QuickBooks Online vs Desktop: Which Is Right for Your Business?

This hands-on approach helps us strengthen our accounting software expertise and deliver on the Fit Small Business mission of providing the best answers to your small business questions. Get current pricing and promotions; if you work with an accounting professional, you may want to speak with your accountant or bookkeeper prior to signing up for any possible discounts or packages. Many accounting professionals also offer set-up services, ongoing support, and advisory services to help your small business work successfully on QuickBooks. To use many features of QuickBooks Online on your mobile device, sign in from your web browser and download the QuickBooks app from the Apple Store or Google Play. Multiple users can be signed in at the same time without any complicated network setup or expensive hosting service. You’ll be able to access the account anywhere with an internet connection.

It includes the features in Simple Start, Essentials, and Plus, with additional features for a growing business approaching mid-market size. You can set up a chart of accounts with an unlimited number of accounts to meet the needs of your business. If you’re shopping for QuickBooks as a small-business accounting solution, first decide whether you’d like online, cloud-based software or a desktop product that locally stores your information. QuickBooks pricing varies quite a bit depending on which product you choose, as well as on how many users you need. When you’re ready to set up and run payroll in QuickBooks Online, you can sign up directly through the QuickBooks Online dashboard and select your subscription plan directly from there.

  1. As a Priority Circle member, you get access to a dedicated customer success manager who can assist you with any questions or issues you have with your software.
  2. QuickBooks Online automatically syncs with connected bank and credit card accounts and auto-categorizes expenses to help small business owners save time.
  3. This plan also gives you a dedicated account team to help with training, troubleshooting and setup.
  4. Xero is most often used by small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
  5. A popular add-on is the payroll feature where you can run payroll and access benefits in one convenient place.

QuickBooks Online Advanced now offers a fixed asset accounting feature that allows you to enter and track fixed assets, such as vehicles, buildings, and equipment. Based on the depreciation method you choose, Advanced automatically calculates the depreciation for the fixed asset and creates a depreciation schedule. QuickBooks Advanced provides greater flexibility in customizing reports than the other QuickBooks Online plans. Users can tailor their reports by filtering and grouping data and creating custom fields and dashboards. Additionally, Advanced lets you generate multi-company reports and schedule emailed reports to be sent to specified email addresses.

QuickBooks Online vs. QuickBooks Self-Employed: At a Glance

As for inventory tracking, this feature is also available in the Plus plan. It sends you notifications when product levels are low and also lets you track the gross cost of goods. QuickBooks Self-Employed is good for freelancers who don’t have a lot of volume—perhaps if freelancing is just your side gig.

The first tier is the Simple Start Plan at $9 per month for the first three months, then is $30 per month. This plan gives you all the basics needed to run your business accounting, including income and expense monitoring, invoice and payment capability, tax deductions, receipt capture and mileage tracking. Simple Start is a good starting point for most small businesses, especially those that don’t need to enter bills, track billable hours, and manage projects and inventory. It includes payroll processing, which allows you to calculate and track payroll taxes, and it lets you track assets and liabilities and use automated sales tax on invoices.

Comparison of QuickBooks Online Products

With QuickBooks, small business owners have more time to spend running their business and managing all aspects of their business from invoicing, managing inventory, and paying bills right from QuickBooks. QuickBooks Online Payroll costs between $45-$125/month plus $6-$10/month per employee, depending on which of the three QBO Payroll pricing plans you choose. Each pricing plan gains you full-service payroll with automated tax support, but the larger the plan, the more additional features and customer support you have access to.

When creating POs in Plus, you can input specific items you want to purchase. When your POs are fulfilled, you can convert them to a bill easily. If you’d like additional help, there are tutorials available on a wide range of accounting terms, skills and how-tos in our QuickBooks Tutorials section. Protect sensitive data with user-level access to specific features and share reports with up to 5 log-ins. Banking services provided by our partner, Green Dot Bank, Member FDIC. QuickBooks Online Essentials has all of the features included in Simple Start, with extra functionality for businesses with more needs.

Lastly, our expert opinion score is our subjective rating based on our experience in trying the software. The software must have enough reports that can be generated with a few clicks. Moreover, we’d also like to see customization options to enable users to generate reports based on what they want to see.

However, if you want to pay these taxes directly through QuickBooks, you’ll need to upgrade to a special tax prep plan. QuickBooks Self-Employed lets you import transactions from your credit card, bank, PayPal and more and automatically sort them into tax categories. You can even take photos of your receipts to match them to existing expenses. Intuit reports that 94% of accounting professionals feel QuickBooks Online saves them time and thus saves their clients’ money. While QuickBooks Online is very popular among business owners, some have problems with the system. Problems stem from the complexity of making simple fixes, such as miscategorizations or duplicate entries.

QuickBooks Online at a glance

QuickBooks Online allows up to 25 users on its most expensive plans. However, the QuickBooks Desktop Pro requires you to pay $299 for every additional user, up to a maximum of three. Desktop Premier and Enterprise, meanwhile, allow up to five and 30 users, respectively. The Premium and Elite plans also support automatic filings for state new hire paperwork. Reporting tools are available on the Simple Start plan but they are a bit limited.

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Includes project tracking tools in higher tier plans; has transaction tracking tags; lacks industry-specific reports; users with multiple businesses must pay for separate subscriptions. If your business is service-based without any inventory, then Essentials should provide everything you need while saving you $30 per month compared to Plus. import paypal transactions into quickbooks If you’re scaling from five to 25 users and need advanced features like fixed asset accounting, then go with Advanced. This takes into account customer management, revenue recognition, invoice management, and collections. Meanwhile, Essentials gives you access to more than 40 reports, including those you can generate in Simple Start.

QuickBooks Online Integrations

Read our comprehensive QuickBooks Online review to decide if this popular accounting software is the best choice for your needs and budget. Whether you decide to manage your bookkeeping on your own or work with a professional, you’ll have no trouble accessing online resources for QuickBooks Online. The company offers video tutorials, webinars and training classes, as well as community forums, support topics and other resources on its website. You have the option of contacting QuickBooks customer support directly for any help you may need too.

QuickBooks Online offers around 25 payment processors, or you can use QuickBooks Payments. The cost begins at $17.99 and varies depending on which form you need and how many. If you purchase QuickBooks Online payroll, these forms may be included, depending on your chosen payroll plan. In addition to the monthly subscription price, there are a few other QuickBooks Online charges to be aware of. Intuit is not always the most forthcoming about these extra fees, which is why we want to highlight them now.

Vehicle tracking is included, too, should you need to invoice for fuel and driving time for any job. This plan is best for small businesses, whether an LLC run by just one individual https://quickbooks-payroll.org/ or a simple partnership. It’ll help someone keep their accounting data in one place, although it doesn’t offer many bells and whistles that could be useful for a larger operation.