QuickBooks Online vs QuickBooks Desktop 2023

Intuit QuickBooks Online has four plans that can accommodate small, midsize and large businesses. New users can choose between a 30-day free trial or a three-month 50% discount. If you choose the free trial, note that QuickBooks requires a credit card to sign up.

QuickBooks Online pros and cons

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2. In both QuickBooks Online and Desktop, you can assign costs to your inventory items and track the quantities sold to calculate the cost of goods sold (COGS).
3. If you need more users than that, you can contact QuickBooks Online's customer support to see if you can create a custom plan with custom user access.
4. Different software packages include licenses for 1 to 10 users, up to 20 users, up to 30 users, and up to 40 users.
5. Contractors and professional service businesses can use the software to compare revenue by city, customer and job type.

Because it is locally installed software, you also have more control over keeping your financial data secure. As a QuickBooks ProAdvisor, Mark has extensive knowledge of QuickBooks products, allowing him to create valuable content that educates businesses on maximizing the benefits of the software. This requires the software to allow users transitioning from other bookkeeping software to import their chart of https://www.business-accounting.net/how-to-prepare-a-post-closing-trial-balance/ accounts (COA), vendors, customers, service items, and inventory items. Ideally, there will be a wizard to walk the user through the import process. You can download a 30-day trial version of QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise only—both the Premier Plus and Pro Plus plans come with a 60-day money-back guarantee, but no free trial. Alternatively, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial with QuickBooks Online.

QuickBooks Desktop Premier Plus

We research and recommend products and services suitable for various business types, investing thousands of hours each year in this process. All you need is your account information, and you can access your QuickBooks details on any device https://www.intuit-payroll.org/ with an internet connection. While the two iterations are different in some aspects, they're essentially the same product, and the differences between them aren't as glaring as they are with other accounting software solutions.

NEW! Upload vendor invoices via mobile device and auto-create bills for review

QuickBooks is an excellent option for accounting and invoicing software but there are viable alternatives that may fit your business better. For example, if you’re looking to save money on payment processing, QuickBooks Payments might not be right for you and you may want to choose Xero, which lets you choose your own payment processor. The great thing about tiered subscriptions is that they scale with your business as you grow. So, you may be able to start with the lowest tier around $20 per month, but when you need to set up recurring bills or purchase orders, you could justify subscribing to a higher cost for those features. Top-tier plans can cost as much as $200 per month, but at this level, you get uncommon features, such as workflow automation, advanced analytics and dedicated customer support. Cloud-based software is far more popular today and with that comes tiers for different types or sizes of businesses.

Compare QuickBooks products

If a specific version of QuickBooks stood out to you, we recommend taking the software for a test run to make sure you love using it. If you want a happy medium, QuickBooks Mac Plus might be a good balance since its UI is easier to use without sacrificing advanced and customizable features. The type of business you run has a huge influence on which QuickBooks product is right for you. If you’re a freelancer, QuickBooks Self-Employed is the obvious choice.

Invoicing: QuickBooks Online Wins

In addition to automatic invoicing and collection, you can set up automatic bill payments. There are also features to help you manage tax codes, journal entries and fixed assets. Additionally, the highest tier lets you create invoices and accept payments in multiple currencies, so this is a viable option for international businesses. The lowest tier is affordable, but the invoice limits are too limiting—your count applies to sending and approving invoices.

QuickBooks Enterprise Gold differs from the Silver package in that Gold includes QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll. These features are available in every QuickBooks Enterprise subscription. Learn more about the benefits of QuickBooks’ six industry editions and how they can benefit your business. Compare QuickBooks Online to other leading financial solutions and spreadsheets. QuickBooks Time Premium is included with Payroll Premium and Time Elite is included with Payroll Elite. There are two versions of QuickBooks Desktop (Premier Plus and Enterprise) and four versions of QuickBooks Online (Simple Start, Essentials, Plus and Advanced).

The $40/month plan gives additional tax support with unlimited help and advice year-round from CPAs and a final review of your tax return by a CPA. If QuickBooks Online and Desktop are on your list of potential accounting solutions, you may want to also consider some similar alternatives. For example, Xero and FreshBooks are cloud-based platforms with extensive features for small and medium-sized businesses, while Quicken is a desktop option for self-employed individuals. Upon opening QuickBooks Desktop, we found that the general layout didn’t differ too much from that of QuickBooks Online.

Manage cash flow, and boost transparency with customizable approval workflows for bills. If you’re a freelancer, stick with its Self-Employed plan, which is $15 per month 9after the three-month discount at $7.50). Features include mileage tracking, basic reporting, income and expense tracking, capture and organize receipts and estimation of quarterly taxes.

While you can add cloud access to QuickBooks Enterprise, it involves an additional fee. You can send a copy of your company file to your accountant and import their changes. Many or all of the products featured here are from our partners who compensate us. This influences which products we write about and where and how the product appears on a page. We believe everyone should be able to make financial decisions with confidence. To review QuickBooks Online, we set up a free online account with a demo business so we could test the software for ourselves.

QuickBooks Online diverges from the desktop versions in that it’s accessible from anywhere with internet access and doesn’t require data backups. Each of the four plans have different user limits, and you’ll need to select the $90 per month Plus plan if you want inventory management features. Other advantages of cloud-based software include hundreds of integrations, a more modern user interface and the ability to enter transactions through the mobile app. QuickBooks Plus is the most popular plan for businesses since it includes features such as inventory tracking, project management and tax support. Midsized businesses with several customers or clients might benefit from the ability to track profitability with QuickBooks Plus. Because the Plus plan enables users to view and track projects, including project expenses and labor costs, users can accurately track a project’s profitability and generate relevant reports on project progress.

Working from the cloud means you need an internet connection, so a poor signal or an intermittent connection can be an issue. QuickBooks Online Advanced is more than double the cost of QuickBooks Online Plus, which can make it an expensive jump for midsize businesses seeking to scale up. Still, the plan is extremely comprehensive and includes employee expense the direct write off method vs. the allowance method tracking, batch invoicing and 25 users. Advanced is the only QuickBooks plan to include free 24/7 customer service. Zoho Invoice is most suitable for freelancers and small service-based businesses, mostly because it doesn’t include inventory tracking or full accounting features. For example, there are no balance sheets or bank reconciliation features.

On the other hand, QuickBooks Enterprise is designed for larger businesses that want access to more users and more features without fully upgrading to ERP software. Best for small to medium-sized businesses with three users or fewer looking for strong accounting or locally-installed software. Quickbooks Self-Employed has very limited integrations, but the Turbo Tax integration is one of the greatest parts of the software. When you’re ready to file taxes, you can pull all of your QuickBooks Self-Employed data directly into Turbo Tax to make filing easy.