focuses mainly on cost reduction. For this purpose, it is essential to underline the cross-platform frameworks like React Native or Flutter, which can achieve this goal by integrating a single codebase for different platforms. 

By contrast, the native development tech stack like Android Studio, XCode, Swift, Kotlin, and Java may represent a favorable variant for those who prefer effective performance over the price of the final product, making it more expensive as compared to cross-platform app development. 

• Platform-Specific Features

Again, if the business owner prioritizes cost-effectiveness, they should remember that some platforms comprise built-in features or libraries that can minimize developmental costs by alleviating accounting-related functionalities.

Design Requirements

Design requirements play no less important role in defining the cost of the accounting app development, as they deal with identifying key functionalities and capabilities of the final product. 

Here is the list of most crucial design requirement for the custom accounting app development:

• User Experience (UX)

The emphasis on UX features like credibility, usability, and functionality, indeed, will produce an intuitive operability. Nevertheless, there will be a considerable raise in cost based on the design iterations and user testing. 

• Customization

Customization indicates the development and integration of unique design elements, which might require the involvement of the narrowly specialized professionals, leading to an increase in the final product cost.

• Complexity

The complexity requirement means that if the client aims to obtain an accounting app with an advanced design or impeccable financial calculations, it will considerably affect the cost and development time.

One of the most important factors worth mentioning is that front-end development can help implement design requirements into life. Here is the categorization of the most expensive and least expensive front-end options:

Back-End Infrastructure 

The back-end infrastructure is a backbone of the accounting app functionality as it will focus its overall crafting, maintaining, and securing the platform’s functionality. 

Among the versatile spectrum of the accounting platform back-end infrastructure, these elements are worthy of discussion:

Database Management System (DBMS), which stores data like transactions and user information. 

The Application Server ensures data processing and promotes communication between the database and the front-end. 

Authentication and Authorization System assesses the security level of the app by measuring user access.  

API Layer is about ensuring the communication between the front-end and back-end service within the interface API provides. 

Moving forward, infrastructure is not the only point that will affect the back-end accounting app’s price. The factors like overall development complexity, licensing, and requirements for hosting will affect the cost.

Here is the list of the most expensive and least expensive back-end features.

Integration within the Existing Systems

The process of accounting app’s integration implies its connection with the business systems in order to organize data flow and financial operations.  

The integration processes are often based on the API connections and involve data mapping. These operations help with data protection and inter-system consistency. 

Some of the key examples where accounting apps might be integrated are Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), payroll, and banking systems. 

Some of the strategic advantages of accounting app inter-system integration represent data entry automation, enhanced accuracy in financial records, etc. 

What Is the Typical Cost to Build an Accounting App?

The ultimate accounting  app cost will be based on the client’s overall expectations from its functionality, design expectations, back-end characteristics, and expectations. The presented factors will determine the overall application’s complexity and modify the price accordingly. 

Basic Accounting App ($30,000 – $50,000)

The price for the basic accounting application will shift between $30,000 – $50,000 as its key focus will represent crafting and maintaining its ordinary functionalities, as well as the basic security measures. Invoicing, tracking of the basic expenditures, and simple financial reporting will designate the core simple features of the basic accounting application, making it a favorable option for small businesses and startups. 

Middle-Range Accounting App ($50,000 – $150,000)

The development cost of the middle-range accounting application will be within the sum of $50,000 – $150,000, considering the involvement of more complex features in its operability. The intermediate type of the custom accounting platform will support multiple currencies and rely on the integration with the systems like CRM and ERP and will suit the businesses who are at the expansion phase. 

Advanced Accounting App ($150,000 – $300,000)

The price for the advanced accounting platform will range between $150,000 – $300,000, considering the sophisticated tech features it will comprise. AI-based predictive analytics, and real-time data synchronization, machine learning, and task automation. This option will be suitable for large enterprises as the mentioned complex features will help arrange the complicated fiscal transactions and provide tactical advice. 

How Long Does It Take To Build an Accounting App?

By denoting the overall cost range of the custom accounting application, the factor of its development durability is of no least importance. The overall crafting of the identified platform will be based on the following five stages. 

