BambooHR vs. QuickBooks Desktop Premier

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BambooHR
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
BambooHR is an on-line human resources solution that provides onboarding, payroll, and benefits management. It also offers automated time-off management and employee self-service.
$250
per month
QuickBooks Desktop Premier
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
QuickBooks Desktop Premier is an installed version of QuickBooks for general business, contractors, manufacturing and warehouse accounting, as well as nonprofits, professional services, and retail.N/A
Pricing
BambooHRQuickBooks Desktop Premier
Editions & Modules
Core
$250
per month
Pro
$250
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BambooHRQuickBooks Desktop Premier
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsNo matter what HR looks like at your company, we have the perfect plan for you!
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BambooHRQuickBooks Desktop Premier
Considered Both Products
BambooHR
Chose BambooHR
Didn't look, had used excel prior and just staff to handle it all instead of a program. We heard about BambooHR from another nonprofit and decided to give it a try. The eSignature capability has been a lifesaver along with a spot to keep all documents. Our onboarding process …
QuickBooks Desktop Premier

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
BambooHRQuickBooks Desktop Premier
Human Resource Management
Comparison of Human Resource Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR
8.1
122 Ratings
3% above category average
QuickBooks Desktop Premier
-
Ratings
Employee demographic data7.7104 Ratings00 Ratings
Employment history8.7111 Ratings00 Ratings
Job profiles and administration8.4108 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow for transfers, promotions, pay raises, etc.8.295 Ratings00 Ratings
Organizational charting7.1107 Ratings00 Ratings
Organization and location management8.098 Ratings00 Ratings
Compliance data (COBRA, OSHA, etc.)8.558 Ratings00 Ratings
Payroll Management
Comparison of Payroll Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR
8.1
78 Ratings
1% above category average
QuickBooks Desktop Premier
8.9
47 Ratings
17% above category average
Pay calculation8.252 Ratings7.046 Ratings
Support for external payroll vendors8.245 Ratings00 Ratings
Off-cycle/On-Demand payment8.030 Ratings00 Ratings
Benefit plan administration8.860 Ratings10.020 Ratings
Direct deposit files8.459 Ratings8.036 Ratings
Salary revision and increment management8.062 Ratings9.927 Ratings
Reimbursement management6.731 Ratings9.529 Ratings
Leave and Attendance Management
Comparison of Leave and Attendance Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR
8.8
106 Ratings
9% above category average
QuickBooks Desktop Premier
-
Ratings
Approval workflow9.1104 Ratings00 Ratings
Balance details8.997 Ratings00 Ratings
Annual carry-forward and encashment8.487 Ratings00 Ratings
Employee Self Service
Comparison of Employee Self Service features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR
8.7
117 Ratings
7% above category average
QuickBooks Desktop Premier
-
Ratings
View and generate pay and benefit information7.971 Ratings00 Ratings
Update personal information9.2116 Ratings00 Ratings
View company policy documentation8.996 Ratings00 Ratings
Employee recognition8.678 Ratings00 Ratings
View job history9.0109 Ratings00 Ratings
Asset Management
Comparison of Asset Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR
7.8
48 Ratings
1% above category average
QuickBooks Desktop Premier
-
Ratings
Tracking of all physical assets7.848 Ratings00 Ratings
HR Reporting
Comparison of HR Reporting features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR
7.7
93 Ratings
1% above category average
QuickBooks Desktop Premier
-
Ratings
Report builder8.189 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-built reports7.787 Ratings00 Ratings
Ability to combine HR data with external data7.463 Ratings00 Ratings
Onboarding
Comparison of Onboarding features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR
8.6
96 Ratings
7% above category average
QuickBooks Desktop Premier
-
Ratings
New hire portal8.792 Ratings00 Ratings
Manager tracking tools8.683 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance and Goals
Comparison of Performance and Goals features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR
8.2
60 Ratings
1% above category average
QuickBooks Desktop Premier
-
Ratings
Corporate goal setting8.246 Ratings00 Ratings
Individual goal setting8.258 Ratings00 Ratings
Line-of sight-visibility8.245 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance tracking8.154 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance Management
Comparison of Performance Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR
7.9
66 Ratings
0% below category average
QuickBooks Desktop Premier
-
Ratings
Performance plans7.659 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance improvement plans8.053 Ratings00 Ratings
Review status tracking7.960 Ratings00 Ratings
Review reminders8.261 Ratings00 Ratings
Multiple review frequency7.857 Ratings00 Ratings
Succession Planning
Comparison of Succession Planning features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR
7.1
45 Ratings
10% below category average
QuickBooks Desktop Premier
-
