PEAK is one of the best-known cloud accounting products in Thailand, and for a lot of businesses it is genuinely the right call. This is not a takedown. It is a decision guide for freelancers trying to work out which kind of tool actually matches the problem they have.
What PEAK does well
PEAK positions itself as online accounting for SMEs and accounting firms. Its site cites more than 30,000 businesses, around 1,800 accounting firms, roughly 8 million documents a month, and about 80 billion baht in monthly transaction value.
Worth stating plainly:
- Real double-entry accounting. Journals, general ledger, trial balance, profit and loss, balance sheet — produced by the system rather than rebuilt in a spreadsheet
- It works with your bookkeeper. This is the strongest argument for it. If you already have an accounting firm, there is a good chance they know PEAK and can be given access to the same data set
- Broad module coverage. PEAK Payroll for salaries and social security, PEAK Asset for fixed assets and depreciation, PEAK Tax, and PEAK Board for analytics
- Marketplace integrations. Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop, plus 20-odd other connections
- e-Tax Invoice & e-Receipt support, including the by Email route
Package structure shown on their site at the time of writing runs from a free Freelance tier through e-Document at 2,500 baht a year, Basic at 5,000, PRO at 9,000, PRO Plus at 12,000, and Premium at 35,000.
Where a solo freelancer tends to snag
These are fit problems, not flaws.
- The free tier is named Freelance but its limits arrive fast. One user, a maximum of 20 contacts, five products, cash-basis entries only, and backdating capped at two months. Anyone juggling several clients with deposits outstanding outgrows that within a few months
- e-Tax Invoice & e-Receipt sits in the upper tiers. If you are VAT-registered and need electronic tax invoices, your realistic price point moves to the 12,000 baht a year level
- The system thinks in a chart of accounts, not in jobs. The questions freelancers actually ask are project-level: what did this job earn, what does this client still owe, will next month clear
- Without an accountant, the depth becomes overhead. An individual filing PND 90 and PND 94 does not close statutory accounts and does not need a balance sheet. Capability you never use is still capability you paid for
How MANA frames the same problem
MANA is not an accounting ledger and does not pretend to be one. It starts from a single job and follows it from quotation to money in the bank.
- Projects, clients, documents and money sit on one line. An approved quotation becomes an invoice, then a receipt, with no retyping
- Thai paperwork is native: quotations, invoices, receipts, tax invoices, plus e-tax invoice support
- 3% withholding tax is handled at issue time rather than discovered when the transfer comes up short, and 50 Tavi certificates are tracked until they arrive
- A PromptPay QR goes on the document, a public link lets the client view and pay without an account, and slips are verified against bank data
- Import a bank statement, reconcile it against invoices, and read a forward cash-flow projection
- The project Reports tab answers in seconds which jobs are still unpaid
Side by side
| PEAK | MANA | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | SMEs and accounting firms | Freelancers and one-person businesses |
| Organising principle | Chart of accounts and statements | Projects, clients and cash flow |
| Full financial statements | Yes | No, deliberately |
| Thai tax documents | Complete; e-tax on upper tiers | Built in |
| WHT and 50 Tavi tracking | Handled as accounting entries | Tracked per document and per client |
| PromptPay and slip checks | Via integrations | Built in |
| Payroll and fixed assets | Separate modules | Not offered |
| Marketplace connections | Shopee, Lazada, TikTok Shop | Not a focus |
Three questions that settle it
- Do you already have an accountant or accounting firm? If yes, and they need data they can close books with, PEAK is the better match
- Are you incorporated, do you employ people, do you hold stock? If yes, you need a real accounting system, not a work management tool
- What actually keeps you up at night? If the answer is unpaid clients, thin project margins, next month's cash, and Thai documents you cannot issue fast enough — that is the problem MANA was built for
Plenty of people land on using both: MANA as the daily surface from brief to payment, with a clean summary handed to an accountant who keeps the statutory books. And if you do grow into annual statutory accounts one day, having every baht reconciled from now makes that transition far less painful.