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QuickBooks Desktop Premier

QuickBooks Desktop Premier

Overview

What is QuickBooks Desktop Premier?

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.

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Recent Reviews

Appalling Fee for Basic Support.

3 out of 10
December 20, 2022
I use QB Desktop Pro 2019. I have been using QB for 20+ years. I suddenly got a warning that my file was corrupted. This happened once …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 44 features
  • Bank reconciliation (57)
    8.0
    80%
  • Standard reports (56)
    7.8
    78%
  • Accounts receivable (59)
    7.0
    70%
  • Accounts payable (58)
    7.0
    70%
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Pricing

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N/A
Unavailable

What is QuickBooks Desktop Premier?

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.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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4 people also want pricing

Alternatives Pricing

What is QuickBooks Online?

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.

What is Acumatica?

Acumatica delivers a set of cloud-based business software applications with dashboards, reporting tools, integrated document management, centralized security, and customization tools.

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Features

Payroll Management

Provides for pay calculation and benefit plan administration, in addition to managing direct deposit, salary revisions and payroll tracking.

8.9
Avg 7.5

Customization

This addresses a company’s ability to configure the software to fit its specific use case and workflow.

1.3
Avg 7.1

Security

This component helps a company minimize the security risks by controlling access to the software and its data, and encouraging best practices among users.

7.4
Avg 8.0

Reporting & Analytics

Users can report on and analyze usage, performance, ROI, and/or other metrics of success.

6.8
Avg 7.6

General Ledger and Configurable Accounting

Financial management solution, including capabilities for general ledger and configurable accounting

7.1
Avg 7.4

Inventory Management

The ability to track and manage the flow of goods or materials into and out of an inventory.

2.9
Avg 7.0

Order Management

The ability to process orders, and track them from quote to cash.

7
Avg 7.4
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Product Details

What is QuickBooks Desktop Premier?

Quickbooks Desktop Premier is the on-premise version of Quickbooks designed for various industries. It features core accounting capabilities, including general ledger, double-bookkeeping, and reporting. It also includes invoice status tracking, contractor management, and time and inventory tracking. Premier in particular is designed to enable industry-specific tasks for general contractors and organizations in manufacturing and wholesale, nonprofits, service, and retail sectors, as well as servicing general business needs.

QuickBooks Desktop Premier Video

QuickBooks Desktop Pro/Premier Plus

QuickBooks Desktop Premier Competitors

QuickBooks Desktop Premier Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Priority AccountEdge and MIP Fund Accounting are common alternatives for QuickBooks Desktop Premier.