Ratings
Create succession plans/pools5.831 Ratings00 Ratings
Candidate ranking7.737 Ratings00 Ratings
Candidate search7.139 Ratings00 Ratings
Candidate development8.035 Ratings00 Ratings
Recruiting / ATS
Comparison of Recruiting / ATS features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR
8.1
79 Ratings
4% above category average
QuickBooks Desktop Premier
-
Ratings
Job Requisition Management8.055 Ratings00 Ratings
Company Website Posting8.362 Ratings00 Ratings
Publish to Social Media8.256 Ratings00 Ratings
Job Search Site Posting8.259 Ratings00 Ratings
Duplicate Candidate Prevention7.453 Ratings00 Ratings
Applicant Tracking8.269 Ratings00 Ratings
Notifications and Alerts8.672 Ratings00 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR
-
Ratings
QuickBooks Desktop Premier
1.3
20 Ratings
138% below category average
API for custom integration00 Ratings1.315 Ratings
Plug-ins00 Ratings1.320 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR
-
Ratings
QuickBooks Desktop Premier
7.4
49 Ratings
8% below category average
Single sign-on capability00 Ratings4.843 Ratings
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings10.040 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR
-
Ratings
QuickBooks Desktop Premier
6.8
57 Ratings
11% below category average
Dashboards00 Ratings4.948 Ratings
Standard reports00 Ratings7.856 Ratings
Custom reports00 Ratings7.854 Ratings
General Ledger and Configurable Accounting
Comparison of General Ledger and Configurable Accounting features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR
-
Ratings
QuickBooks Desktop Premier
7.1
60 Ratings
4% below category average
Accounts payable00 Ratings7.058 Ratings
Accounts receivable00 Ratings7.059 Ratings
Cash management00 Ratings8.054 Ratings
Bank reconciliation00 Ratings8.057 Ratings
Expense management00 Ratings6.156 Ratings
Time tracking00 Ratings5.028 Ratings
Fixed asset management00 Ratings5.139 Ratings
Multi-currency support00 Ratings9.018 Ratings
Multi-division support00 Ratings7.033 Ratings
Regulations compliance00 Ratings1.819 Ratings
Electronic tax filing00 Ratings10.028 Ratings
Self-service portal00 Ratings8.017 Ratings
Global Financial Support00 Ratings9.03 Ratings
Primary and Secondary Ledgers00 Ratings7.06 Ratings
Intercompany Accounting00 Ratings9.08 Ratings
Localizations00 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Journals and Reconciliations00 Ratings7.014 Ratings
Enterprise Accounting00 Ratings9.05 Ratings
Configurable Accounting00 Ratings7.16 Ratings
Centralized Rules Framework00 Ratings9.93 Ratings
Standardized Processes00 Ratings4.37 Ratings
Inventory Management
Comparison of Inventory Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR
-
Ratings
QuickBooks Desktop Premier
2.9
36 Ratings
83% below category average
Inventory tracking00 Ratings1.735 Ratings
Automatic reordering00 Ratings1.015 Ratings
Location management00 Ratings8.019 Ratings
Manufacturing module00 Ratings1.017 Ratings
Order Management
Comparison of Order Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR
-
Ratings
QuickBooks Desktop Premier
7.0
38 Ratings
5% below category average
Pricing00 Ratings10.030 Ratings
Order entry00 Ratings10.031 Ratings
Credit card processing00 Ratings7.027 Ratings
Cost of goods sold00 Ratings6.334 Ratings
Order Orchestration00 Ratings10.03 Ratings
End-to-end order visibility00 Ratings1.04 Ratings
Order exception Resolution00 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BambooHRQuickBooks Desktop Premier
Small Businesses
Patriot Software
Patriot Software
Score 9.0 out of 10
QuickBooks Self-Employed
QuickBooks Self-Employed
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Paypro Workforce Management
Paypro Workforce Management
Score 9.5 out of 10
Accounting Seed
Accounting Seed
Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Infor Human Resources
Infor Human Resources
Score 7.3 out of 10
Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP
Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP
Score 8.1 out of 10
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User Ratings
BambooHRQuickBooks Desktop Premier
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(126 ratings)
3.0
(63 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.2
(10 ratings)
1.3
(12 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(53 ratings)
7.0
(14 ratings)
Availability
9.3
(5 ratings)
8.9
(5 ratings)
Performance
8.7
(5 ratings)
5.7
(4 ratings)
Support Rating
8.5
(50 ratings)
1.1
(12 ratings)
Online Training
9.2
(4 ratings)
1.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.6
(3 ratings)
7.2
(7 ratings)
Configurability
8.6
(4 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
8.3
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.6
(2 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.9
(5 ratings)
6.2
(4 ratings)
Professional Services
9.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.9
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(4 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
BambooHRQuickBooks Desktop Premier
Likelihood to Recommend
BambooHR
I think BambooHR is meant for companies that have more than 200 employees, because it is not cheap, but for what they are offering, it is a nice software with some easy UI to understand for everyone at a company. I think for a small company, it is way too big of a software and it is not that worth the price.
