She has spent the last year and a half working at a software company, managing content about CRM, project management and other business topics. For $27.50 per month for the first three months, then $55 per month after that, get up to three users, manage and pay bills and track time with its Essentials plan, which is its most popular plan. Upgrade to Plus for $42.50 per month for the first three months, then $85 per month afterward, and you will receive access for up to five users, inventory tracking and the ability to track project profitability. The two versions are independent of each other, which means the data you enter on Desktop doesn’t sync to the Online version and vice-versa.
Payroll
Since QuickBooks Online is priced as a monthly subscription, it doesn’t require a contract and you can cancel your account at any time. Additionally, the desktop products are only available as annual subscriptions, making them a bigger commitment than QuickBooks Online. QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop are two solid accounting products from Intuit. While both software types have plenty of perks, QuickBooks Online is a more flexible, affordable, and scalable option for most small-business owners. QuickBooks Desktop doesn’t offer the same multi-user accessibility, but it does have a more comprehensive assortment of features that provide an in-depth view of your accounting operations. QuickBooks Desktop offers more advanced inventory management features, job costing worksheets, sales orders, and highly customizable reports.
Which Is Best For My Business?
While these products will still be available to existing users, QuickBooks Desktop Payroll for Pro and Premier will no longer be available for new users to purchase starting on September 31, 2024. One of the biggest differences here is that QuickBooks Online now offers a bookkeeping service called QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping, where you can pay for professional support from certified QBO accountants and CPAs. For small business owners new to the accounting scene, this service may bring much-needed peace of mind when managing your books and filing small business taxes. 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. Both versions offer expense: definition types and how expenses are recorded automatic syncing with your bank so you can categorize transactions. Add payroll to QuickBooks Online starting at $45 per month, or to Desktop starting at $50, plus $2 per employee, per month.
Why You Can Trust Fit Small Business
QuickBooks Desktop wins this head-to-head competition, with better reporting, industry-specific features, a better price structure, and more comprehensive features. However, if things like integration and cloud access are important to you, QuickBooks Online may be the way to go. Once you decide, if you need some assistance with your QuickBooks Migration, be sure to check out our comprehensive QuickBooks Tutorial. QuickBooks Online offers a variety of pricing plans, which range from $12 to $75 for the first three months. While the features are similar, QuickBooks Desktop offers more functionality, such as the ability to run checks to pay bills and more in-depth customer and vendor management capability. You must purchase additional licenses if you want to access it on multiple computers.
- QuickBooks Desktop also offers easy integration with QuickBooks Payments so you can accept online payments from customers.
- Businesses that have purchased one-time licenses of the locally-installed QuickBooks Desktop versions that have been sunset can still use the software’s accounting features.
- Perhaps the biggest area where QuickBooks Desktop falls short is that its Pro and Premier versions will soon be discontinued for new users.
- Ultimately, your specific business’s size, type, and needs are the real deciding factors in determining which of the QuickBooks versions is best for your business.
But aside from cloud access, there are other differences between the two applications that we’ll talk about next. Our partners cannot pay us to guarantee favorable reviews of their products or services. The maximum amount of users you can have with a QuickBooks Online subscription is 25 (plus an accountant). If you need more users than that, you can contact QuickBooks Online’s customer support to see if you can create a custom plan with custom user access. Otherwise, you’ll need QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise, which supports up to 40 users. For instance, if you choose the Simple Start plan, you’re the only person who can use the software—apart from your accountant, with whom you can share your business’s account at no additional cost.
Pro Plus and Premier Plus limit customer service hours to just 12 hours a day, weekdays only. Every business is unique, and there may be instances where QuickBooks Desktop may be a better fit. For example, it may be more suitable for businesses with complex inventory management needs or those wanting offline access to their financial data. However, QuickBooks Online is the better choice for most companies, especially those with remote accountants and multiple employees.
All reports can be exported to Microsoft Excel for customizing, viewing on screen, printing, or emailing directly to recipients. QuickBooks Online variable consideration wins this one, offering easy system navigation from the user dashboard. 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. A new and improved migration process gives you even more ways to move online.
Know that your data is protected without downloading and installing product updates. You don’t have to worry about losing everything in a fire or an unforeseen event. 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 wave accounting 2021 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.