Reviewers rate Benefit plan administration and Role-based user permissions and Pricing highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of QuickBooks Desktop Premier are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(436)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-15 of 15)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use it to plan purchases, sales, AP/AR, GL. Our version is 2 user multiuser (It honestly is not multiuser). Our version is Wholesale/Mfg.
  • Order entry
  • Search customers, vendors, products
  • It doesn't do anything else good.
  • Make multiuser real multiuser. Everyone must log out (cumbersome process) so one single user can do many tasks. They include Changing Sales Tax Rate, Deleting a customer, Defining fields for a customer, [Adjusting] product quantities, [Backing] up [QuickBooks], Delete a ledger code, Delete an inventory part, add additional notes.
  • Could have lines between listing on invoices.
  • Could track inventory product purchases. My old 1970's UNIX software did a stellar job of this. Suppose I buy identical products from numerous vendors. My old software listed 10 dates, 10 vendors, 10 quantities, & 10 prices. [QuickBooks] only lists the very last one.
  • Lists sales commission for sales reps. I can input a sales rep but not print a report with his name, address, & commission. Pulling UPS out of the sales is another chore. We do it manually. (Why computerize?)
  • About every 2 weeks [QuickBooks] won't allow me to restore a backup. I have to delete previous backups.
  • Continual pop-up windows DO I LIKE THE SOFTWARE. When I say no & list reasons...they never fix it.
  • There is a Price Level List. I can sell Item 1 to you for $1, to a store for $.35, & to a distributor for $10. BUT it is a long list. We have 1100 products. There is no search for the item that we want to update. I have to scroll through 1100 items to make a change.
I think I already was clear.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use QuickBooks Desktop Premier for all the financial and accounting needs for one of our companies.
  • Allow you to make changes on previous months.
  • Allows you to create a copy of an expense.
  • Very easy to reconcile your bank account.
  • Reports
  • Accounts entry
QuickBooks Desktop Premier is well suited [because] it allows you to make corrections easily, make a copy of an expense, and it allows you to reconcile your bank statements easily.
Tracie Jones | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Quickbooks Premier (2018 version) primarily for A/P, A/R, and payroll functions within our small marketing company. This program solves invoicing and vendor payment issues as well as making payroll simple and nearly seamless. We do also file state and federal tax forms within B for ease of reporting and data collection. The many reports available make financial statement analysis simple.
  • Data entry and compilation are seamless and easy with QB Premier 2018.
  • Invoicing is smooth and statements can now be sent including a "PAST DUE" stamp.
  • Financial statements are easy to combine and draw information directly out to provide for company owners, banks, and investors.
  • The ability to move screens over and out to more monitors is amazing!
  • I would like to see the multi window controls improved to include icons rather than the left sidebar menu.
  • Inventory control could be improved some although I do not use it much in this position I have had opportunities in the past that would have been a bit more simple had the function been more user-friendly.
  • I am still learning some of the new functions in this version but overall I think QB does a great job of minimizing the stress in my job as an accounting manager.
I use QuickBooks premier in my business which is internet marketing/affiliate market-related. I have also helped other companies set up and begin using QB Premier in industries such as manufacturing and construction. With the right setup and add-ons, QB can be used in nearly all scenarios with ease. I find the program user-friendly and although I would not call it foolproof, easily taught to even those without an accounting background.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use QuickBooks Premier in my line of business daily. This is the platform that I also recommend to my clients. Being an accounting professional, I need a platform that would offer customizations for different industries, tracking of billable expenses, creation of various financial statements to analyze profitability, quick lookup of items. I find that this QuickBooks product most fully addresses these needs.
  • QuickBooks Premier has all the basic functions of the QuickBooks Basic plus industry-specific tools for inventory management, cost-tracking and much more.
  • QuickBooks Premier has an extensive set of reports that can be customized for profitability analysis. Plus AR/AP reports are an excellent tool to help manage cash flow.
  • QuickBooks Premier is inexpensive in a long run as opposed to QuickBooks Online where you pay monthly recurring fees, those add up quickly!
  • Learning some of the advanced functions can be time-consuming, but there is lots of online support through QB community and YouTube training videos.
  • While it's more efficient and comprehensive, QuickBooks Online gives instant simultaneous access to business owners and accounting professionals. Same cannot be said about QuickBooks Premier desktop version.
