Accounting, payroll and tax — built for US small business
Kangaroo ERP handles bookkeeping, invoicing with real sales tax, full US payroll and every federal form your entity has to file — whether you're a sole proprietor, an LLC, an S corp or a C corp.
No credit card. Set up your entity in under five minutes.
Not a European accounting tool with the labels changed. Every calculation follows the Internal Revenue Code, IRS Publication 15-T and the rules of the state you operate in.
Sole proprietorship, single-member LLC, multi-member LLC, partnership, S corporation, C corporation and nonprofit. We model the state-law entity and the federal tax election separately — because an LLC can be taxed four different ways, and the software should know which one you picked.
Federal withholding from the Publication 15-T percentage method, FICA with wage-base tracking, Additional Medicare, FUTA, and SUTA plus disability and paid-leave contributions for all 50 states. A traditional 401(k) reduces income tax withholding but not FICA — we track both bases separately, which is why your W-2 and your 941 reconcile.
Post-Wayfair economic nexus measured across all 50 states, with alerts while you still have time to register. Rates by jurisdiction, exemption certificates per customer, and a frozen breakdown on every invoice so a later rate change never rewrites history.
Schedule C and SE, Form 1065, 1120, 1120-S with Schedule K-1, quarterly 941s, annual 940, W-2 and W-3, 1099-NEC and 1096, and 1040-ES estimates with the safe-harbor rule applied. Every expense account maps to its form line, so nothing needs reclassifying in April.
This is the distinction most software gets wrong, and it changes everything downstream. An LLC is how you're organized under state law. How the IRS taxes you is a separate election — and one LLC can sit on top of four completely different outcomes.
| If you are | You file | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Sole proprietor · single-member LLC | Schedule C + Schedule SE | Owner takes draws, not wages. Self-employment tax on net profit. |
| Partnership · multi-member LLC | Form 1065 + Schedule K-1 | Due a month before personal returns, so partners get their K-1 in time. |
| S corporation | Form 1120-S + Schedule K-1 | Owner-employees take W-2 wages; distributions carry no FICA. |
| C corporation | Form 1120 | Taxed at the flat corporate rate on its own income. |
| Nonprofit | Form 990 | A public document, filed annually. |
When you create your business, Kangaroo asks for the entity and the tax election separately, shows you what each one implies, and only offers combinations that legally exist.
Read the full entity type guideEverything posts to the same double-entry general ledger. That's what makes the reports match the returns, and the returns match the books.
Estimates, invoices and payment tracking, with sales tax computed per jurisdiction.
Double-entry general ledger on a cash or accrual basis, with a chart of accounts seeded to match your tax classification.
Bills and vendors with W-9 tracking and automatic 1099 eligibility.
Employees, contractors, pay runs and every payroll tax for all 50 states.
Nexus monitoring, jurisdiction rates and a filing calendar per state.
Federal returns computed from your ledger, with due dates per entity type.
MACRS depreciation with Section 179 and bonus depreciation.
Profit and loss, balance sheet and your figures aggregated by form line.
Everything below is generated from two answers. There's no blank-slate configuration to work through.
How you're organized under state law, and how you elected to be taxed federally. If you're not sure which election you made, the product explains what each one implies before you pick.
Seeded for your exact classification, with every expense account already carrying the line of the form it belongs on.
Real filing dates derived from your fiscal year end and whether you have employees or contractors, moved for weekends and federal holidays.
Withholding structure, unemployment wage base and rate, disability and paid-leave contributions, sales tax rate and nexus thresholds.
Every paycheck opens up into its full Publication 15-T Worksheet 1A, step by step: the annualized wage, the adjustments, the tentative annual withholding, the dependent credits, and the amount for this period. You can see exactly how each number was produced.
MACRS is not straight-line. It's declining balance with a switch to straight line, recovery classes fixed by asset type, and conventions that depend on when in the year you placed the asset in service. Kangaroo computes the whole schedule and shows it before you commit.
The reason year-end is usually painful is that the books and the forms use different vocabularies, and somebody has to translate. Kangaroo removes the translation step by mapping every account to its form line the moment your business is created.
There are around 43 million Spanish speakers in the United States, and a large share of Hispanic-owned businesses are run in Spanish while being filed in English. Kangaroo is the whole product in both languages, under one login, switchable at any time.
It makes them faster and cheaper. What a CPA charges most for is untangling a year of scattered records. Clean books already mapped to form lines remove that work, and the time goes into planning instead.
LLC is how you're organized, not how you're taxed. Pick the federal election you actually made: sole proprietor (disregarded), partnership, S corporation or C corporation. The product explains what each implies before you commit, and only offers the combinations that legally exist.
All 50 and DC: withholding structure and rates, unemployment wage base and new-employer rate, disability and paid-family-leave contributions where the state has them.
Either, and the difference is applied properly. On cash basis, revenue is recognized when you're paid rather than when you invoice — which is why an invoice creates no journal entry until the payment lands.
Yes. One login can hold several businesses, each with its own entity type, chart of accounts, calendar and state rules. Switching between them takes one click.
Export whenever you want, in full. Your books are yours.
Free to start. Your chart of accounts, tax calendar and filing requirements are generated the moment you tell us your entity type and state.
