QuickBooks Online

What is QuickBooks?

Intuit’s QuickBooks Online is arguably one of the best small business accounting software currently on the market. Not only does it has both accounts receivable and payable features, but it can also track projects and inventory, making it a ‘must-have’ for every business. You can use this software for bank reconciliation, tracking expenses, drafting invoices, and monitoring financial reports, among many of its other uses.

Vendor Details:

• Company: Intuit
• Website: www.quickbooks.intuit.com
• Founded in 2013
• United States

Key Metrics of QuickBooks Online

What makes QuickBooks customer service great to use is its continuous updates to be better. The software is updated on a monthly basis, and its mother company Intuit provides details about each update on its blog helping users understand what’s new and how it’s useful.

Other than this, QuickBooks pro also enables its users to download and reconcile credit card transactions. Additionally, businesses can use this software to organize weekly timesheets and track bank deposits. Users can take photos of bills and submit them as expense proofs or share them with concerned stakeholders.

User-Friendly & Easy to Use

This online accounting software, like many of its competitors, is easy to set up. You answer several questions about your business, and it customizes the program based on your answers. After you set up your account, the software prompts you with basic tasks to get started.

Attractive, intuitive interface

Most action items are quickly accessible from the tabs on the side menu or the quick menu that opens when you click the plus sign in the upper right corner of the QBO online screen.

Interactive dashboard

The QBO dashboard shows several graphs that give you an overview of your sales over time, income, expenses, and profit and loss. You can click on the images to drill down on that particular set of information. You can also customize the date range for each graph.

Easy invoice customization

You can select from five templates, 18 colors, and four fonts in three sizes. Also, upload your logo and choose where to place it on the page and how large you want it to be. You can set header and footer text as well as a message to your customers. You can also choose to include an account summary on the bottom of your invoice, which could be useful if you’d rather not send out monthly statements.  

Easy Access to Files

QuickBooks software is what’s called a cloud-based application, meaning it’s not installed on one specific computer, but can be accessed anywhere there is an internet connection. You can access your files, and work from wherever you are. Phone, iPad, PC, Mac: whatever you’re using, you’ll be able to do what you need to do

High-Class Security

QuickBooks Enterprise uses 128-bit SSL encryption and multi-factor authentication. Physical safeguards have been implemented at the Tier 4 data center, and routine testing ensures security. For more information on QuickBooks security, and to learn how you can play a factor in making your data even more secure, check out the Intuit website here.

Quickbooks Pricing

QuickBooks Online pricing has three tiers with no annual contracts required. Other than this, Quickbooks free offers a 30-day trial of any plan, which you can check out here.

Simple Start Plan

$15/month

Essentials Plan

$35/month

Plus Plan

$50/month

Intuit also constantly offers discounts, which are more important than ever now as QuickBooks online accountant has recently increased its price. So, be sure to check out their website to see if they are running any promotions. However, please note that discounts are invalid if a customer uses the free 30-day trial before purchasing.

Also, in addition to increasing its pricing plans, QuickBooks accountant has significantly increased its payroll support. This means, you now have to bear an added cost of $39-$99 depending on your plan. You will also have to bear an added $4.99 for a custom invoice template if required.

Features of QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks cloud has an impressive feature selection, especially for cloud-based software. This section covers the basics, but you can check out the full list of QuickBooks Online features on the company’s website.

Dashboard

A basic dashboard includes a list of tasks and charts for Invoices, Expenses, and Accounts, Profit and Loss, Sales, and Discover. There’s also a “see all activity” option at the bottom of the dashboard that will take you to a full audit log and history of recent activity.

Invoicing

The redesign in 2016 gave QuickBooks Online plus one of my favorite invoice customizations features ever. There are five invoice templates (or you can import an existing invoice template via Microsoft Word).

Estimates

Creating estimates and converting them to invoices is easy. Estimates are sent via email and customers receive the documents as PDFs. You can set a default estimate message.

Client Portal

QuickBooks personal does offer a client portal, but only for invoices, not estimates. Customers can view, print, save, pay, or ask questions about their invoices.

