The Best Accounting App for Sole Traders in Australia — an Honest Comparison

Updated 8 July 2026

TradieMate is an invoicing and tax app built specifically for Australian tradies. It costs $3.99/week (about $17 a month) after a 14-day free trial with no credit card, and covers invoices, quotes, expenses with receipt capture, hours tracking, a vehicle logbook, and GST, BAS and annual tax reports. Below is an honest comparison with Hnry, Rounded, MYOB, QuickBooks and Xero — including where each of them beats us.

What a sole trader actually needs from an accounting app

Most Australian tradies operating as sole traders don’t need payroll, inventory or a general ledger. The real workload is smaller and more specific:

• Quoting and invoicing with GST. A compliant tax invoice, sent from the ute before you leave the job. (See what a tradie invoice must include.)
• Expense records that survive an audit. A photo of the receipt attached to the expense, categorised for tax time. (See what tradies can claim.)
• BAS every quarter. If you’re GST-registered, the ATO wants a Business Activity Statement four times a year. (See BAS for sole traders.)
• Vehicle kilometres. The ute is usually a tradie’s biggest deduction, and the ATO has specific rules about proving it. (See ATO logbook rules.)
• An end-of-year summary your accountant (or myTax) can work from without a shoebox of paper.

Judge any app — including ours — against that list, not against a feature grid built for office-based businesses.

Price and fit comparison (checked July 2026)

Prices are standard rates from each provider’s public pricing page as of July 2026 (Hnry, Rounded, MYOB Solo, QuickBooks, Xero). Most run introductory discounts; check current pricing before you commit. QuickBooks retired its old Self-Employed product for new customers in late 2024 — the sole trader path is now QuickBooks Sole Trader or Simple Start.

Where the others genuinely beat TradieMate

An honest comparison cuts both ways, so here it is:

• Hnry does your taxes for you. Their accountants calculate, withhold and lodge your BAS and income tax as money comes in. If you never want to think about tax at all — and you’re happy paying a percentage of income for that — Hnry is the stronger pick. TradieMate prepares ATO-ready reports, but lodging is on you or your accountant.
• Rounded, Xero, MYOB Business and QuickBooks have bank feeds. Transactions flow in from your bank automatically. TradieMate doesn’t have bank feeds — you log expenses as they happen (with a receipt photo), which suits how tradies buy materials but is more manual if you have lots of card transactions to reconcile.
• MYOB Solo is cheaper. At $99/year it undercuts everyone. If your only need is basic invoicing and GST tracking, it’s honest value — you give up quotes, hours tracking and a vehicle logbook.
• Xero and QuickBooks scale with you. If you take on employees, need payroll, or your accountant insists on a standard ledger, the big packages are built for that. TradieMate is deliberately for sole operators.

Where TradieMate is the better fit

• It’s built around a tradie’s week, not a bookkeeper’s. Log hours against a job, turn them into an invoice with the worked dates on the line items, photograph the fuel receipt, log the trip — all from your phone between jobs.
• The vehicle logbook is built in. Trips with auto-calculated distances, purpose tagging, and ATO-method support — most general accounting apps make you buy or bolt on a separate logbook app.
• BAS without translation. GST is tracked at 10% on income and expenses as you go, and the quarterly BAS report comes out as a PDF matched to what the ATO asks for — same for the annual summary at tax time (Australian financial year, 1 July – 30 June).
• Pricing that matches cash flow. $3.99 a week, cancel anytime, and the trial needs no credit card. There’s also a referral ladder that discounts it to free-for-life at 10 mates.

The short version: if you’re a sole-operator tradie who wants job-first invoicing and tax sorted from your phone, TradieMate is built for exactly you. If you want someone else to lodge everything, pick Hnry. If you need payroll or bank-feed reconciliation, pick Xero, MYOB Business or QuickBooks.

You can see every TradieMate screen in the tour or start the 14-day free trial — no card needed.

This guide is general information, not tax, legal or financial advice. Rules and rates change — check current details with the ATO or a registered tax agent before acting on it.