QuickBooks Desktop, Compare QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise

While QuickBooks Live charges a set monthly fee that is based on your company’s average monthly expenses, you have more flexibility to arrange a payment schedule and customize services with an independent ProAdvisor. QuickBooks Online integrates with hundreds of business applications available in the QuickBooks App Store. These integrated apps are designed to help you simplify the various aspects of your business, from bill management and payment acceptance to cash flow forecasting. Well, we think QuickBooks is a pretty great accounting software for small business, and so do our 4.5 million users. Every day, small businesses around the world use our software to help meet their business needs. It’s no fluke that QuickBooks Desktop continues to be an industry leader, with long-time users remaining loyal to the application and loathe to make a change.

Our accounting software makes it easy for small businesses to connect with apps you already use or discover new ones. QuickBooks Online Advanced is slightly better than Plus and the other QuickBooks Online plans in A/P and A/R because of its batch invoicing and expense management features. Batch invoicing allows you to create multiple invoices at once rather than creating them one at a time. This can be useful if you have many customers who need to be invoiced for the same products or services. You just need to create a single invoice template and then apply it to all the customers who require the same invoice.

How to Use QuickBooks for Small Business

If you’re constantly worried about being paid on time, software with invoicing features is a necessity. With the ability to customize an invoice, you can include your company logo, contact information, and more. This invoicing tool can be sent to customers from QuickBooks and returned to be stored and organized.

A Live Bookkeeper cannot begin cleaning up your past books until they receive the required supporting documentation, which your bookkeeper will request from you after your first meeting. Once your bookkeeper receives all the necessary documentation, they’ll typically complete your cleanup within 30 days. In some cases, your cleanup may take longer depending on timeliness of documentation and the complexity of your books. The QuickBooks Online plans vary in terms of the number of reports you can create and the ability to run customized reports. Meanwhile, Batch expensing allows you to record and categorize multiple expenses at once instead of entering them individually.

Get to grips with the features that matter most to you with our bitesize getting started guides. Check out our short video tutorials and jargon-free guides, or contact our award-winning team of experts. Save up to 60% off on QuickBooks Online when you manage the subscription billing for your clients. Each new client you add to QuickBooks gets a free 45 minute onboarding session with one of our product experts.

You can drill down to a list of your outstanding invoices instead of only the total outstanding. Small business owners of all kinds look to QuickBooks as one of the business finance authorities that can best help them manage their invoices, pay their bills, and track cash flow. Generate month-over-month reports and year-end financial reports to track the growth of your small business.

Unfortunately, you can’t assign billable expenses to customers unless you upgrade to Plus. QuickBooks Online Self-Employed works very well for people who work for themselves in a service industry and report their business income on Schedule C of their personal income tax return. We even consider it the best for tracking freelance income and filing tax returns in our guide to the best accounting software for freelancers. To see what it can do for freelancers and solopreneurs, check out our review of QuickBooks Online Self-Employed. For time tracking and customer support, you’ll need the Established plan at $65 per month. The Established plan is far more powerful with in-depth analytics, multicurrency, and project management.

Access your QuickBooks account at any time, and run your small business on any device. With cloud-based accounting software, you no longer need to be at your office desk to access financial information. QuickBooks makes it easier for you to manage your small business accounting wherever you are.

You’ll get the most value out of QuickBooks Online if you understand how to use its transaction tags and reporting capabilities. If you’re not sure whether you’re getting the most of these features, consider asking your accountant to review your chart of accounts and how you’re categorizing transactions. QuickBooks Online is not free to use, but new customers can choose between a 30-day free trial or a 50% discount for three months. Competitors like Xero and FreshBooks offer basic inventory tracking for less, but it isn’t as advanced.

Look at your business’s specific needs, what you can afford per month, and what comes with each platform’s service plan. If you’re just starting a business, look for a more simple, more straightforward platform with fewer bells and whistles. This software level supports up to 30 licenses and is great for large, layered industries like construction, distribution, manufacturing, and retail. You can manage numerous locations and users, large transactions, and customize your workflows. Pricing depends on your business operations, size, and needs so it is best to speak to a QuickBooks representative. A cash flow statement shows how changes in your income and overall balance sheet affect your liquidity at the moment represented by your cash and cash equivalents.

Benefits of accounting software for your small business

With five plans, each at different price points, users can choose the plan that best meets their business needs without paying for additional features that they don’t want. As a business grows, users can easily upgrade to a more advanced plan with additional features seamlessly. QuickBooks is the platform most used by professional accountants so if you plan to work with an accountant, they will likely be very familiar with the platform, its features and capabilities. QuickBooks Point of Sale is software that replaces a retailer’s cash register, tracks its inventory, sales, and customer information, and provides reports for managing its business and serving its customers. While the software would continue to function for end users after that date, Inuit will no longer provide software updates for security and functionality. Zoho’s pricier plans include advanced features like sales and purchase orders, recurring bill payments, a collaborative vendor portal and enhanced metrics.

