QuickBooks Product Comparison Guide
Both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Pro and Premier have notoriously poor customer support (QuickBooks Enterprise support has better priority support). 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. Even though QB Desktop has more comprehensive features in general, there are some key features that only QuickBooks Online has, such as bookkeeping support. We recommend crunching the numbers to decide whether the online or desktop versions of QuickBooks are right for your specific business.
QuickBooks Online offers integration with more than 500 third party apps in categories such as Payments, CRM, Project Management, Payments, Payroll, Invoicing, Inventory, and Time Tracking. You can easily connect to any what is run rate arr definition formula and examples third-party app from within the application, saving you a ton of time in the process. Depending on your business, the ability to integrate with other applications may be convenient, while for others, it can be a necessity. QuickBooks Online offers a variety of pricing plans, which range from $12 to $75 for the first three months. QuickBooks Desktop also offers easy integration with QuickBooks Payments so you can accept online payments from customers.
When To Choose QuickBooks Desktop Pro
- QuickBooks Online wins because it offers more professional-looking and customizable invoices than QuickBooks Desktop.
- Merchant Maverick’s ratings are editorial in nature, and are not aggregated from user reviews.
- In terms of features, QuickBooks Enterprise is about as close as you can get to an ERP without making the switch to full-on business management software.
- Or, to save money, you can try QuickBooks’ typical offer of 50% off for three months (though choosing the discount waives your free trial).
- Because of this, QuickBooks Online is much easier to use and has many more integrations and time-saving invoicing automations, such as auto-scheduling.
- Another key difference between QuickBooks Online and Desktop is that the former allows you to track your activity, such as income and expenses, by class and location.
QuickBooks Desktop also has several additional features you won’t find with QBO, including sales orders and lead management. Because it is locally installed software, you also have more control over keeping your financial data secure. What stands out most about QuickBooks Online when compared to Desktop is that QBO is cloud-based accounting software. Because of this, QuickBooks Online is much easier to use and has many more integrations and time-saving invoicing automations, such as auto-scheduling. While we’re on the topic of invoicing, QuickBooks Online has the superior product, offering six invoice templates and multilingual invoicing in six languages.
Ease of use is one of the most important things to consider when shopping for software. Neither QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop are difficult to use, although they offer very different user experiences. Both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop applications offer a good selection of features, though QuickBooks Desktop features tend to be more comprehensive. It has less of a learning curve than QuickBooks Desktop and comes with a much more simplified dashboard that’s easy to navigate. Some accountants dislike QuickBooks Online’s limited functionality, limited report customization, and dependency on the internet.
As an added convenience, if you outgrow your current edition of QuickBooks Online, upgrade fixed cost: what it is and how its used in business 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. And let’s not forget offline accessibility for the times your ISP decides to ruin your Monday. Everything from the installation screen to the lagging UI gave me flashbacks to the 1998 dial-up tone on my family’s Pentium III computer. There were also fewer prompts of the tutorial variety, but I was pleasantly surprised by the number of features packed into it. As with QuickBooks Pro, Premier will no longer be available for purchase by new users after September 30, 2024.
You should also consider budget constraints before choosing, as QuickBooks Online provides more plans and more diverse pricing options, while QuickBooks Desktop can be more expensive. I want to confidently say that the difference in pricing is due to the considerable amount of features that QuickBooks Desktop offers, but I’m unsure if that’s the case. Going completely cloud-based comes with marginally higher security risks. While QuickBooks Online does offer security features like multi-factor authorization and encrypted data storage, it’s accessible by anyone with employee login credentials and an internet connection. If, after reading this post, you aren’t convinced that any version of QuickBooks is right for you, or if you just want to consider all of your options, there are other solutions that may be a better fit.
QuickBooks Online: Overall Best For Small Businesses
Read our article on what the QuickBooks Online Desktop app is to learn more. Ease of use includes the layout of the dashboard and whether new transactions can be initiated from the dashboard rather than having to navigate to a particular module. Other factors considered are user reviews specific to ease of use and a subjective evaluation by our experts of both the UI and general ease of use. With QuickBooks Desktop, you must make an Accountant’s Copy of your data file and send it to your ProAdvisor. The copy will allow you to continue to work on transactions in the current period while your accountant makes adjustments to past periods. It’s an acceptable system but isn’t nearly as convenient as sharing your books through QuickBooks Online.
Live Bookkeepers aren’t responsible for errors resulting from incorrect information that you provide, or if you re-open the books by overriding closure after a Live Bookkeeper completes the month-end closure. QuickBooks Desktop offers more than 100 standard reports that can be customized as needed. Users can simply click on the Reports option to access reports in a variety of categories including Favorites, Business Overview, Expenses and Vendors, Employees, and Sales Tax reports, along with several others. All reports can be exported to Microsoft Excel for customizing, viewing on screen, printing, or emailing directly to recipients. QuickBooks Online wins this one, offering easy system navigation from the user dashboard.
The Complete Guide To Getting A Free Square Card Reader For Your Business
The software must have features that allow users to set sales tax rates, apply them to invoices, and enable users to pay sales tax liability. While QuickBooks Online offers project management features, it doesn’t have the same level of customization options as QuickBooks Desktop. For instance, QuickBooks Desktop allows you to create customized job costing reports tailored to specialized industries, including manufacturers, contractors, and retailers.
With QuickBooks Online, users receive many of the same great features while gaining the mobility of cloud-based software. QuickBooks Online is easier to use and has more automations, more integrations, and better invoicing. The downsides are the lack of sales orders, lead management, and other complexities that loyal Desktop users may miss (such as customizable letter templates, a built-in calendar, and even spellcheck). QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop operate on true double-entry accounting principles and have both accrual and cash-basis accounting. Each offers a detailed chart of accounts, journal what is the purpose of control accounts entries, bank reconciliation, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and the basic reports needed to run a company.