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QuickBooks Desktop Pro

QuickBooks Desktop Pro

Overview

What is QuickBooks Desktop Pro?

Quickbooks Desktop Pro is accounting software from Intuit, Inc. It includes core accounting features, plus analytics and exportable reports. It is offered in on-premise and SaaS forms.

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Recent Reviews
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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
  • Accounts payable (107)
    9.7
    97%
  • Bank reconciliation (108)
    9.7
    97%
  • Accounts receivable (109)
    7.6
    76%
  • Standard reports (108)
    7.6
    76%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Unavailable

What is QuickBooks Desktop Pro?

Quickbooks Desktop Pro is accounting software from Intuit, Inc. It includes core accounting features, plus analytics and exportable reports. It is offered in on-premise and SaaS forms.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

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

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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 Sage 100cloud?

Sage 100 (or Sage 100cloud is a business management software offering a broad range of modules designed to meet the many needs of virtually any business. It encompasses financial operations and accounting, payroll, business intelligence, CRM, eBusiness, manufacturing and distribution.

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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.

9.3
Avg 7.5

Customization

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

7.9
Avg 7.0

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.

8.5
Avg 7.9

Reporting & Analytics

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

8.4
Avg 7.6

General Ledger and Configurable Accounting

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

8
Avg 7.4

Inventory Management

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

6.7
Avg 7.0

Order Management

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

7.4
Avg 7.4
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Product Details

What is QuickBooks Desktop Pro?

Quickbooks Desktop Pro is accounting software from Intuit, Inc. It allows a user to create invoices and track sales, enter and pay bills from vendors, and download bank and credit card transactions directly into QuickBooks. It contains analytic features, and its reports can be exported into Excel. Its home page conveys an overview of business activity at a glance, providing insight into business processes. Quickbooks Desktop Pro for Windows Desktop can be obtained presently for a one-time purchase fee of $230, while Quickbooks Desktop Pro Plus is available for $200 annually as a cloud-based service with the support, data backup, and free updating typical of cloud-based services.

QuickBooks Desktop Pro Competitors

QuickBooks Desktop Pro Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Quickbooks Desktop Pro is accounting software from Intuit, Inc. It includes core accounting features, plus analytics and exportable reports. It is offered in on-premise and SaaS forms.

Priority AccountEdge are common alternatives for QuickBooks Desktop Pro.

Reviewers rate Pay calculation and Salary revision and increment management highest, with a score of 9.9.

