Austin Merritt over at Software Advice wrote a great article about the future of accounting software, go and read it here and then come back.

I disagree on one part though. Very small businesses (VSB) are starting to look for a more customized option for their own accounting. They may not want a full blown ERP but they are looking for the same features that larger enterprises are getting. They want to have their CRM, inventory, and accounting all integrated. VSBs want to be able to whip out their iPhone or Android device and make up an invoice and then swipe a customer’s credit card and be done with it. This is similar to what Google Apps is doing, VSBs are using the same spam filtering, document management, and the rest of the suite as large enterprises have for a long time only had.

Software as a Service (SaaS) is really starting to change this as your seeing a an accounting solution with a mini-ERP starting to pop-up for every industry. And the costs are affordable for VSBs.