Likelihood to Recommend If you are an entrepreneur and you want to focus on building your business, start with Less Accounting. It's a full-blown accounting system that has a simple implementation and it can connect to your financial accounts to automate many parts of the business. Our 1st four years of business, we worked without a bookkeeper at all due to the level of automation.
It is not limited in any regard and is not simply for invoicing or tracking hours, it more or less does everything. Perhaps one area that it wouldn't be ideal is for firms that need to have more rigid accounting, with charts of accounts etc for industries that are audited or highly regulated.
Read full review QuickBooks is a great tool for new SoleTraders that need basic accounting software and require digital invoicing for their clients to send via email and access key features via a mobile app on the go. QuickBooks is a straightforward tool to use with a simple design and learning curve for business owners that are not very tech-savvy. For businesses that operate on a larger scale and need to provide access to other users on their team, QuickBooks is limited. This type of business may also require more insights into the business outside of accounting, and QuickBooks won't be able to supply insights outside of that.
Read full review Pros Categorize Expenses Automatically Profit and loss Statements Interfaces with Credit Union Read full review QuickBooks Self-Employed does keep a running total of your income and estimated taxes. Of course, this requires that your entries are accurate. The mileage feature is particularly helpful. One just needs to either use the phone app in conjunction with QuickBooks Self-Employed, or keep a log of all mileage. When tax time comes around, it's easy to use TurboTax software and import your data from QuickBooks. Read full review Cons With the flexibility comes room for folks not adhering to specific accounts. There is no numeric chart of accounts so at times you will see 2 line items for a single item. We tend to overcome this limitation with extensive tagging. Invoices and sales orders don't have an obvious way to assign credit to specific salespeople or consultants. We reached out to LA and they have shown us a different way to do this which we'll try soon. The visual interface can use some sprucing up. It's easy to navigate but I believe the navigation can be slightly improved. I do find myself hitting the back button to get into other parts of the app. Read full review Doesn't integrate with Mint, which I use for my home expenses. I think this would be a nice addition to the program, so I could keep track of my whole financial situation. A Windows 10 app would be a nice addition to the program, so I could access it securely from my desktop. Read full review Likelihood to Renew It works, it keeps our historical data and is easy to use
Read full review Usability I have been using this software for several years now and it has always put out my data in beautiful generated reports that I can use for verification purposes with my financial institute and the IRS. It has all the tools I need to run my business without loosing track of anything
Read full review Support Rating I have never faced any difficulties that required me to contact QuickBooks customer service. QuickBooks has plenty of online tutorials, blog posts, and helpful tips and advice for almost any issues you may face using the desktop or app version of the software. Even if you can not find the right answer on the QuickBooks webpages, there are loads of YouTube videos from experts.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I had been with QuickBooks for a few years (unwillingly) at the behest of accountants. It took me a while to realize there were other options out there and I needed to begin a hunt to find them. I found LessAccounting. While it's not the most appealing software, it sure helped me see the breakdown of things and allowed me to reconcile my books without feeling like I needed a degree in Accounting.
Read full review FreshBooks limited my ability to categorize transactions, specifically removing duplicates or excluding them. I selected QuickBooks Self-Employed because it allowed me to be in control of items. Sometimes accounting is just making sure things are organized the way YOU think, and
FreshBooks wasn't doing that for me.
Read full review Return on Investment + Less time worrying about my accounting + actually reconciling my books at the end of each month or quarter + being able to access my P+L anytime! Read full review Overall, tagging expenses and mileage has saved me thousands in taxes, for a relatively low cost of around $8/mo. QuickBooks allows me to get invoices to clients quickly and accept online payments, which helps with cashflow. The app has stopped tracking mileage automatically on my device, so I worry that sometimes I am not tracking business miles effectively, which could end up costing me at the EOY. Read full review ScreenShots