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

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Reviews and Ratings

(953)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-5 of 5)
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Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use QuickBooks Desktop Pro for the accounts management of our entire organization. It helps us manage the bank accounts of multiple group homes that we operate, our day service, and our primary bank account. It helps us to keep an eye on our budget from a monthly and annual perspective.
  • It is quick and easy to enter and print checks, and they post automatically to the QB bank register.
  • It makes it easy to enter and track client invoices.
  • It makes it easy to enter and track vendor bills.
  • When you post payments from clients it makes it easy to create a bank deposit summary sheet.
  • If you make an entry directly onto the register in the incorrect debit/credit column, you cannot simply reverse the error.
  • If you make a deposit entry error, it is difficult to get removed from your "Record Deposits."
  • You cannot print a check to "John Doe" if he is listed in your vendor list as "Doe, John."
  • There is not a quick access icon on the Home Screen for transfers between accounts.
QuickBooks Desktop Pro is better suited for at minimum small companies with multiple expense and revenue accounts needing to be tracked. It is much less suited for smaller companies that do not need such tracking. For example, I am also a partner in a behavioral health company. We only need to track our client income and business expenses. We do not have multiple revenue and expense account categories to track, so QB Desktop Pro would be way more complex then we need.
General Ledger and Configurable Accounting (21)
42.38095238095238%
4.2
Accounts payable
80%
8.0
Accounts receivable
80%
8.0
Cash management
50%
5.0
Bank reconciliation
80%
8.0
Expense management
90%
9.0
Time tracking
N/A
N/A
Fixed asset management
N/A
N/A
Multi-currency support
N/A
N/A
Multi-division support
80%
8.0
Regulations compliance
80%
8.0
Electronic tax filing
N/A
N/A
Self-service portal
N/A
N/A
Global Financial Support
N/A
N/A
Primary and Secondary Ledgers
80%
8.0
Intercompany Accounting
N/A
N/A
Localizations
N/A
N/A
Journals and Reconciliations
50%
5.0
Enterprise Accounting
N/A
N/A
Configurable Accounting
70%
7.0
Centralized Rules Framework
70%
7.0
Standardized Processes
80%
8.0
Inventory Management (4)
N/A
N/A
Inventory tracking
N/A
N/A
Automatic reordering
N/A
N/A
Location management
N/A
N/A
Manufacturing module
N/A
N/A
Order Management (7)
N/A
N/A
Pricing
N/A
N/A
Order entry
N/A
N/A
Credit card processing
N/A
N/A
Cost of goods sold
N/A
N/A
Order Orchestration
N/A
N/A
End-to-end order visibility
N/A
N/A
Order exception Resolution
N/A
N/A
Payroll Management (5)
N/A
N/A
Pay calculation
N/A
N/A
Benefit plan administration
N/A
N/A
Direct deposit files
N/A
N/A
Salary revision and increment management
N/A
N/A
Reimbursement management
N/A
N/A
Reporting & Analytics (3)
70%
7.0
Dashboards
50%
5.0
Standard reports
80%
8.0
Custom reports
80%
8.0
Customization (2)
N/A
N/A
API for custom integration
N/A
N/A
Plug-ins
N/A
N/A
Security (2)
65%
6.5
Role-based user permissions
50%
5.0
Single sign-on capability
80%
8.0
  • QuickBooks Desktop Pro saves us time in creating and tracking invoices.
  • QuickBooks Desktop Pro saves us time in tracking and paying vendors.
  • QuickBooks Desktop Pro saves us A LOT of time in reconciling our bank statements.
QuickBooks Desktop Pro is much more suited for tracking multiple revenue and expense accounts. Quicken is much more suited for very small businesses. QuickBooks Desktop Pro makes it much easier to create and track invoices versus Quicken. QuickBooks Desktop Pro also makes it much easier to enter and track vendor bills and make payments. QuickBooks Desktop Pro is much easier to use in keeping track of your bank accounts and to reconcile your bank statements.
1
The person that uses our QuickBooks Desktop Pro is responsible for tracking and reconciling the bank accounts and expenses for our group homes and day program. The person is also responsible for using QB for managing and reconciling our office expenses and main bank account. The person also uses QB for our company invoicing, revenue receipts, and vendor bill payments. The person also runs the monthly financial reports for presentation to the Board of Directors on a monthly basis for their review.
1
I think the people using QuickBooks Desktop Pro need to be very detail oriented; which however I feel is common in the accounting/bookkeeping field in general. I think the people using QuickBooks Desktop Pro need to have good basic math and financial accounting skills and understanding; which I also feel is common in the accounting/bookkeeping field.
  • Client Invoicing
  • Vendor bill tracking and payment
  • Multiple Bank Account management and reconciliation
  • Financial Reporting of Revenues and Expenses
  • Using the bank deposit summaries in place of deposit slips.
  • Tracking Fundraising Expenses and Revenue
  • Tracking random donations
  • We are hoping to be able to use it to track credit card expenses easier.
I gave QuickBooks Desktop Pro a 10 rating in likelihood to renew first because of how much quicker it makes our invoicing and revenue receipt tracking. I also gave a 10 because of how much easier it makes our vendor bill tracking and payments. I also gave a 10 because of the quality and flexibility in the financial reports and other tracking reports that are available.
  • Client Invoicing
  • Vendor Bill Payment
  • Running Financial Reports
  • Correcting deposit entry errors
  • Being able to see Client credit to invoices
  • Correcting entry errors to the register
I gave QuickBooks Desktop Pro an overall usability rating of an 8 because it makes client invoicing and vendor bill tracking and payments quicker and easier. However, I do not like that credits applied to invoices do not appear on the invoices when printed for clients. I also gave it an 8 vs. a 10 because it is difficult to correct entry errors, particularly to your recording of deposits and to your register.
