QuickBooks Online vs. Square 9 Softworks

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
QuickBooks Online
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
QuickBooks Online is a SaaS version of the QuickBooks product. It contains all of the features found in the local version. Higher-priced plans include greater automation, payment management, inventory and time tracking, and analytics features.
$38
per month
Square 9 Softworks
Score 9.7 out of 10
N/A
For document-intensive companies looking to improve business efficiency, Square 9 Softworks develops solutions for process automation that aim to drive increased productivity across all business applications.
$250
per month 5 users
Pricing
QuickBooks OnlineSquare 9 Softworks
Editions & Modules
Simple Start
$38
per month
Essentials
$75
per month
Plus
$115
per month
Advanced
$275
per month
Square 9 Process Automation Essentials
$50
per month per user (5 User Minimum)
Square 9 Digital Transformation Essentials
$68
per month per user (5 User Minimum)
Square 9 Enterprise Essentials
$75
per month per user (10 User Minimum)
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
QuickBooks OnlineSquare 9 Softworks
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsOffered via a three-tier pricing model that allows customers to scale their solution up or down based on the changing needs of their organization. Pricing excludes professional services and implementation fees
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
QuickBooks OnlineSquare 9 Softworks
Features
QuickBooks OnlineSquare 9 Softworks
Payroll Management
Comparison of Payroll Management features of Product A and Product B
QuickBooks Online
8.1
121 Ratings
7% above category average
Square 9 Softworks
-
Ratings
Pay calculation8.4110 Ratings00 Ratings
Benefit plan administration7.260 Ratings00 Ratings
Direct deposit files8.5101 Ratings00 Ratings
Salary revision and increment management8.274 Ratings00 Ratings
Reimbursement management7.981 Ratings00 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
QuickBooks Online
7.0
113 Ratings
8% below category average
Square 9 Softworks
-
Ratings
API for custom integration7.194 Ratings00 Ratings
Plug-ins7.095 Ratings00 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
QuickBooks Online
8.4
186 Ratings
2% above category average
Square 9 Softworks
-
Ratings
Single sign-on capability8.5151 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-based user permissions8.3176 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
QuickBooks Online
8.2
212 Ratings
5% above category average
Square 9 Softworks
-
Ratings
Dashboards8.3199 Ratings00 Ratings
Standard reports8.4206 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom reports7.9190 Ratings00 Ratings
General Ledger and Configurable Accounting
Comparison of General Ledger and Configurable Accounting features of Product A and Product B
QuickBooks Online
8.0
229 Ratings
5% above category average
Square 9 Softworks
-
Ratings
Accounts payable8.8195 Ratings00 Ratings
Accounts receivable8.8212 Ratings00 Ratings
Cash management8.1194 Ratings00 Ratings
Bank reconciliation9.0218 Ratings00 Ratings
Expense management8.4202 Ratings00 Ratings
Time tracking7.095 Ratings00 Ratings
Fixed asset management8.094 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-currency support7.548 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-division support7.379 Ratings00 Ratings
Regulations compliance7.978 Ratings00 Ratings
Electronic tax filing8.1113 Ratings00 Ratings
Self-service portal7.4124 Ratings00 Ratings
Global Financial Support6.840 Ratings00 Ratings
Primary and Secondary Ledgers8.170 Ratings00 Ratings
Intercompany Accounting7.970 Ratings00 Ratings
Localizations7.954 Ratings00 Ratings
Journals and Reconciliations8.5141 Ratings00 Ratings
Enterprise Accounting7.160 Ratings00 Ratings
Configurable Accounting7.986 Ratings00 Ratings
Centralized Rules Framework7.757 Ratings00 Ratings
Standardized Processes8.8105 Ratings00 Ratings
Inventory Management
Comparison of Inventory Management features of Product A and Product B
QuickBooks Online
6.9
88 Ratings
6% below category average
Square 9 Softworks
-
Ratings
Inventory tracking6.783 Ratings00 Ratings
Automatic reordering7.146 Ratings00 Ratings
Location management7.353 Ratings00 Ratings
Manufacturing module6.636 Ratings00 Ratings
Order Management
Comparison of Order Management features of Product A and Product B
QuickBooks Online
7.9
141 Ratings
5% above category average
Square 9 Softworks
-
Ratings
Pricing8.090 Ratings00 Ratings
Order entry7.886 Ratings00 Ratings
Credit card processing8.4109 Ratings00 Ratings
Cost of goods sold8.3107 Ratings00 Ratings
Order Orchestration7.446 Ratings00 Ratings
End-to-end order visibility7.949 Ratings00 Ratings
Order exception Resolution7.542 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
QuickBooks OnlineSquare 9 Softworks
Small Businesses
QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
Score 5.9 out of 10
PowerDMS by NEOGOV
PowerDMS by NEOGOV
Score 7.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Zoho Books
Zoho Books
Score 9.1 out of 10
MSB Docs
MSB Docs
Score 9.4 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP Cloud ERP
SAP Cloud ERP
Score 8.6 out of 10
M‑Files
M‑Files
Score 8.9 out of 10
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User Ratings
QuickBooks OnlineSquare 9 Softworks
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(230 ratings)
9.8
(66 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.5
(27 ratings)
4.9
(7 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(146 ratings)
7.8
(6 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(6 ratings)
7.3
(2 ratings)
Performance
1.0
(5 ratings)
7.3
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
9.8
(70 ratings)
7.9
(26 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.9
(7 ratings)
6.4
(3 ratings)
Configurability
1.0
(2 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
1.3
(2 ratings)
4.5
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
2.0
(3 ratings)
7.3
(2 ratings)