Companies with in-house accounting will benefit most from this platform. It is a fast desktop version with an easy job costing process from estimate to PO, order tracking, and unbilled time. That is a great feature for contractors, who create estimates with many lines - platform makes it easy to convert to PO/invoice.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use it to maintain my set of books for my company. I use it for billing and collections from all my clients. I also use it for budgeting and financial reporting for my company.
  • Integrated credit card processing - posts automatically to customer accounts, allows online payment. It uses the most current technology.
  • It maintains a good strong history of billing and collections and provides collection letters and assistance when you have past due amounts to collect.
  • It allows you to download credit card transactions and post into the software automatically. It is easy to track spending details with this process.
  • 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.
Job costing and more advanced accounting requirements are typically not well-suited to QB applications. Sometimes they can be handled with third-party add-ons but it just depends.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are only using QuickBooks Premier for the payroll module. I use Blackbaud Financial Edge for all other accounting tasks.
  • Tracking employees
  • Tracking payroll items
  • Tracking associated payroll taxes
  • Printing W-2's
  • Interface with Georgia Department of Revenue for payroll forms is not the best it could be. There are some forms that just don't interface well.
  • I have had issues sending the required year end payroll forms to Georgia in the past but it was better this year.
I think for small businesses it probably does a pretty good job.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Used as accounting software to generate account receivable, account payable reports, P&Ls, and documents needed to prepare tax returns. We use it to analyze the business on a monthly basis. Aids with budgeting and planning for the future. Provides and environment whereby we can contact clients and follow up on receivables, etc.
  • It's intuitive if you have an accounting background.
  • The help section typically offers reliable information to answer questions
  • I like the email functionality with sending invoices directly to clients.
  • Adjusting entries
  • Self created communications for emailing clients
  • Journal entry suggestions
I'm unsure how it would work for different types of businesses but for my purposes, it works.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It's just being used by the Accounting/Finance Department right now. We have about ten departments, so we make use of their "classes" and memorized transactions. Thinking about moving away from QuickBooks.....weak in budgeting area.
  • The drill down features
  • The Audit trail
  • Automatic close with journal entry
  • Need more robust report writer
  1. What are your budgeting requirements? Do you need to have high flexibility in developing various types of budgets and budget reports? Would you like to have the availability of "what-if" scenario planning?
  2. Do you require high flexibility in developing financial reports? Do you need a powerful report writer?
Cristine Delos Santos | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
This software is used by the entire organization and it helps us a lot in the overall bookkeeping process for our clients. It makes financial generation easy and quick which make work more efficient.
  • Remote Access Capability- This feature of QB is essential for us since we target the markets of Hawaii and Australia and our Operations Team is in the Philippines.
  • Easier reconciliation of bank type accounts - The interface provides us, bookkeepers, with a list of transactions which we can modify (if recorded wrong) on the spot. It also makes it easier to track unrecorded bank transactions for the given period.
  • Import of IIF and Excel files - It makes recording numerous transactions faster and more accurate than recording each entry one at a time. It improves our effectiveness and efficiency as bookkeepers.
  • Recognition of duplicate vendor and customer name.
Quickbooks is well suited for small business owners like our clients from Hawaii. The balance sheet, profit & loss and other reports we submit are more understandable and preferred by end-users. I guess Quickbooks is less appropriate for large businesses with highly complex accounting procedures because this requires a more sophisticated accounting system to achieve desired results.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a small nonprofit we use QuickBooks to manage our bookkeeping and financial reporting, grant administration and donation collection. It also allows us to track functional expense allocations through the use of classes and grant expenditures through customer jobs.
  • Customer / job invoicing and tracking is simple and straightforward. Easy to manage accounts/grants receivable through the program.
  • Customizable templates to add our logo, identifying information and messages to invoices and receipts allow us to produce more professional, non-cookie-cutter statements.
  • Payroll modules integrate seemlessly with reporting structure, which avoids having to make entries separate from payroll reporting.
  • QuickBooks reporting templates need some work to allow more customization, especially with the heading labels, subtotal breaks and terminology for nonprofit statements to match industry standards.
  • QuickBooks premier industry versions do not have the same journal entry view as the Accountant's version, which shows a list of previous entries at the bottom half of the screen.
QuickBooks Premier is well suited for small nonprofits who need more than just straight bookkeeping.
May 05, 2015

