QuickBooks Online Accountant acts like a portal to all your clients’ books from a single login. Because QuickBooks Online Accountant is a cloud-based system, you have access to all your clients’ QuickBooks Online anytime, anywhere. Plus, share real-time access to the books with clients and your team members.
Thanks to cloud computing, businesses can manage their finances anywhere in the world using any device they choose. QuickBooks Desktop is on-premises accounting software with optional remote access through an internet connection. QuickBooks Desktop versions are Pro Plus, Premier Plus, and Enterprise, which are sold as yearly editions with an annual price that varies by the number of users.
Which Version of QuickBooks is Best for Your Business?
I recommend saving a backup of your QuickBooks Desktop company file in case of any issues. While most information transfers well to QBO, not all of your information will convert from Desktop. We think QuickBooks Online is the best overall option for small businesses, but QuickBooks Desktop Premier is a great option for niche businesses.
QuickBooks Desktop recently began requiring an annual payment to maintain live technical support and even some features, such as payroll. Thus, QuickBooks Desktop effectively forces you to pay for an annual license if you want full support. Once you set up your online banking integration, your banking activity will import automatically. Multiple users can view the banking area without needing to enter banking details or passwords.
- QuickBooks Online’s biggest advantage is its ability to be accessed from anywhere with an internet-enabled device.
- It has an easier learning curve, and you’ll have plenty of new features to learn before you reach the limits of what it can do.
- Many or all of the products featured here are from our partners who compensate us.
- The mobile app for Online is robust, and Desktop’s mobile app is so limited, that it essentially functions as a receipt uploader.
- 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.
- There are many cases where it’s to your benefit to learn how to approach and resolve a task.
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. Simple Start runs basic reports, including cash flow statements, profit and loss (P&L) statements, and balance sheets. Some of the other 20-plus built-in standard reports available include P&L by month and customer, quarterly P&L summaries, and general ledger. With QuickBooks Online you can easily link to your client’s bank accounts to automate the collection of bank transactions, statements, and receipts.
Areas Where Desktop Outscores Online?
It’s easier to upgrade from QuickBooks Online Simple Start to Essentials, Plus, or Advanced than to switch from QuickBooks Self-Employed to any other QuickBooks Online version. You may check QuickBooks’ guide to upgrading or downgrading your subscription. With Essentials, you can track your unpaid bills easily and pay them directly within QuickBooks. You just need to select the bills you want to pay from the Pay Bills window, place a checkmark next to the bills, and then select Save & Print.
Terms, conditions, pricing, special features, and service and support options subject to change without notice. The final choice will come down to the advanced customization features in QuickBooks Desktop that help with job costing, estimating, and monitoring ongoing profitability. If you have the accounting knowledge and need for those, then QuickBooks Desktop is the obvious choice. QuickBooks Desktop is also good for smaller to medium-sized companies, but it’s geared toward advanced users who understand the nuances of construction accounting. It has an easier learning curve, and you’ll have plenty of new features to learn before you reach the limits of what it can do.
QuickBooks Online Pricing
With QuickBooks Desktop, users receive some of the most developed accounting tools on the market. The software offers comprehensive features, unique touches (such as lead management and sales orders), industry-specific versions of the software, and the potential to be more secure. In addition, the Premier and Enterprise plans offer more than 150 reports, with industry-specific reporting options available.
- 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.
- However, QuickBooks Online is the better choice for most companies, especially those with remote accountants and multiple employees.
- Explore our list of the best QuickBooks Online integrations for different business purposes.
- Or should you supply them yourself and pay a toll for the manufacturing services?
- You also have the option to import products and services into the application to avoid having to re-enter the data.
Your accountant can log in to the QuickBooks Online platform using their own credentials, eliminating the need for file transfers or physical handoffs. QuickBooks Desktop is preferable when advanced customization, industry-specific versions, or offline access are required. Interestingly, the benefits of QuickBooks Desktop can be further amplified if the software is hosted on the cloud by a credible service provider. intro to business flashcards This approach essentially marries the robust functionality of QuickBooks Desktop with the accessibility of QuickBooks Online, providing businesses with a powerful, flexible solution. QuickBooks Desktop requires a one-time upfront payment, making it more cost-effective in the long run for users who don’t require regular upgrades. There’s also an option for an annual subscription which includes updates and upgrades.
What is QuickBooks?
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. Intuit QuickBooks is one of the most popular accounting software with more than 6.1 million paying customers, according to Intuit’s Investor Day 2020.
If your business needs sales orders, QuickBooks Desktop is your only option. Although Intuit has talked about adding sales orders to QuickBooks Online, this feature is only available with QuickBooks Desktop products at this time. Both include the basic reports you’d expect to find with accounting software, such as a balance sheet, a Profit & Loss report, a cash flow statement, etc. With QuickBooks Desktop, you can set recurring invoices, send payment reminders, send batch invoices, and track invoices, but you’ll miss out on many of the other modern, cloud-based automations that QBO provides.
Explore our list of the best QuickBooks Online integrations for different business purposes. The QuickBooks Desktop mobile app is very limited as it only allows you to capture expense receipts. If you want to perform bookkeeping from anywhere, we strongly recommend QuickBooks Online’s mobile app. However, Intuit’s push for its QuickBooks Online software and discontinuation of its Desktop offering in the UK has caused users to worry about possible sunsetting. Both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop are capable programs with strong accounting features. 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.