Professional Services
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
5.0
(3 ratings)
7.3
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
5.0
(3 ratings)
7.3
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
QuickBooks OnlineSquare 9 Softworks
Likelihood to Recommend
Intuit
QBO is a great solution for small and midsize companies. If the goal is to record all transactions and pull reliable financial reports, QBO is a great option. QBO is also a great solution if most operations are run in a system like Ramp. It syncs well with systems like that and turns the data into something management can use to make decisions. QBO is great because so many people use it. It is easy to find training online, and many people have experience with it.
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Square 9 Softworks
Great for automating invoice processing where you want to set it and forget it. Also works well for document storage where you need things organized and easy to find. If you have complex requirements and need flexibility, this platform can handle it.
Not ideal if you expect a lot of exceptions or manual intervention since troubleshooting misrouted documents can be tricky. Also not the best fit if you want something that works out of the box with zero setup. You get the most out of it when you invest time upfront to build workflows.
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Pros
Intuit
  • Workflows for accounts payable invoice review are terrific.
  • Bill payment allows you to pay vendors online via ACH or check without having to write a physical check, which reduces admin time.
  • The cloud based login lends well to a remote or hybrid work environment for staff.
  • QuickBooks Online allows you to pre-configure vendors' general ledger expense accounts. This helps with general ledger coding accuracy and consistency.
  • QuickBooks Online integrates with Rippling HRIS, Coast, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, etc., which lends well to an efficient month-end closing and reduced administrative time.
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Square 9 Softworks
  • The software is very flexible, and the technicians were great at implementing our customizations for the PO project.
  • While indexing fields in Global Search, the Key Free tool works great.
  • Global Search is well-organized. It's easy to navigate and find your documents.
  • The process for completing your project was well done. Communicating with individuals at Square 9 who were responsible for different aspects of the project was easy.
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Cons
Intuit
  • I dislike that the online bill pay option through QuickBooks is required for their invoicing.
  • The auto-fill portion of the customer setup, specifically the company name, is listed, but it also auto-fills in the name portion, which is inconvenient and time-consuming to remove.
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Square 9 Softworks
  • GlobalSearch could use some enhancements in layout - THIS IS FIXED WITH THE NEWEST VERSION OF GLOBALSEARCH 6.3 and their Sleek GUI GlobalSearch GO! - WELL DONE!
  • GlobalSearch could use external sharing of documents THIS IS FIXED WITH THE NEWEST VERSION OF GLOBALSEARCH 6.3 and their Sleek GUI GlobalSearch GO! - WELL DONE!
  • GlobalForms could have better formatting tools to enhance the fields and text formatting
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Likelihood to Renew
Intuit
It like the product 'right out of the box' and I trust Intuit will continually improve it over the years based on my experience with their desktop products. The large providers of Apps makes customizing the entire package relatively easy and seamless for a wide variety of business types.
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Square 9 Softworks
We absolutely can't imagine not continuing software maintenance as there are always new additions that improve the system not to mention the excellent tech support when issues are encountered. Response times for troubleshooting are very quick and usually, my issue is resolved in less than an hour after connecting with support.
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Usability
Intuit
Beyond being overkill for a small org's needs, QBO is constantly stealing screen real estate and attention by hammering users for account upgrades, connecting to one of their approved consultants or buying add-ons. The idea of using a simple configurable bookeeping and light accounting interface is completely missing. At the very least, we should be able to hide functions like inventory that we will never use.
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Square 9 Softworks
The items I am searching for are easily found. They are found in at least 95% of the searches. The failure rate generally is related to another employees user error or a template error set up by our Square 9 team in house.
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Reliability and Availability
Intuit
We have rarely had outages in the last 10 years. I can only recall 2 times in the last 10 years where we were not able to access our client files.
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Square 9 Softworks
Square-9 can get this product out to you in almost the same hour your order it. We got ours very fast.
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Performance
Intuit
Everything process has its bugs lately with the new interface. Nothing has worked smoothly since this all began last month.
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Square 9 Softworks
With the PDF projected viewer, the document retrieval-to-display can drag for a second more than some systems, and the capture workflow if you overload a server array can also drag, but those are the only two issues we've ever seen with this product, and they are not serious issues at all.
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Support Rating
Intuit