President

Andrea Campbell, CPA,CITP | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use QuickBooks to run most aspects of my business, billing, payroll, general ledger. It lets me run my business quickly and efficiently from one platform. As a sole practitioner, I don't have a lot of time to waste on the back office. I appreciate the efficiency I get from QuickBooks.
  • Invoicing. Items can be pre-loaded with text to make creating an invoice fast and efficient.
  • Memorized Transactions. All types of transactions can be recorded repeatedly by QuickBooks with little effort on my part. This also lets me avoid missing monthly bills or retainer invoices.
  • Writing checks is one of the best tasks. If you can write a physical check, you can write a check in QuickBooks. The auto fill and auto recall make this task exceptionally easy and fast.
  • Payroll needs to be streamlined. There are about 5 steps to creating a payroll check, 2 (the confirmations to create and print the checks) are redundant.
  • Payroll tax payment corrections are too complicated. Adjusting the balances for discounts, etc. are cumbersome.
  • Using the find for an amount could be better. There is no default, you have to choose less than, greater than or equal. The default should be equal. The others should be an option.
If the business will have inventory or costing, I usually use caution in recommending QuickBooks. While it will perform the tasks for inventory and costing, the setup is critical to getting the information you need correctly. Once started, it is difficult to make corrections since changes are applied retroactively to all transactions.
April 30, 2015

QuickBooks Rundown

Michael Klein, CPA, CMA, EA, CGMA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
QuickBooks is used by our organization to account for all general and program activities.
  • User friendly
  • Easy-to-understand reporting
  • Simple to use
  • Easy to train
  • Audit trail
  • Budget management reports
  • Greater security on entries
  • More advanced reporting including rolling forecasts
Ask about:

  • Complexity of organization
  • Volume of transactions
  • Reporting needs
John Coleman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the program internally for our financial accounting and we use it for some of our clients to prepare their financials. Other clients also use it and we review their work. Virtually everyone here except our receptionist uses the program. We keep our internal books very up to date so it helps us compare our current and prior year results in real time.
  • I really like the Portable Accountant file. Many of our clients who use this program internally like us to review their work but they can't shut down their financial operations while we are working on the file. The split that the accountant copy generates allows us to work on the historical data while the client can continue with current and future transactions.
  • I like the import feature. We do our payroll through ADP and can export a file from there and import it into QuickBooks. Doing the financials for our internal payroll takes about a minute.
  • The ability to add additional accounts or subaccounts is also a very nice feature for us internally as well as our clients.
  • The program takes a very long time to load. It'd be nice to be able to open it quicker as myself and my staff are somewhat inefficient while waiting for the program to load. Probably one of the longest hold times we have for any software.
  • Our clients are constantly receiving payments when an invoice has not been generated. This results in a negative A/R. QuickBooks needs to alert the user to this so this can be avoided.
  • When a group of checks is deposited and one bounces, you have to undeposit the entire lot and redeposit those that did go through. Should be a way for you to go in and just select the one that did not credit.

Some of our clients who are small don't use an accounting software because they can reconcile everything on Excel. They also don't have any employees so that QuickBooks is probably not needed for them. The rest of our clients, we recommend QuickBooks. However, some do not use it because they have an industry specific program which has some financial functions. What we've found is that these financial functions, whether it be general ledger capabilities or even payroll; are fairly subpar. So, we recommend that they use this industry specific program for inventory, revenues, etc...and then do the whole financial statement and accounting function in QuickBooks.

So, the questions I ask are:

1) What's your company size and how comfortable are you with excel reconciliations?
2) Do you run payroll?
3) Do you have an industry specific program?

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My organization provides free, one on one business advising for small businesses. I provide small businesses with training and problem solving for their bookkeeping and financial management needs. I assist them in assessing their needs and help them decide on a bookkeeping method/tool and then often assist them with the set up of their system.
  • Very user friendly; adaptable to almost any type of business
  • Intuitive data entry forms
  • Powerful and customizable reporting capabilities
  • The inventory functionality is limited. QuickBooks Pro and Premier use average cost, with no option for other cost methods. This limitation is most significant for manufacturers, who may need to consider QuickBooks Enterprise for more options.
The biggest question is what are the inventory accounting and valuation needs of the business? If the business can accept average cost inventory valuation, then QuickBooks Premiere will probably be a good choice.
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