Contact Management

QuickBooks simple start has a highly developed contact management system. You save an incredible amount of information on your customers and vendors, including a display name, billing address, shipping address, preferred payment method, default payment terms, opening balance, attachments, and default tax codes.

Expense Tracking

You can add individual expenses, manually import bank statements, or enable live bank feeds. You can categorize expenses and attach receipts to them as well.

Bank Reconciliation

As mentioned above, QuickBooks accounting software has live bank feeds which makes bank reconciliation easy. QuickBooks used to have good duplicate transaction detection and transaction. 

Accounts Payable (Essentials & Plus Plan Only)

With QuickBooks payroll cost, you can enter and sort bills easily. You can also set recurring bills and schedule them to be paid at a later date or pay bills directly online. 

Chart of Accounts

This feature stays true to traditional accounting practices. QuickBooks Online has a default chart of accounts set up, but you can customize each account to fit your business or import your own. 

Budget (Plus Plan Only)

Unlike the desktop version of QuickBooks invoicing (which only allows one-year-long budget), you can have multiple budgets in QuickBooks business. You can use data from a previous financial year as your basis for a budget, or you can copy existing budgets. You can create budgets by customer, class, location, or by year.

Inventory (Plus Plan Only)

While each plan has item list management, only the Plus plan tracks inventory. When adding items you can save default sales prices, purchase prices SKU numbers, images, and create item descriptions. 

Project Management (Essentials and Plus Plan Only)

You can create projects, add billable and non-billable time, and create billable and non-billable expenses. You can easily send invoices for projects as well. 

Time-Tracking (Essentials and Plus Plan Only)

You can track billable and nonbillable hours and attach them to projects. You can enter an employee’s total hours or start and end times, 

Importing/Exporting

The importing feature in QuickBooks bookkeeping is refreshing and easy to use compared to most other programs. You can import your customers, vendors, chart of accounts, products, and services. Exporting is more limited. You can export reports to Excel. All other data can only be exported via Internet Explorer.

Quickbooks Pros and cons

Quickbooks Integration

With QuickBooks cloud software, you can collaborate with other applications to enable the smooth running of your business. For example, you can integrate your accounting application with your payment system, in order to ensure your payments from customers reflect automatically in your records. In short, you can eliminate data entry and save time by connecting QuickBooks apps and services you already use.

Currently, you can integrate an impressive 280 reputable apps and add-ons with QuickBooks. Some of the most popular integrations include:

Specification

As cloud-based software, QuickBooks connector operates with nearly all internet browsers so long as you have internet access. Supported browsers include:

Devices Supported

Language Support

• English

Pricing Model

• Monthly payment

Customer Types

• Small Business
• Medium Business
• Large Enterprises

Deployment

• Cloud Hosted
• Open API

Quickbooks Support

As mentioned in the cons, Quickbooks customer support is not a strong point for Intuit. However, recent reviews show that the Intuit is working on fixing this drawback.

QuickBooks Online offers phone support from 6:00 am – 6:00 pm PST, Monday through Friday. The time on Saturdays is 6:00 am – 3:00 pm PST. The software’s support services include:

• Phone: You can contact customer support at 1 (800) 488-7330
• Help Center: With an improved Help Center, QuickBooks Online has plenty of helpful articles on various features.
• In-Program Help Button: QuickBooks Online features a help button in the top right corner of the software.
• Video Tutorials: QuickBooks Online features video tutorials to explain how each function works. You can view these videos on the software’s YouTube page as well.
• Online Classes: QuickBooks Online offers both in-person and online classes at an additional cost
• Resource Center: There is also a QuickBooks Small Business Resource Center that hosts articles, business advice, and guides.
• Pro Advisor: At an extra cost, QuickBooks Pro Advisors can help walk you through the program at an extra cost.
• Social Media: QuickBooks Online has a Facebook page where they can post updates and helpful advice articles. Customer comments are generally responded to within 24 hours and responses are relatively helpful. There is also a Twitter feed for all QuickBooks Online programs and features.

Quickbooks Competitors

Here are some Quickbook alternatives Toolsmetric recommend you to see before opting this software for your business :