Plenty of Australian accounting software is advertised as free. Very little of it is free in the way a sole trader assumes when they read the word. The differences are not hidden — they are just in the part of the page nobody reads. This guide sorts the models out so you can tell which one you are being offered, and includes where Balaana sits, plainly.
The five models
1. Free trial
Full product, 14 or 30 days, then a subscription. This is not free software, it is a sample. It is a perfectly reasonable way to sell, but if you migrate your books during a trial you have effectively already committed — moving them again is the expensive part.
2. Free tier with a volume cap
Free until you send more than a handful of invoices a month, or add more than a few clients. Fine while you are starting; the cap is designed to bind exactly when the business begins working. Check the cap before you commit, not after.
3. Free, funded by advertising or data
No charge, but your financial records are the asset — used to sell you lending, insurance or accounting services, or shared with partners. Read the privacy policy properly. For a business's books, this is the model that deserves the most scepticism.
4. Free software, paid transactions
The bookkeeping costs nothing and the provider earns when you take a payment through it. This aligns reasonably well with a small business: you pay when money comes in, not when it does not. The thing to check is whether the transaction fee is at cost or carries a margin on top of the payment provider's own.
5. Free core, paid extras
A genuinely usable free plan, with a paid tier for capabilities that cost the provider money to run — payments, bank feeds, extra users. Balaana is this model, combined with the fourth.
Questions to ask before you migrate
- Is there an invoice or client cap on the free plan? If so, what happens on the day you hit it?
- Can I export everything? Invoices, expenses and clients, to CSV, on the free plan — not only on a paid one.
- Is my data sold or shared? The privacy policy, not the marketing page, is the answer.
- Does it handle Australian GST properly? Overseas products often bolt on a generic tax field that does not produce BAS labels.
- What happens if I downgrade? Are the records still there, and still readable?
- Where is the data stored, and who can access it?
- What does it not do? If nobody will tell you, the answer is usually "you will find out later".
Where Balaana sits
Balaana's free plan has no invoice cap and no client cap. Invoicing, expenses, receipt capture, GST tracking, the BAS summary and CSV export are all on it. Your data is not sold or shared, and there is no advertising.
The paid plan is $7 a month and adds the things that genuinely cost money to run: payment collection, bank feeds, automatic reminders, custom branding and up to three users. Payments carry the payment provider's transaction fee, passed through at cost. That is the whole model — see the pricing page or why it works.
Where Balaana is the wrong choice: if you run payroll, hold inventory, invoice in multiple currencies or need job costing, we do not build any of that and are not planning to. Established full-featured platforms exist for exactly those needs and are worth their subscription if you have them.
A note on comparing prices
Published prices, free-plan limits and included features change frequently across this market. Rather than reproduce a table here that will be wrong within months, check each provider's current pricing page directly on the day you are deciding — and compare the plan you would actually be on, not the entry price used in advertising.
Related reading
Frequently asked questions
Yes, but read which model you are being offered. Some products are free trials, some are free until a volume cap, and some are funded by advertising or data. A free core plan with paid extras — where the free plan is usable indefinitely and the paid tier covers things that cost the provider money — is the model most likely to still suit you in two years.
Unlimited invoices, unlimited clients, expense and receipt capture, GST tracked per transaction, a BAS summary, and full export to CSV. If any of those sit behind a paywall, the free plan is a trial with a longer expiry.
It depends entirely on the provider, not on the price. Check where data is stored, whether it is encrypted, whether it is sold or shared with third parties, and whether you can export everything. A paid product is not automatically safer than a free one.
Yes. The cleanest point is the start of a quarter or a financial year, because it keeps your BAS periods whole. Export your existing records first, bring across open invoices and client details, and keep the old export regardless — you must retain those records for five years either way.