Quickbooks Online

I started using desktop Quickbooks back in 2000 right after I first started the company. As a single-person company at first, I got used to being in the books almost every day. As we grew we added an in-house Bookkeeper. A few years ago I relocated the company to a different area and we kept our Bookkeeper who stayed in the original area. I really missed having direct access to the numbers so last year I switch to Quickbooks Online and I love it. In addition to having direct access to the numbers I need, it has a lot of other functionality and reporting that I really like. It's also great for clients to easily pay the invoices online. It's making a night and day difference. Support has been great as well.

It's definitely very expensive to be paying a pretty high fee every month - especially compared to the desktop version where we bought it and were good for years to come. It's definitely worth it but I'd be more of an evangelist if the pricing was a little easier on the pocket book.

It is very simple to use overall. I like that i can check and work from any computer or cell phone as well. I love direct access to the numbers, easily available reports. It is great for auto billing direct from the software itself. The best part is integration with the bank account. I do not have to manually review expenses and add it.

The QBO is slow to load pages and that can be irritating at times. I initially thought that it was my internet connection but no that is not the case. While you are allowed to do a journal entry with a supplier name you cannot enter a negative invoice. There can be a greater variety in invoice format selection. A tad bit expensive.

It is accounting software. That we can use an app to export sales from our online store to Quickbooks.

Very slow to load pages which is why I am finally bothering to write a review right now because I am trying to enter timesheets and I am waiting for each page to load. This happens all of the time. The interface is not intuitive. There is no class tracking for employee hours which is hampering our ability to run reports and do business planning. Our business was with Quickbooks desktop for 15 years and we were very happy with it. We switched to Quickbooks Online thinking that this was an upgrade but it is a huge down grade plus we are pay much more for the online version. The process of switching was literally catastrophic. Much of our payroll and tax data did not transfer correctly. We spent over 200 hours correcting problems. We would solve one problem only to discover another. These problems also meant that we had unknowingly submitted incorrect tax forms that then had to be amended and submitted. It is 1 1/2 years later and we are still discovering errors that occurred during the switch. Quickbooks Online customer service was not helpful/useful at all when it came to fixing these problems. Additionally, instead of improving the problems with the existing program (the timesheets for example), QB came out with a new time timetracking app (T sheets) that you have to pay a lot of additional money for. At this point it seems like a total rip off for a small business. As the owner, I have had to deal with all of these problems - we are going switch as soon as I have time.

The best part of Quickbooks Online is its integration with our business bank account. Prior to QB Online we used QB desktop. We would have to manually review expenses and bank accounts to make sure everything was entered into Quickbooks correctly and would constantly come across discrepancies due to data entry errors. Now that we use Quickbooks online, we have it integrated with our business account and simply identify what category each expense belongs to. It's also easy to set a "rule" for certain expenses (for example recurring monthly charges) to automatically categorize these every month. This has saved us many hours of data entry every month which is very valuable for a small business.

It takes a little time to get used to some of the changes from Quickbooks Desktop to Quickbooks online. For instance, I have a hard time figuring out where to make manual journal entries and have to use Google to figure it out. Also, the price can be significantly higher than the desktop version depending on how you use it. Currently a desktop version for my needs without a subscription can be bought for $399. In the past I have been able to use a desktop version for several years. For example, when I switched from Desktop to QB online in early 2021, I was still succesfully using a 2018 vesrion of QB Desktop. Currently I am paying $300 every year for the online version.

Far and away the best feature of this software is that it's cloud based. So many clients want to be able to see their books from anywhere, at any time, on any device. If you are using this for a small business and are not trained in bookkeeping/accounting, this is the easiest bookkeeping software on the market.

If you are a trained bookkeeper/accountant you will likely be disappointed that it's not as flexible as Sage 50. They payroll module is terrible unless you have simple payroll with no deductions or special pay circumstances. While you can do a journal entry with a supplier name, you can't enter a negative invoice. They've updated with a credit card credit that allows you to enter a negative credit card transaction but it's limited to credit card transactions only.