Market Research (2-4 Weeks)

When the business leader has the overall idea of the accounting app they want to get, marketing research is about investigating the overall competitors’ success and disadvantages, identifying the target audience, and their preferences. From that point, crafting an in-depth plan with ideas with feature complexity, milestones, and resource allocation will be crucial to determine the upcoming stages of an accounting app from scratch development. 

Designing (2-6 Weeks)

The designing phase focuses on crafting a UX/UI design to visualize the application’s overall aesthetics and strategically locate the navigation elements to maintain its functional consistency within the further stage of development. 

Development (3-8 Months)

The development phase will focus on the practical elaboration on the app’s architecture, selected features, and functionalities. Additionally, this stage will focus on selecting a host (prem, web, cloud) and integrating a brand-new accounting application in it. Prem is the most effective in providing the owner with complete control and security over the information proceeding. Nevertheless, Prem is expensive in its maintenance, unlike Web and Cloud that are more flexible but provide less control over the data storage. 

Testing (2-6 Weeks)

The testing phase usually takes a couple of weeks when it comes to the applications with basic features. Nevertheless, the complex features require more precise evaluation of correct functionality, which can take more than one month. Among the overall scope of testing procedures, it is possible to detect the following: 

• Functional testing is applied to check whether the developed features run in accordance with the defined plan of the market research phase. 

• Usability testing aims to determine whether the accounting app is smooth in operability, stable, and consistent within the various devices/platforms. 

• Security testing checks whether the application complies with the regulations on the safety of the data & financial operations. 

Maintenance (After the Product Launch)

The final stage of custom accounting application development is its launch on the market, after which the ongoing support will ensure effective product maintenance, updates announcements, and client reviews analysis/proceedings.  

Choosing the Right Development Partner

Selecting a development team is of a top priority for the further creation of an accounting application. The reason is quite justified: a right tech partner will develop a custom app per all the requirements and details, will report on working progress, challenges, strategies of their overcoming, stick to the deadlines, and be reliable in maintenance and product support. 

Speaking about the costs of hiring a team of developers, outsourcing might be a suitable variant for those businesses and startups who aim to achieve the maximized tech effectiveness of product functionality, and reduce cost and development time. The top-3 models of outsourcing are: dedicated team, staff augmentation, and project-based outsourcing. 

A Dedicated Team is an outsourcing model applied for long-term collaboration. The business can entrust all the development process of the accounting app to the hired specialists as they will lead the project from the market search till the final product maintenance. 

Staff Augmentation reflects hiring niche specialists to the in-house development team to ensure simultaneous work on various aspects of the project development and support. 

Project-Based Outsourcing is applied to run the project per clearly defined requirements. This outsourcing type ensures flexibility and optimized resource allocation. 

We highly encourage you to gain in-depth insights on the outsourcing models, their applicability, and strategic advantages.

Criteria for Choosing Development Team

Just before making a final decision on hiring a specific IT candidate for the financial app development, there are the key elements worthy of keeping in mind to ensure a collaboration with a truly reliable partner: 

• Expertise in Financial Software

The factor of a company's versatility in experience can not only prove its reliability but show the way it can interconnect its domains of experience into the accounting app development to build a truly unique and custom solution. 

• Client Testimonials

A truly reliable partner will locate client feedback on the collaboration. Analyzing those testimonials might be beneficial to understanding the key developmental aspects the team and the former clients were working on. This factor matters as it gives a first impression about the potential tech partner. 

• Cost-Effectiveness

The factor of cost-effectiveness implies analyzing the candidate’s positioning of their services. The tech companies usually place content like “How we can help” or “Why partner with us,” on their website. Information placed in those sections give a profound recap on their technological capabilities, digital solutions, and the costs of their services.

Conclusion

Developing a custom accounting software requires analyzing its overall expected complexity, to determine the ultimate product cost. The key elements worth keeping in mind when aiming to craft one are features complexity, platform choice, and inter-system integration. Finally, we highlighted the importance of selecting the right development team and mentioned the models of outsourcing. Agilie is an impeccable candidate for tailoring your custom accounting application due to our result-driven approach, versatile experience, and focus on creative and non-standard solutions. 

Don’t hesitate! Contact us to craft an exclusive accounting software per your business needs.