QuickBooks Online vs QuickBooks Desktop: Comparison Guide
Meanwhile, QuickBooks Desktop allows you to set up classes, but you can’t track your income and expenses by location. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team. Depending on your business, the ability to integrate with other applications may be convenient, while for others, it can be a necessity. QuickBooks Online offers a variety of pricing plans, which range from $12 to $75 for the first three months. If you’re a freelancer, stick with its Self-Employed plan, which is $15 per month 9after the three-month discount at $7.50). Features include mileage tracking, basic reporting, income and expense tracking, capture and organize receipts and estimation of quarterly taxes.
- The most notable difference, aside from price, between QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop is the Online version is cloud-based.
- Both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Pro offer a good number of helpful integrations and add-on products.
- One of the best resources is the QuickBooks Online community, where you can connect with other users to share tips, answer questions, and find answers to problems that may arise.
How features differ between QBDT and QBO tend to be in looks, functionality, and comprehensiveness. The four remaining editions of QBO include Simple Start, Essentials, Plus, and Advanced. Each edition varies in terms of its available features and functionality, with Advanced providing the fullest feature set. If your office computer is a Mac, you can still use QuickBooks Desktop on your Mac. I do this using Parallels, software which allows you to run Windows applications on your Mac. As a result, access to the software and its information is only possible if you’re physically using the computer it was installed on.
This means business owners who are frequently on the go or who spend a decent amount of time away from their desks can still have easy access to their financial information. QuickBooks Desktop, on the other hand, is software that can only be installed on one computer at a time. QuickBooks Online is a cloud-based https://www.quick-bookkeeping.net/ software optimized for small businesses. As a user, you will access QBO through your browser by going to a website where you log on to do business. The “Plus” subscription affords you certain benefits, including 24/7 support, automatic backups of your QuickBooks file, and yearly software upgrades.
How They Compare: QuickBooks Online vs. QuickBooks Desktop
These reports focus on the Dashboard view and gauging your day-to-day financials. Since QuickBooks Online is a more lightweight product the reports don’t dive as deep into things like job costing, business health, or financial projections. Because QuickBooks Online is a SaaS product, that means you have access anywhere, any time, including on your phone. You don’t need to install any software, and updates are automatic with no need to download a package. Katana integrates with QuickBooks Online and equips you with all the necessary tools to manage your inventory and manufacturing processes.
QuickBooks Desktop is preferable for companies wanting to manage their books without an internet connection. It’s also the better option for businesses requiring complex inventory accounting features. Ease of use gets the highest weight in this case study because we want to give more credit to easy accounting software.
Work on desktop
In contrast, you need to upgrade to Advanced to be able to use QuickBooks Online’s budget vs. actual reporting feature. We have an extensive history of reviewing QuickBooks products, and we stay up-to-date with the latest features and enhancements. Our first-hand experience, guided by our internal case study, helps us understand how the different QuickBooks products compare with each other and how they work in real-world scenarios. Users can simply click on the Reports option to access reports https://www.online-accounting.net/ in a variety of categories including Favorites, Business Overview, Expenses and Vendors, Employees, and Sales Tax reports, along with several others. All reports can be exported to Microsoft Excel for customizing, viewing on screen, printing, or emailing directly to recipients. Users can access features via the vertical menu to the left of the screen or by using the drop-down menu bar at the top, and the My Shortcuts option allows you to add a shortcut to frequently used features.
QuickBooks Desktop is more traditional accounting software that you download and install on your computer, while QuickBooks Online is cloud-based accounting software you access through the internet. For the Desktop version, you pay an annual fee starting at $549.99 per year, and the cloud-based option starts at $15 per month. Both versions have mobile apps, but the app for the Desktop version https://www.bookkeeping-reviews.com/ primarily functions as a way to upload receipts, and the Online mobile app is robust in comparison. Since QuickBooks Online offers four cloud-based plans, it easily grows with your business. As you hire more employees or bring on more customers, you can scale up your software to match. And if you manage your business from multiple locations, you’ll want QuickBooks Online over Desktop.
Security updates and product updates will still be released for all users who purchase a QuickBooks Desktop Plus or QuickBooks Desktop Payroll subscription before the cutoff date. QuickBooks Online also has a dedicated network of connections built out to a growing library of business applications to bring all financial information into one place. QuickBooks Desktop does not have this same infrastructure meaning that businesses who would like to connect their tech stack are better suited to using QuickBooks Online. Certain tiers of QuickBooks Desktop offer additional features, including industry-specific features and forecasting.
