Short answer: The best accounting software for a family office depends on scale. For lean single-family offices, Sage 50, QuickBooks Online and Xero are simple and affordable. For multi-entity offices that need consolidated books across trusts, holdcos, and operating companies, NetSuite, Sage Intacct, and the family-office-specific SumIt are stronger fits. Whatever general ledger you run, MyFO sits on top of it as the aggregation and reporting layer, so your GL stays the system of record and MyFO becomes the single point of entry for financial data.

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A quick note on scope: if you run a general ledger, it's where your official books live: journal entries, financial statements, the audit trail. MyFO is deliberately not a general ledger. It aggregates, reports, forecasts, and organizes across your whole balance sheet, then connects to your accounting system so data doesn't have to be entered twice.

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Does every family office need a general ledger?

Not necessarily. Plenty of family offices operate well without a formal GL, relying on consolidated reporting and their accountant's books instead. Whether you need one comes down to your entity count, structure, and reporting obligations. We break down the decision in this blog. If the answer is no, you can skip straight to a consolidated reporting layer; if it's yes, the platforms below are the ones to weigh.

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What accounting systems do family offices actually use?

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These are the five accounting and GL platforms most commonly found in the family office stack — and the ones MyFO is built to sit alongside.

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1. Oracle NetSuite

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A comprehensive cloud ERP that unifies accounting, CRM, and operations at scale. Best for larger, more complex offices and operating businesses that need one system across finance and operations. Powerful, but heavier to implement and administer than a pure GL.

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Best for: Multi-entity offices and operating companies that want an ERP, not just a ledger.

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‍2. QuickBooks (Intuit)

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The most widely used small-business accounting platform: bookkeeping, payroll, invoicing, and reporting. Familiar to nearly every bookkeeper and CPA, inexpensive, and fast to stand up. Its limits show up as entity count and consolidation complexity grow.

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Best for: Emerging and single-family offices that want something simple and universally supported.

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3. Sage (Sage Intacct)

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Cloud accounting and business management with strong multi-entity consolidation, dimensional reporting, and automation. A common step up from QuickBooks for offices that have outgrown small-business tooling but don't need a full ERP.

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Best for: Growing offices that need real multi-entity consolidation without ERP overhead.

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4. SumIt

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A multi-entity general ledger built specifically for family offices, designed for accurate accounting and consolidated financial reporting across complex ownership structures. Because it's purpose-built for the family office use case, it maps cleanly to layered entities and look-through ownership.

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Best for: Offices that want a GL designed around family office structures from day one.

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5. Xero

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An online accounting platform known for real-time collaboration, automated bank feeds, expense tracking, and clean reporting in one system. Modern and approachable, popular outside the US, and a strong QuickBooks alternative for smaller offices.

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Best for: Smaller offices that value a modern interface and collaboration.

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How does MyFO fit with your accounting software?

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MyFO doesn't replace your GL, it removes the double-entry between your portfolio and your books. Transactions are aggregated and categorized inside MyFO across banking, custodial, and investment data, then extracted in a GL-ready format for your accounting system. The office keeps one source of truth for financial data and cuts down the manual re-keying of the same transactions.

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This reflects how we think about the family office from first principles. Every office, from one entity to a hundred, is built from the same fundamental components: entities, assets and liabilities, stakeholders, and documents. Standardize that foundation and the accounting system becomes one clean connection point rather than a parallel universe of manual exports.

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Frequently asked questions

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Is MyFO a general ledger or accounting system? No. MyFO is a family office operating system for consolidated reporting, entity and ownership modeling, forecasting, documents, and tasks. It connects to accounting systems like the ones above rather than replacing them.

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Which accounting software integrates with MyFO? MyFO is designed to work alongside the leading GL and accounting platforms used by family offices, including NetSuite, QuickBooks, Sage, SumIt, and Xero. For current, confirmed integration coverage, contact the MyFO team.

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Do I still need a bookkeeper or CPA? Yes. The accounting system and your accountant produce the official books. MyFO reduces the manual work of getting data into and out of that system and gives you a consolidated view on top.

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What's the difference between a general ledger and portfolio reporting? A GL records every transaction for official financial statements. Portfolio reporting answers "what do I own, how is it performing, and what's coming up." Family offices need both — and MyFO is the reporting and aggregation layer that connects to your GL.

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Want to see how MyFO connects to your GL? Talk to our team.

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