As your business grows and you need more advanced features like bill pay and sales tax tracking, QuickBooks Online Essentials is a solid option. For businesses requiring more robust features, including inventory management and project profitability tracking, QuickBooks Online Plus offers a comprehensive solution. Larger businesses with complex needs should explore QuickBooks Online Advanced for increased user access, custom reporting, and other advanced functionalities.

• Imagine subscribing to a QuickBooks Online plan, only to realize you don’t need its features.
• Each tier offers a different level of service, so consider factors like automated tax payments and HR support when making your decision.
• QuickBooks Self-Employed is an easy-to-use, cloud-based software with strong mobile apps.
• QuickBooks Online is one of the preeminent cloud-based accounting software platforms on the market.
• Plus also supports up to five users, offering better scalability for expanding teams.

There are over 750 business software that integrate with QuickBooks Online. They enhance its existing features, such as making payments, managing customers and projects, running payroll, etc. Generating financial reports is crucial for any business, and QuickBooks excels in this area. You can create detailed reports that provide insights into your business’s financial health. This feature helps you make data-driven decisions, plan for the future, and present financial information to stakeholders with confidence.

Quickbooks Solopreneur is an easy-to-use, cloud-based software with strong mobile apps. The Turbo Tax integration is one of the greatest parts of the software, making it easy to file your taxes. The number of users and features needed are the two factors considered for deciding between the QuickBooks Plans.

QuickBooks Essentials lets you track billable hours by job and assign them to specific customers, a feature not available in Simple Start. You can easily add billable time to invoices and send them to clients, making it ideal for service-based businesses like lawyers or freelancers who charge by the hour. QuickBooks is also a great solution for small businesses because they offer so many different versions to fit anyone’s needs. Whether you’re just starting out and want to try their Simple Start version or you’re a seasoned pro that needs the advanced features of Premier, QuickBooks has a version someone at every level.

This QuickBooks Online comparison highlights their features, pricing, and ideal use cases, helping you choose the best plan for your business. The choice between Xero vs QuickBooks isn’t just about which is better but where you want your business to head. For startups and service providers, Xero’s ease and affordability win.

What is QuickBooks Online (QBO)?

• QuickBooks Mac Plus — also known as QuickBooks for Mac — is locally-installed accounting software designed specifically for Mac users.
• If you’re already familiar with business financials (including if you’re an accountant), QuickBooks Desktop plans give you heftier fiscal reports and more complex accounting features.
• The cancellation process is straightforward, and you will not be charged any cancellation fees.
• Track fixed assets like vehicles, buildings, and equipment with automatic depreciation calculations and schedules.
• With support for up to 25 users and 24/7 support and training, this plan ensures that large teams can collaborate effectively and make strategic decisions based on detailed financial data.

Both Essentials and Plus offer powerful features that can keep your small business on top of its accounting game. However, we’d definitely recommend QuickBooks Essentials for service-based businesses that don’t have products or inventory to track on a regular basis. It’ll help you manage all of your clients, suppliers and employees without hassle. The QuickBooks Online Plus subscription is the most popular plan among small to medium-sized businesses. It offers robust features, such as inventory tracking, project profitability tracking, budgeting, and class/location tracking, making it ideal for businesses with diverse needs.

QuickBooks Online

If you’re looking for a straightforward way to manage your finances without the complexity of advanced features, Simple Start might be the right choice. As your business grows and your needs become more complex, the Plus plan offers the tools to keep up. At $99 per month (or $49.50/month with the 50% discount for the first three months), this plan supports up to five users and includes inventory tracking and project management. This is a valuable addition for businesses that sell physical products or manage client projects.

Need expert help selecting the right tool?

The Essentials plan is best for growing or service-based small businesses. You can have up to 3 users per account, which is enough for a small team. You can also assign employee cost rates and automatically add their time to invoices. That way, you can make payments quickly and easily, resulting in happy employees.

Inventory Management

Understanding these limitations is crucial for determining if QBO is the right fit for your current and future needs. As your business grows and evolves, you might find that certain aspects of QBO are no longer suitable for your operations. For businesses seeking more advanced solutions, FinOptimal offers resources and services to help you manage your accounting effectively. QuickBooks Self-Employed caters specifically to freelancers and independent contractors. It provides essential tools for tracking income and expenses, mileage, and estimated taxes.

While you can access your data remotely with some workarounds, it’s not as seamless as QBO’s cloud-based access. For most plans, phone support is available from 6 am to 6 pm on weekdays, or from 6 am to 3 pm on Saturday, although the QuickBooks Advanced plan includes 24/7 phone support. Live chat and a chatbot are also available as forms of support that can guide users towards answers that can’t be addressed through online resources. Paying your freelancers is also easy thanks to 1099 contractor management features.

The Advanced Plan is QuickBooks Online’s most comprehensive offering, designed for larger businesses with complex accounting needs. At $235 per month (or $117.50/month with a 50% discount for the first three months), this plan supports up to 25 users, making it ideal for growing teams. QuickBooks includes plenty of customization options, from the previously mentioned reports to invoice templates that can include your own business logos, branding, terms, and details. You’ll be able to set permissions to give departments different approvals, and the platform’s mobile app adds extra flexibility to business managers who aren’t always near a desktop.

However, for many small to medium-sized businesses, QBO’s feature set is more than sufficient. Beyond custom reports, the Advanced Plan offers enhanced insights to help you understand your business performance. Features like advanced analytics and forecasting tools provide a clearer picture of your financial health, allowing you to identify trends and make proactive adjustments.

All feedback, positive or negative, helps us to improve the way we help small businesses. If you want a happy medium, QuickBooks Mac Plus might be a good balance since its UI is easier to use without sacrificing advanced and customizable features. If you are a small business owner, it will come back to the decision between cloud-based and locally-installed software to determine which software is right for you. Deciding which type of software works best for your business model can make your QuickBooks choice a whole lot easier. If you want cloud-based software, there’s QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Solopreneur.

The features are great if you work with multiple vendors or contractors. Drew currently works as the Financial Controller for Black & White Zebra, leading the finance department for the company. Prior to BWZ, he was at EY for six years, including two as a manager. He received his undergraduate degree at the Ivey Business School in Canada and MBA from Oxford University. An open API is also available, although you’ll need to create an Intuit Developer account in order to get access.

These five questions will help you narrow down your search and find what you’re looking for. If you want to give QuickBooks a try before buying, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial or use the company’s interactive test drive that’s set up with a sample company. Hopefully, knowing the exact costs of QuickBooks Online will ease your mind and help you create a more realistic business budget. If you want to learn more about QuickBooks, read our complete QuickBooks Online review or get started with a free trial. Make sure you are on the right QuickBooks plan, so you aren’t paying for features you don’t need.

We hope that after reading this article, you now can figure out which QuickBooks Online Plan is ideal for your business enterprise. With just one spreadsheet, you can quickly build custom quickbooks plan comparison reports, do intricate computations, and work with your data using Excel’s built-in capabilities. You may quickly post the completed data from Excel back into QuickBooks Online Advanced. To get the best possible experience please use the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Microsoft Edge to view this website. Help us to improve by providing some feedback on your experience today. As with QuickBooks Pro, Premier will no longer be available for purchase by new users after September 30, 2024.

The Projects tool assists you in handling various jobs plus projects for your customers and monitoring costs concerning materials and labor. Basic Start generates balance sheets, cash flow statements, and profit and loss (P&L) statements. The general ledger, quarterly Profit and Loss summaries, and Profit and Loss by month and customer are a few of the additional twenty-plus built-in standard reports that are accessible.