Unfortunately, pricing is no longer disclosed and you will need to contact QuickBooks Sales for more pricing details. At the time of our last review, pricing started at $349.99/year for a single user. Join the thousands of people like you already growing their businesses and knowledge with our team of experts. We deliver timely updates, interesting insights, and exclusive promos to your inbox. If you don’t renew your QuickBooks Desktop subscription at the end of the year, then you will no longer be able to access your data on the desktop app. During our testing, it negative confirmation took us no time to get up to speed on how to use the QuickBooks Online platform.
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This user review score helps us give more credit to software products that deliver a consistent service to their customers. Service or project-based businesses should choose accounting software that can track project costs, revenues, and profits. The software must have tools to track time, record billable hours or expenses, send invoices for progress billings, or monitor project progress and performance. Additionally, QuickBooks Online 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.
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While QuickBooks Enterprise will still be an option, this is powerful software with an expensive price tag that will be too much (in terms of features and pricing) for most small businesses. We at the MarketWatch Guides team spent over 100 hours researching and testing 15 accounting software providers. We looked at all-in-one tools, such as QuickBooks, as well as specific tools for mileage tracking and expense management. During our extensive research of the business accounting industry where we interviewed financial experts and surveyed accounting software users, QuickBooks came up often as a widely used solution.
It’s designed to foster collaboration between multiple users, facilitating multi-user access to accounting data. Each user has their own login credentials, which can be customized to limit access to sensitive information. There’s also a feature that facilitates inviting your accountant to the platform, so they can have direct access to your data. 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. We recommend crunching the numbers to decide whether the online or desktop versions of QuickBooks are right for your specific business.
Industry-specific reports
In the battle between QuickBooks Online and Desktop, it’s best to focus on the differences between the two accounting software options since they are so similar. MarketWatch Guides may receive compensation from companies that appear on this page. The compensation may impact how, where and in what order products appear, but it does not influence the recommendations the editorial team provides. QuickBooks Online is preferred for invoicing, as it provides easier access and more flexibility.
The most notable difference, aside from price, between QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop is the Online version is cloud-based. The mobile app for Online is robust, and Desktop’s mobile app is so limited, that it essentially functions as a receipt uploader. Working from the cloud means you need an internet connection, so a poor signal or an intermittent connection can be an issue. Its highest-tiered plan is the Advanced option, which costs $100 per month for the first three months, then $200 per month after that.
- Upon opening QuickBooks Desktop, we found that the general layout didn’t differ too much from that of QuickBooks Online.
- Businesses with inventory items should choose accounting software that can track inventory costs, manage cost of goods sold (COGS), and monitor inventory units.
- With QuickBooks Online, you also get the latest security capabilities.
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QuickBooks Online is cheaper than QuickBooks Desktop if you need multiple users. For instance, QuickBooks Online Plus only costs $99 per month ($1,080 per year) for up to five users as opposed to Desktop Enterprise, which costs $1,481 per year for only one user. Yes, but the only option is QuickBooks Enterprise, as Pro and Premier will no longer be available for new users after July 31, 2024. However, existing Pro and Premier users can still renew their subscriptions.