Alternatively, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial with QuickBooks Online. Just know that doing so waives your option to get 50% off your QuickBooks Online subscription for your first three months. Speaking of extra fees, QuickBooks Desktop also charges for e-commerce app integration, invoice-based payment acceptance, and online data hosting. If you choose QuickBooks Desktop Pro Plus, you’ll also need to pay extra if you want to access customer service via live chat. Notably, only QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise includes 24/7 customer service.
QuickBooks Online is more collaborative, whereas QuickBooks Desktop provides more tools for solo users
Granted, you don’t have to be an accountant to learn QuickBooks Desktop either, but if you are new to accounting, you will need a lot of time to learn the program. While QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop offer contact management, only QuickBooks Desktop allows you to manage and track leads as well as contacts. Even though QB Desktop has more comprehensive features in general, there are some key features that only QuickBooks Online has, such as bookkeeping support. All reports can be exported to Microsoft Excel for customizing, viewing on screen, printing, or emailing directly to recipients. Users can access features via the vertical menu to the left of the screen or by using the drop-down menu bar at the top, and the My Shortcuts option allows you to add a shortcut to frequently used features.
Tax Benefits and Deductions for the Self-Employed
Keep in mind that if you do decide to have QuickBooks Desktop hosted, there will be an additional fee. As an added convenience, if you outgrow your current edition of QuickBooks Online, upgrade to a more powerful plan in minutes. QuickBooks Desktop’s user interface is very different from QuickBooks Online, offering navigation using a flowchart style menu. Katherine https://www.kelleysbookkeeping.com/ Haan is a small business owner with nearly two decades of experience helping other business owners increase their incomes. To get the best possible experience please use the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Microsoft Edge to view this website. Find help articles, video tutorials, and connect with other businesses in our online community.
Create invoices for QuickBooks Online customers from new Shopify orders
- Amy Nichol Smith spent more than 20 years working as a journalist for TV and newspapers before transitioning to software and hardware product reviews for consumers and small businesses.
- How features differ between QBDT and QBO tend to be in looks, functionality, and comprehensiveness.
- Our meticulous evaluation process makes us a trustworthy source for accounting software insights.
- You’ll need to file business taxes manually, and update your QuickBooks account with the information afterward.
QuickBooks Online wins because it offers more professional-looking and customizable invoices than QuickBooks Desktop. Also, it allows you to calculate sales taxes automatically to apply to an invoice based on the customer’s address. This feature is particularly useful if you sell and ship products out of your state. Best for small businesses looking for easy-to-use, cloud-based accounting software and strong mobile apps. Complete Training and Live Help MembershipTo refund your membership, please send an email to [email protected] before the 30th day of purchase, and you’ll receive a full refund.
QuickBooks Plans and Pricing
We went to user review websites to read first-hand reviews from actual software users. This user review score helps us give more credit to software products that deliver a consistent service to their customers. Businesses with inventory items should choose accounting software that can track inventory costs, manage COGS, and monitor inventory process costing in management accounting units. The banking section of this case study focuses on cash management, bank reconciliation, and bank feed connections. The software must have bank integrations to automatically feed bank or card transactions. The bank reconciliation module must also let users reconcile accounts with or without bank feeds for optimal ease of use.
What QuickBooks Desktop offers
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). When comparing QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop, each version has its own advantages, helping specific businesses with certain financial management needs. QuickBooks Online is popular for businesses that want flexibility — both in terms of where and how they can access their finances as well as what plan they can choose as they grow. On the other hand, established businesses may get more out of QuickBooks Desktop with its advanced capabilities in a secure database. QuickBooks Online also syncs with a variety of payroll tools, including the accountant-friendly QuickBooks Online Payroll.
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. For small and growing businesses, Xero offers some limited plans at affordable prices, but the Established plan for $78 per month is the better option if you’re looking for a QuickBooks alternative.
Xero’s software is easily as user friendly as QuickBooks’ with a colorful, organized dashboard and highly reviewed apps for iOS and Android. It also has better customer service reviews than Intuit, even though Xero’s customer service is available via email only. Square Invoices is an affordable alternative to QuickBooks that gives you precisely what you need for payment processing.
In the past, customers could choose between annually renewing plans and single-purchase software with a license that stayed valid for three years. If you purchased a Desktop Pro plan in 2021, your software will still work until 2024—but new customers who bought the 2022 software version can only choose annual subscriptions. We evaluated QuickBooks Online vs Desktop based on pricing, ease of use, customer support, and the availability of important features, like banking, project accounting, https://www.business-accounting.net/statement-of-activities-definition-and-meaning/ and inventory management. QuickBooks Online and Desktop share many similarities, including income and expense tracking, bank reconciliation, accounts payable (A/P) and accounts receivable (A/R) management, and reporting. We consider them tied in terms of features, as they are both robust accounting software, and they have their own strengths and weaknesses. Many satisfied QuickBooks Online users appreciate that they can access the program from any internet-enabled device.
DIY clients often find that hiring a professional bookkeeper for on-demand support is a better use of their time and money than the 24/7 support desk. By not purchasing the Plus edition of the software, you lose the automatic backups, but those can be easily handled by yourself. It’s important to note that QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online are two separate products, and data in the two versions do not automatically sync. A company should work with either QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Online to avoid data discrepancies. QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online are separate platforms that do not sync with each other.
Instead, you will need to contact QuickBooks Sales by phone or purchase a subscription through an authorized QuickBooks reseller. Pricing varies based on the number of users and the level of customer support you need, and if you need to add QuickBooks Desktop Payroll. Best for large businesses with 40 users or fewer looking for industry-specific accounting and advanced accounting. Best for small to medium-sized businesses with five users or fewer in need of strong accounting and industry-specific accounting features. The downside of QuickBooks Online is that customer support is a bit lacking, and the subscription fee can be a bit expensive for smaller businesses in need of advanced features.
FreshBooks is great for self-employed individuals, sole proprietors and independent contractors. It is incredibly user-friendly and easy to navigate, so if you are a sole proprietor looking for basic accounting software, FreshBooks will meet your needs at a relatively low cost. Its basic plan is in line with QuickBooks Simple Start, at $15 per month. QuickBooks Online is a cloud-based software optimized for small businesses.
You can also send estimates and payment reminders, take payments and track time and expenses. Upgrading to higher tiers grants you access to advanced features, such as double-entry accounting and bank reconciliation. The plan offers up to three users all the features of QuickBooks Simple Start, plus the ability to track hours worked and manage bills.
If you can’t decide between two programs, here’s how they stack up head-to-head to help you determine which version of QuickBooks is the best accounting solution for your business. The main downside of QuickBooks Mac Plus is that the software doesn’t have a single integration. Additionally, QuickBooks Mac Plus never seems to get the same amount of attention as other QuickBooks products in terms of new features and updates. We’ll also walk you through what questions to ask so that you can pinpoint the perfect QuickBooks software for your business and choose the right QuickBooks accounting solution with confidence.
The software itself may look like an outdated image on some monitor within a cubicle maze, but it’s versatile in what it can do. The dashboard does an excellent job dividing all accounting aspects into a flowchart type of view, while the sidebar provides quick access to a list of features. That said, it can feel overwhelming and confusing if you don’t have prior accounting knowledge.