Keep in mind that if you do decide to have QuickBooks Desktop hosted, there will be an additional fee. As an added convenience, if you outgrow your current edition of QuickBooks Online, upgrade to a more powerful plan in minutes. QuickBooks Desktop’s user interface is very different from QuickBooks Online, offering navigation using a flowchart style menu. Find help articles, video tutorials, and connect with other businesses in our online community. To get the best possible experience please use the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Microsoft Edge to view this website.
While the Desktop version, the company data can only be accessed on the computer or network where the file is installed. We need to be able to use quickbooks while it is accessed by other employees elsewhere. For the U.S.-based reps they do have, they are often newer employees and rookies. QuickBooks also tries to promote a DIY attitude and will typically push you towards their knowledge base before connecting you with a live human, this can be frustrating when your product is not working correctly.
QuickBooks Online Vs. Desktop: What’s The Difference?
There are over 200 options instead of the 650-plus to its cloud counterpart. When signing up for QuickBooks Online, it only gives options for paying monthly. However, once you’ve signed up, navigate to your account settings, and you can switch to annual billing to save 10%. All Online plans include receipt capture, QuickBooks support and more than 650 app integrations with apps such as PayPal, Square and Shopify. QuickBooks Enterprise is designed for large businesses or small enterprises and starts at $1,410/year. QuickBooks Online is cloud-based subscription software, meaning it can be accessed from any device with a wifi connection.
Is QuickBooks Online Or QuickBooks Desktop Better For My Business?
QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop have very different pricing structures, with QuickBooks Online available by a monthly subscription, while QuickBooks Desktop has an annual cost. Support options are fairly similar for both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop, with the more expensive plans offering better support options. 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. QuickBooks Desktop also offers easy integration with QuickBooks Payments so you can accept online payments from customers. QuickBooks Desktop is designed for small to mid-size businesses that are looking for the reliability of a desktop software solution. QuickBooks Desktop is also a good fit for niche businesses such as nonprofit organizations, retailers, and general contractors looking for a more industry-specific solution.
The QuickBooks Desktop mobile app is very limited as it only allows you to capture expense receipts and track business mileage. If you want to perform bookkeeping from anywhere, we strongly recommend QuickBooks Online’s mobile app. Those who have left negative reviews dislike that it doesn’t offer many third-party integration options. Further, one user said that QuickBooks Desktop is more expensive than QuickBooks Online, especially if you need multiple users, which aligns with our evaluation. Others mentioned the bank account reconciliation and invoicing features are excellent. QuickBooks Online is on par with Desktop in terms of banking, but we believe that the cloud-based version is better for professional invoicing.
Can I switch from QuickBooks Online to Desktop?
However, QuickBooks Desktop relies on users to implement security measures and perform regular data backups. The online version will soon be the only available version, and it’s used by hundreds of thousands of American businesses. To find out what we thought about it, please check out our review of QuickBooks Online 2024. Launched in 1983, it was originally aimed at individuals looking to manage their money better. If you made a one-time software purchase of QuickBooks Desktop, support for the 2021 edition will end in May 2024.
Once you decide, if you need some assistance with your QuickBooks Migration, be sure to check out our comprehensive QuickBooks Tutorial. QuickBooks Desktop wins this, offering more reporting options as well as industry-specific reports and forecasting options not offered in QuickBooks Online. While people may assume that QuickBooks Online is simply the cloud version of QuickBooks Desktop, in reality, the two products are very different. For an extra $50, sign up for a one-time live Bookkeeping setup with any of its plans. We’ll compare QuickBooks Online vs. Desktop and highlight the differences between each version plus which one is most suitable for collaborating on the go, and which is faster and offers more advanced features. Both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop are designed to handle small business’s bandwidth and needs.
Both versions offer 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. 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.
If your accounting software doesn’t register changes in real time, it could lead to costly delays. Small to midsize businesses that want a desktop solution or need advanced inventory and industry-specific features. Our partners cannot pay us to guarantee favorable reviews of their products or services. Intuit QuickBooks has been pushing its online products, so switching from QuickBooks Online to Desktop isn’t as easy, but it is possible.
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