In my experience, most representatives keep me on the phone for hours, literally, for a single issue and then usually cannot resolve it satisfactorily. I have 10 open cases that need resolution and, in my experience, there has been NO follow-up communication on any of them.
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Square 9 Softworks
We had one "production down" incident that took about a day to get help on. I think that's a bit too long. The support people seem confident but not that friendly. I feel like I'm bothering them when I get help, but they get the job done.
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In-Person Training
Intuit
No answers on this topic
Square 9 Softworks
It would have been higher, but the training is a bit muted for the lesser qualified office equipment vendors who signed up as partners to sell and support it. The more experienced ECM vendors and customer end-users will find the training very good, but a bit slow.
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Implementation Rating
Intuit
The person in charge of QB needs to be very accurate with record keeping and is recommended to stay on top of tasks. The biggest issue we have is reconciliation, and those issues occur only when too much time has occurred between reconciliations
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Square 9 Softworks
I think the implementation could have gone a little smoother than it did. Now that I know how to use the software, I could do it myself. I feel that as an organization, we could have been a little better prepared. If the consultant was more aware of what we were looking for, they could have assisted in setting up some workflows for us as per the contract. But because we were not prepared, the initial implementation process was a little painful. That said, adding a document management system to ANY business kinda means everyone has to re-think the way they do their work which can be difficult for some staff.
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Alternatives Considered
Intuit
As a freelance bookkeeper, the Desktop version of QuickBooks Online doesn't allow for ease of access from any device. Having to be on a computer with the software downloaded creates additional work to gain access to all required filings etc. Also, I personally find the linking functionality on the Online version to be much more streamlined and user friendly.
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Square 9 Softworks
Laserfiche could not even complete their installation. Square 9 Softworks was able to come in and rescue the failed project. We have hardly scratched the surface of what we believe we can do in terms of more implementations of the Square 9 Softworks program in other business processes in our company. Square 9 Softworks was demonstrated to our procurement management team while they were struggling with the Laserfiche implementation, and they were ready to abandon Laserfiche immediately upon seeing the Square 9 Softworks program demonstrated. We abandoned Laserfiche even though we had financial investments with them already. This is testimony to how clearly Square 9 Softworks is a better solution than Laserfiche.
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Scalability
Intuit
As we have grown along our professional path, we have also expanded our use of QB. The scalability is easy and features seem to be waiting for you until you need them. We have increased profits by over 10x from our first year in business to the current and have yet to find a reason to look elsewhere
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Square 9 Softworks
The scale-ability is quite good actually, but you need competent sales/support folks providing it to you, so the scale is set right for the demands of your system use. Some resellers are not good at doing this, some are fantastic. If you are scaled correctly at first implementation, you'll be very happy with this system.
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Return on Investment
Intuit
  • QuickBooks has given us a useful portal by which to get an overview of our financials.
  • QuickBooks has given us a relatively easy way to send out invoices quickly and efficiently.
  • Due to the customization limitations on QuickBooks, we've had to get creative in third-party implementations to better represent our brand and to track financials.
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Square 9 Softworks
  • Having less paper in the office has saved space and supplies. We no longer need to purchase those expensive cardboard folders for archiving.
  • Having someone do their own health screening is safer and saves us from keeping a staff member devoted to that task.
  • I used to have to spend hours physically culling archive records. Now I can sort it and weed it with clicks of a button!
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ScreenShots

QuickBooks Online Screenshots

Screenshot of the accounting and bank transactions interfaceScreenshot of an overview of the accounting inventoryScreenshot of book marksScreenshot of the business tax overviewScreenshot of the customer hubScreenshot of the dashboard

Square 9 Softworks Screenshots

Screenshot of GlobalSearch Go, which organizes documents based on extracted data.Screenshot of InquireAI, which offers AI-driven data extraction of invoice and receipt fields to eliminate the need for manual data entry.Screenshot of a contract. Contracts are a complex document format that can require contextual understanding to collect accurate data points.Screenshot of where using natural language prompts, InquireAI works as an agent to extract, classify, and analyze information from any type of document.Screenshot of the invoice review process, where users can be notified by email when a pending approval is available.Screenshot of a fully indexed document. These can be released for secure access within GlobalSearch or sent to other repositories, including QuickBooks, Dynamics 35 Business Central, Citrix ShareFile, or Google Drive.