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Intuit
QuickBooks Premier is not well suited to manufacturing industries, as it cannot handle the complicated inventory requirements of raw materials, work in process, and finished goods. Retailers and Wholesalers can use QuickBooks Premier as long as they have an add-on inventory tracking program or Point of Sale system that integrates with QuickBooks. Likewise, restaurants would need specialized restaurant software that integrates with QuickBooks Premier. Non-profits can use QuickBooks Premier non-profit edition, but if they use fund accounting, it will require some complicated work-arounds. QuickBooks Premier is well-suited to most construction trades, personal and professional services providers, small retailers, and rental property owners.
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Pros
BambooHR
  • Customer Service - The customer service is consistent and the team is always eager to help. They are polite, patient, and there are never terrible interactions.
  • Communication - BambooHR communication channels are simple. There are many different ways to communicate with the team. I prefer e-mail because it helps me keep track of the conversations and they respond within the appropriate time. Also, the e-mail reminders or notifications help tremendously and it's not overbearing.
  • User Interface - It's simple and easy to use!
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Intuit
  • The program is easy to learn and use. We can train our clients' personnel how to use the program with out difficulty.
  • It is easy for clients to generate bills and manage accounts receivable.
  • It is easy to manage accounts payable and allows clients to pay their bills electronically.
  • Transactions can be imported electronically for credit card and banking transactions.
  • It is easy to reconcile bank and credit card accounts.
  • We can import data generated by QuickBooks into our tax and accounting software.
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Cons
BambooHR
  • Reporting - I wish that you could choose a timeframe for all reports. There are times when I need to run a report for information at a point in time, but there is no functionality to complete this (maybe this is an add-on, but seems like it should be a basic function.)
  • ATS - Customizable notifications and making it easier to figure out how to change notification/email settings. I figured it out, but it was difficult to find. I wish you could choose to notify managers of candidates 1/week instead of every time someone applies.
  • Custom Holidays - being able to set up 2 different Holiday policies for different working groups. Some of our team gets a floating holiday, but we can't set that up without doing it for the entire company.
  • Being able to intercept a form that was signed by an employee but not the 2nd signer. We can't access onboarding forms that new hires signed after the 2nd signer left the company. Now we have to have our team resign all their onboarding forms because we cannot access the one with their signature.
  • Delegation for approvals - being able to delegate this when someone is on leave or time away so that Admins don't have to manage.
  • Org chart - being able to customize this feature
  • More broad or customizable EEO categories
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Intuit
  • I would like to be able to choose how i want to view accounts receivable aging. I would like some flexibility to sort and choose how to present the data.
  • For a seasoned accountant, I would like to see some of the restrictive controls that are in place for novices to be able to be relaxed so that I can easily make some entries and adjust some balances that ordinarily a regular user would not be able to do.
  • I would like to see an easy way to clear old outstanding checks that need to be reversed without affecting prior balances/history.
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Likelihood to Renew
BambooHR
Overall we have not had any reason to discontinue our use of BambooHR. We have not found a better solution, and there is no pressing reason that we would want to move away from the product. If they should fail to continue to improve their features over time, I could see this changing down the road, but for now I would say we are very satisfied with them. We would definitely like to see continued growth of their product however.
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Intuit
Because we have been extremely happy with the product and our organization tends to be creatures of habit. We rarely leave a product that works this well for the latest and greatest. Typically we follow the "if it's not broken, don't fix it rule". While QB does make changes we typically just roll with it. If we do find something we don't like we work through it until we fully understand its functionality.
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Usability
BambooHR
Is very easy to navigate. All processes once explained, you can actually create an implement process associated to your HR goals. It is like a digital file of your employees, with functionalities that let you be on track on onboarding, performance, information, among others process. Time off approvals are easy to navigate.
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Intuit
QuickBooks is an amazing tool that provides all of the necessary features needed to run the finances of a company. I would like for QuickBooks to provide better resources for training. There are many features that go unused because of lack of knowledge. Procore offers chatting and calls on their platform and they make it easy and accessible to get answers and solutions.
