--- title: "What 'free accounting software' actually costs you" source: https://www.lskhata.com/blog/what-free-accounting-software-costs category: "Getting started" language: en published: 2026-09-04 reading_time: 8 min --- # What 'free accounting software' actually costs you _Free is a real price and also an incomplete one. The four costs that a price of zero does not cover, and how to check each one before you commit your books._ ## In short - Free usually means one of four things. Knowing which one you are being offered tells you what happens next year. - The largest cost of any accounting software is rarely the licence — it is the evening you spend moving balances and the risk of getting them wrong. - 'Free for the first user' is the version that becomes expensive, because you find out on the day you hire. - Khata's mobile app is free with no user limit. The web dashboard is a separate, commercial product granted on request, and this page says so because the app's own pages do. 'Free' is the most-searched word in this category and the least examined one. It is not a trick — plenty of free software is genuinely free — but it describes at least four different arrangements, and which one you are being offered decides what happens to you in a year. _[Figure: The price is the easy question. The four on the right are the ones that decide whether you are still using this next year.]_ ### The four things 'free' usually means | The arrangement | How you find out | What to ask now | | --- | --- | --- | | Free for one user | The day you hire someone | What does the second login cost? | | Free under a transaction limit | Your busiest month | What is the cap, in bills per month? | | Free to enter, costly to leave | When you try to export | Show me the export file before I start | | Free because it is unfinished | The first time it breaks | Who answers, and how fast? | There is a fifth arrangement, which is that the free product is genuinely complete and the company earns from something else. That is the case here, and it is worth stating plainly rather than leaving you to guess: the mobile app is free because the web dashboard is not. ### Where Khata's money actually comes from The Android and iPhone apps are free, with every feature, no user limit, and no payment screen anywhere inside them. That is not a trial and there is nothing to cancel. The web dashboard at panel.lskhata.com is a separate commercial product for shops that have outgrown doing back-office work on a phone, and access to it is granted on request rather than bought from a checkout. **Why this is on the page at all.** Because a page about the hidden costs of free software that did not disclose its own would be the exact thing it is warning about. The dashboard is never required to use the app, and no feature is removed from the app to sell it. ### The cost that is not on anybody's pricing page For almost every shop, the largest real cost of changing accounting software is not the licence. It is the evening spent moving customer balances across, and the risk of getting one of them wrong. A wrong balance is expensive in a way a subscription is not. It is money you either do not collect or wrongly ask for, and it damages a relationship with a customer who has been buying from you for years. That is why every guide here about switching says the same thing: carry over the balances, not the history, and keep the old system for a month. - Count how many customers actually carry a balance. In most shops it is far fewer than the number of customers. - Enter those as opening balances on day one. Everything else can start from zero. - Do not attempt to re-enter last year's bills. Nobody has ever finished that job. - Keep the old book or app readable for a month, then stop looking at it. ### Three questions worth more than a price comparison 1. **What happens on the day I hire someone?** — Ask before you need to know. If the answer is a per-user charge, that is not a free product — it is a free single-user product, which is a different thing and fine as long as you know. 2. **Can I download my customers and balances right now?** — Do it on day one when there is nothing to lose. If the file opens in a spreadsheet with the columns you would need, you can always leave, and that is worth more than any feature. 3. **Who answers when it breaks on a Saturday?** — A real answer names a channel and a rough time. 'Community forum' is a real answer too — it just tells you to plan differently. Free is a good deal when you can also leave. Check the exit before you value the price. ## Common questions **Is Khata really free?** The mobile app is free on Android and on iPhone and iPad, with every feature included and no cap on how many staff logins you create. There is no card asked for at any point and no checkout anywhere in the app. The web dashboard is a different thing: it is a commercial product, access is granted on request by our team, and it is never a condition of using the app. **What is the catch with free accounting software?** Usually one of four: it is free for one user and charges for the second, it is free until a transaction limit, it is free but your data is hard to remove, or it is free because the product is unfinished and support does not exist. None of those is dishonest by itself — they only become a problem when you find out after your books are already inside. **Does free accounting software have a transaction limit?** Many do, and it is worth finding the number before you start rather than in your busiest week. Khata's mobile app has no cap on bills, customers, products or staff logins. Where a limit exists in any product, it is normally in the pricing page's small print rather than on the page that says 'free'. **Will I have to pay later if my shop grows?** For the mobile app, no — growth does not change the price, and adding staff does not either. What can change is that a larger shop starts wanting the web dashboard, for the back-office work that is genuinely painful on a phone. That is a commercial product, and it is the honest answer to where the money comes from.