QuickBooks Online Review: Features, Pros & Cons

It’s also possible to customize the text and add a message to your customers in the footer. When it comes to small business accounting solutions, QuickBooks stands apart as the clear market leader in the industry. It is a widely used brand that caters to small business owners who aren’t accountants or bookkeepers; QuickBooks provides straightforward accounting tools that meet their needs. Business.com aims to help business owners make informed decisions to support and grow their companies. We research and recommend products and services suitable for various business types, investing thousands of hours each year in this process. You can avoid QuickBooks fees by accepting credit card payments from a different third-party provider.

Apps like LeanLaw, HubSpot, DocuSign, and Salesforce can be connected for a more personalized business management solution. Tax season becomes less stressful as the software organizes your income and expenses into tax categories. You’ll also get a mileage tracker that works via your smartphone’s GPS, simplifying the categorization of business and personal trips while offering reports on possible deductions.

• QuickBooks Online is cloud-based accounting software that has the complex accounting capabilities small business owners need.
• At the moment of writing this review, QuickBooks also offers a promotional 50% discount on all plans for the first three months.
• If you’ve already registered for an exam or taken an exam before you request a refund, we will deduct the cost of the exam from your refund.
• Discover key differences in pricing, features, and scalability to find the best ERP for your business.

If you need more users, is quickbooks online free you’ll have to upgrade to the next paid plan, which is the Essentials. At the time of writing this review, this plan costs $15/month for the first three months, then $30/month. You can use the app on the go to enter transactions, record your expenses, send invoices, and more. Your data will be synced to the cloud and across all your devices.

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Of course, not all small business accounting software is created equal. Some are designed to grow with your business, offering modular features like inventory management or e-commerce integrations that you can add on as needed. If you just need something to track your cashflow, look for a platform with fewer features and an appealing interface. And then there’s the question of how well the software plays with others – look for platforms that integrate seamlessly with other business tools, from your CRM to your email marketing software.

How do I learn how to use new accounting software?

Read our comprehensive QuickBooks Online review to decide if this popular accounting software is the best choice for your needs and budget. If you don’t need accounting just yet, our new money solution offers banking, payments, and 3.00% APY—all with no subscription or starting fees. QuickBooks Online mobile access is included with your QuickBooks Online subscription at no additional cost. To cancel your membership, email email protected within 30 days of purchase, and you’ll receive a full refund. If you schedule or take any certification exams within your 30 days, we deduct the cost of the exams ($130 each) from your refund.

What you’ll learn in the class

To ensure QuickBooks tracks your project profitability, you should assign income and expense transactions to projects, and the system will calculate everything for you. Another perk of the system is that it can be tailored to any industry, from simple freelance businesses to retail companies. Tax relief is a way to reduce the amount of money you owe to the IRS or state tax agencies.

QuickBooks users can also easily apply for funding through the built-in lending platform QuickBooks Capital. Today’s leading accounting platforms offer standard security features such as data encryption, secure credential tokenization and more. Another cumbersome feature that users don’t like is the requirement that clients must establish their own accounts to pay an invoice.

Accounting Software Review Methodology

When you first land on QuickBooks, the platform directs you to choose a subscription plan, decide whether you need a payroll add-on, and proceed to checkout. The options vary in price and capabilities, so you can pick what fits best for your business and avoid overpaying for features you won’t use. Merchant Maverick’s ratings are editorial in nature, and are not aggregated from user reviews. Each staff reviewer at Merchant Maverick is a subject matter expert with experience researching, testing, and evaluating small business software and services. The rating of this company or service is based on the author’s expert opinion and analysis of the product, and assessed and seconded by another subject matter expert on staff before publication.

If you have independent contractors working for you, then you’ll be glad to hear QuickBooks lets you send them a 1099 at the end of the year so they can report their income to the IRS. You can easily set up 1099 tracking the first time you pay your contractor. QuickBooks Online lets you create estimates, email them to clients, and convert them into invoices after you complete the work. You can customize estimates to fit your brand and business needs. Similar to how the system syncs your income transactions, it also syncs your expenses. QuickBooks will learn your categories over time and will start to suggest a category for each one of your expense transactions; you can accept or change the category QuickBooks suggests.

Getting started with QuickBooks is straightforward, with the initial setup taking approximately five minutes. You can easily sync your bank or credit card transactions to get your account up and running. QuickBooks Online also offers a 30-day free trial of its Plus plan, making it easy and risk-free to test out the platform. Accessible through any web browser, it also comes with a free mobile app, so you can manage your business finances on the go.

Complete Training and Live Help MembershipTo refund your membership, email email protected before the 30th day of purchase, and you’ll receive a full refund. Please note, if you take any of the included certification exams, we’ll deduct the cost of the exams from your refund. If you cancel after 30 days, we’ll stop your monthly subscription for live services (this includes daily instructor-led classes and Live QuickBooks Help). You’ll still retain access to the entire self-paced library (including all future updates).

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don’t guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services. QuickBooks has several solid competitors, many of which offer similar accounting services at a lower cost.

• Workers’ compensation, 401k plans, and expert product support are also available.
• Let me know if you have additional questions about QuickBooks plans and features.
• You can also capture receipts and attach them to expenses, reconcile transactions, view customer information, and message customers.
• It offers a variety of features that make it easy to track budgets, expenses, and project timelines.
• QuickBooks Online has four pricing tiers and offers 50% off for the first three months when you purchase.
• Take a look at our comparisons to see how each program stacks up against the others.

When your project management tool doesn’t sync with QuickBooks, you’re stuck manually copying data, wrangling spreadsheets, and double-checking numbers. If you’re ready to commit — or if you need to check out competing software first — visit our accounting software comparison page to take your next step. QuickBooks offers several online resources, which are designed to be the first port of call when users need help. The cheapest is a stripped-down option, Solopreneur, which is specifically for solo independent workers like freelancers or contractors. The others are Simple Start, Essentials, and Plus, followed by the costly Advanced plan, aimed at large operations. It has great transaction documentation, import/export capabilities, and auto-logs everything in the general ledger.

QuickBooks Online made it to our Best Accounting Software for Small Business list because it is a comprehensive platform that checks all the boxes for accounting, invoicing and expense tracking. If you aren’t sure about the product, you can give it a 30-day test run with 100% capabilities of the Simple Start Plan to see if it meets your needs. Get instant access to the tools and features you need to drive your business forward with deeper insights, custom workflows, easy collaboration, and more. Let me know if you have additional questions about QuickBooks plans and features.