• Our QuickBooks Online vs Excel comparison will help you better understand the differences between the two programs.
• This will offer you a customized recommendation based on the responses you give.
• Time entered and assigned to a customer will be available to add to the customer’s next invoice.
• In May 2002 Intuit launched QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions for medium-sized businesses.
• If you’re fluent in other cloud-based applications, QuickBooks should be fairly simple.

QuickBooks offers a free 30 day trial so you can try our accounting software for your small business before you commit to it. QuickBooks is based in the cloud, simply sign-in and get started from any web browser. Unlike traditional accounting software that needs to be installed on individual desktops, QuickBooks small business accounting software does not require installation.

While all of the information displayed in the Track History feature is readily available in the application, it’s helpful to have all invoice details displayed in one central location. Many powerful features in QuickBooks Desktop you may not even aware that they exist but they could save you a lot of time and frustration through automation. To use this feature, just access the Preferences option and then the Send Forms option.

Landed costs

While both QuickBooks and Xero advocate working with an accountant, Xero cuts out a lot of the work for you. The Early plan starts at just $12 per month and covers invoicing, cash flow reports, and expense tracking. You’re still limited with Xeroo’s Early plan since only send/approve up to 20 quotes and invoices per month and pay only 5 vendor bills. Wave has great invoicing capabilities and allows you to accept credit cards and ACH payments. Despite that, Wave is one of the only truly free accounting software options out there and only add-ons incur fees.

• QuickBooks offers a separate product — QuickBooks Self-Employed — designed for freelancers and independent contractors, with plans starting at $15 per month.
• QuickBooks small business accounting software is based in the cloud, simply sign-in and get started from any web browser.
• QuickBooks Online Advanced is slightly better than Plus and the other QuickBooks Online plans in A/P and A/R because of its batch invoicing and expense management features.
• Its basic plan is in line with QuickBooks Simple Start, at $15 per month.
• Still, the plan is extremely comprehensive and includes employee expense tracking, batch invoicing and 25 users.
• Midsized businesses with several customers or clients might benefit from the ability to track profitability with QuickBooks Plus.

QuickBooks Advanced has many bells and whistles compared to Plus, but there are no additional features that are crucial to good bookkeeping. However, it removes the limitations on the number of classes, locations, and chart of accounts, making it ideal for businesses with a growing staff. So, unless you need more than five user seats, support from a dedicated success manager, and free training to help your team members familiarize themselves with new features, then you can stick with Plus. The main differences between the two QuickBooks plans are the ability to create billable expenses and assign them to customers, track inventory costs, and calculate P&L by project. Other helpful features in Plus are budgets, classes, customer types, locations, and unlimited report-only users. The advantage of QuickBooks Essentials vs Simple Start is the ability to assign hours worked to specific customers.

QuickBooks comes in both a cloud-based online platform and a traditional desktop program. You can read about the pros and cons of each in our comparison of QuickBooks Online vs Desktop. Most of the versions will perform the tasks discussed above, but they come with an extensive variety of advanced features and a wide range of prices. However, because it’s integrated completely within QuickBooks, the sale, credit card fee, and cash deposit are all recorded automatically as they occur. Though QuickBooks Online has a handful of convenient features that can speed up your workflow and even automate some of it, the software can be complex.

Connect your accounting software seamlessly!

QuickBooks Payroll starts at $45 a month plus $5 per employee paid per month, and new users can choose between a 30-day free trial or 50% off discount just as they can with QuickBooks Online. If you’re like most users, you have an average of two to three finance apps on your smartphone. If you’re a business owner, you likely have even more thanks to the number of tools available. Danielle Bauter is a writer for the Accounting division of Fit Small Business. She has owned Check Yourself, a bookkeeping and payroll service that specializes in small business, for over twenty years.

In addition to QuickBooks Online, Intuit offers a desktop product called QuickBooks Desktop, which is locally installed rather than cloud-based. QuickBooks Enterprise is the desktop lineup’s most robust plan — it allows up to 40 users and has industry-specific versions. To see which lineup is best for you, compare QuickBooks Online vs. QuickBooks Desktop plans’ main features and pricing. Although QuickBooks Online is user-friendly, there can be a learning curve, particularly if you’re unfamiliar with the basic principles of accounting.

Simplify taxes

However, if you opt for the free trial you lose the opportunity to save 50% on your first three months. You have easy access to all the common financial statements like balance sheet, profit and loss (P&L) statement, cash flow statements and taxes filed. You can take a printout of these statements for your accountant and send it across to them at the time of filing or invite them to view these statements without needing a login ID or password. Again, QuickBooks has many reports available to analyze your bills and expenses.

You’ll get the most out of it if you have some knowledge of basic accounting concepts. Whereas you might be able to use some software alternatives without explanation, it may take some time to get the hang of hedge fund administration services QuickBooks. Using the Banking tab on the left side of the dashboard, you can connect your bank and credit card accounts so that QuickBooks automatically imports transactions and categorizes them for you.