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Reliability and Availability
BambooHR
Yes, there is a huge team in the back of the online platform or it looks like it because I have never been left without an answer when I have a question or waiting from a response on my chat .... There must be a huge team, this is so great and I always seem to have someone that is very knowledgeable too. So many times in the past I had to leave with customer service that would connect you with someone else because of the expertise, here everyone seems to be some kind of an expert in the HR function.
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Intuit
This is very reliable software, the desktop version is fast. If there is a problem, it is most likely on your own hardware!
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Performance
BambooHR
I love BambooHR. Reports are easy to run and download and it usually covers any types of requests I get from the management team. You get excel or .csv downloads/reports and it is fast and simple, not too crowded so it is easy to read through. We don't integrate the tool yet but again, soon we will. we just did not had the time to utilize it yet but that's the plan.
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Intuit
It takes forever to load.
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Support Rating
BambooHR
I have used the help chat function several times and that is easy and great to use. There are also many articles, FAQs sections and an entire learning platform to learn on your own. I believe that is great. I also have used ChatGPT to ask how to do certain functions as well, which were accurately reported.
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Intuit
This is an awesome product and the support team is very knowledgeable. The product is mature, so there are not a lot of bugs and the support team really solves problems quickly. Usually it is a user error issue, but the support desk helps me out. I love the fact that it is US based support.
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In-Person Training
BambooHR
I didn't have in-person training besides teaching my managers how to use the program. However, I couldn't omit this question (maybe a system glitch).
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Intuit
No answers on this topic
Online Training
BambooHR
As far as I can recall, everything went well with doing it online and got questions answered. Was thankful to work with a dummy file to get used to some practices prior to getting our own domain within bamboo to then place our personnel information in the system, this helped a lot!
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Intuit
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
BambooHR
It was some work involved in moving all of our documents from a drive over to the correct folders and creating the system of what folders were needed and what got placed where
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Intuit
It is important to do your research. There are tutorial videos online that could help new user of this accounting system. These tutorials are straightforward and easily understandable.
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Alternatives Considered
BambooHR
Although there are many products in the marketplace, there is no perfect system. BambooHR is the most economical HRIS for a small business, start-up, or business that has never had HR software. BambooHR was selected for its affordable functionality. However, if they continue to ingore the lack of functionality the pretty package will no longer have any value.
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Intuit
QuickBooks Premier handles most of my business functions efficiently in one package. It is not my "everything." I use Replicon for time rather than QuickBooks. I don't want my WIP data interfering with my accounting. I use PaySimple for it's web interface and back office processing. I don't have security issues since I don't have any credit card data in my possession. With today's identity theft environment, I have to protect myself as much as I can. Not having credit card data in my accounting software lets me sleep much better at night. Quicken will do basic accounting but does not have all the double entry accounting systems contained in QuickBooks. QuickBooks Online does much of the basic business functions but I don't like the pricing structure. As a professional accountant, that is very important to me. Bill.com provided a good service but the ability of QuickBooks to add bills and receipts to transactions makes it redundant.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
BambooHR
Since my organization has dropped with employees, I always find ways to reduce costs. I thought there would be a cheaper option, but I was glad that my package included a lot for the price, and downgrading would cost more. The rep could have let me downgraded and taken me to a higher package. I am thankful that didn't happen.
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Intuit
No answers on this topic
Scalability
BambooHR
There is so much you can do with this platform, it is incredible and so welcoming. We don't utilize it 100% yet just because we are growing and the HR team has not been able to concentrate on other areas offered to us but but we will soon. Which is also why we got the product, specifically because what BambooHR can do to help us meet our growing business needs.
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Intuit
They're getting better. Still room for improvement.
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Professional Services
BambooHR
VERY professional!
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Intuit
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
BambooHR
  • It's been a great force multiplier for our HR staff, supplementing their skills to allow them to focus on more complex tasks.
  • Employees enjoy using it and have to talk to HR staff less with the self-service options.
  • You may find as your organization grows that you outgrow a module or BambooHR and will replace with a dedicated solution.
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Intuit
  • Since our financials are kept very up to date, it helps us compare our financial results to prior years and it is used for our internal goal setting.
  • Due to the accountant copy function, we are able to provide better service since our clients are not waiting on us to fix historical data. They can continue their operations uninterrupted.
  • The import feature certainly speeds up the process of accounting for our payroll. As previously mentioned, it takes about a minute to do our entries for payroll and check them.
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ScreenShots

BambooHR Screenshots

Screenshot of BambooHR's Reporting