Erika Neilson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use QuickBooks Pro as our main accounting software for handling our business. We produce invoices, patient statements, and manage our financial reporting through it. I am able to easily see a snapshot of our financial status when I log in as well as find quick access to reports that I need generated. It is fairly user-friendly and allows me to accomplish all the financial tasks needed to run my business.
  • QuickBooks Pro does invoicing well; I am able to customize my invoices to my company's specifications. The templates allow options for the design to be personalized to the needs of my company, including guides for making it easy to use windowed envelopes.
  • It gives me a quick snapshot of where my financials are. I always have an idea of the financial in's and out's with just a click or two of my mouse.
  • QuickBook Pro reminds me when bills are due, and records easily when payments are made. I never have to worry about missing a payment because of the flag reminders.
  • It is software on my desktop computer at work, therefore, I cannot access it away from my office. This has been somewhat inconvenient, but I am aware that there are online options with QuickBooks that we are strongly considering for the future.
  • Sometimes it is difficult to edit a list item. There is some inconvenience of not being able to right click and permanently edit a list item within an invoice. Instead you have to go to a menu item, look it up and then edit the item instead of being able to edit the original item within an invoice. You can, however, change the information within the invoice, you just aren't able to make permanent changes to the line item without going into the line item menu.
  • When I am paying bills, I am not able to attach a receipt or list a notation about a payment confirmation number. That usually has to be done in the invoice itself, instead of in the 'pay bills' screen, which, at times, can be a hassle.
QuickBooks is perfect for a small business. I have been using it for several years and it is simple enough for a start-up company to be able to figure out how to use it. There are also usually classes offered in local communities to help teach the basics of QuickBooks - which I took, that helped me become familiar. It may work for a larger business, but may not have the ease needed for managing multiple locations as it is somewhat cumbersome to switch between sets of books.
General Ledger and Configurable Accounting (21)
55.71428571428571%
5.6
Accounts payable
80%
8.0
Accounts receivable
80%
8.0
Cash management
90%
9.0
Bank reconciliation
100%
10.0
Expense management
90%
9.0
Time tracking
90%
9.0
Fixed asset management
80%
8.0
Multi-currency support
N/A
N/A
Multi-division support
N/A
N/A
Regulations compliance
N/A
N/A
Electronic tax filing
N/A
N/A
Self-service portal
N/A
N/A
Global Financial Support
80%
8.0
Primary and Secondary Ledgers
N/A
N/A
Intercompany Accounting
70%
7.0
Localizations
N/A
N/A
Journals and Reconciliations
90%
9.0
Enterprise Accounting
70%
7.0
Configurable Accounting
70%
7.0
Centralized Rules Framework
90%
9.0
Standardized Processes
90%
9.0
Inventory Management
N/A
N/A
Order Management
N/A
N/A
Payroll Management (5)
N/A
N/A
Pay calculation
N/A
N/A
Benefit plan administration
N/A
N/A
Direct deposit files
N/A
N/A
Salary revision and increment management
N/A
N/A
Reimbursement management
N/A
N/A
Reporting & Analytics (3)
90%
9.0
Dashboards
90%
9.0
Standard reports
90%
9.0
Custom reports
90%
9.0
Customization (2)
85%
8.5
API for custom integration
80%
8.0
Plug-ins
90%
9.0
Security (2)
95%
9.5
Role-based user permissions
90%
9.0
Single sign-on capability
100%
10.0
  • I am able to keep track of my books with decent accuracy. Most of the issues I have had have been because of not knowing how to use the software, but it has the features needed to keep things going.
  • I am able to quickly see which invoices I have as outstanding, which makes keeping vendors paid on time. This is SUPER helpful for keeping track of the outgoing expenses.
  • I am also able to track Customer balances and statements easily.
I haven't used other accounting software.
1
President, billing, AR/AP
1
As I am a small business owner with little background in accounting, we were able to get started with only basic accounting concepts. The software allows you to edit transactions if you find that you have made any mistakes in your accounting/bookkeeping. Nothing is permanent, which can cause issues if you delete the wrong thing; but it is nice to be able to edit everything.
  • Billing clients
  • Managing vendor invoices
  • Keeping track of monies coming and/or going from the company.
  • Creating packing lists
  • Monthly stats for staff meetings
  • Tracking financials for more than one business
  • Adding and tracking financials for additional providers
  • Merchant transactions
  • Employee payroll
The software is pretty straight forward, it does what I need it to do, and there is no-deal killer issues creating a need for other software. Continuing with QuickBooks makes sense as being familiar with QuickBooks Pro prevents the need to try to learn a different software, and knowing how to use this software already is a big reason to stick with it long into the future.
No
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
We had heard from other users that is a fantastic software for small businesses/start-up businesses. My financial business adviser highly recommended it for it's ease of use and flexibility. These were super important as a new business owner has many responsibilities; simplification of keeping financial records is a huge bonus!
If I were to buy QB again, I would probably not have started with the Payroll version that is included as we were able to outsource our ability to do payroll; however, I was happy to know that there was an option for handling it in-house if we chose to take that route.
  • Implemented in-house
No
  • The learning curve - how to do what I wanted to do and where to go to do it.
  • Setting up items was and can be a bit cumbersome.
We implemented the software ourselves. The training we received on the software was done by taking a community course teaching us how to use QuickBooks. It allowed me to get started with some basics of how to use the program and have not needed much assistance since completing the course work.
No
I haven't needed it since the software is pretty user friendly. All you need is a basic accounting background to get started and the software functions well enough that you can figure most things out with very little training.
I haven't had any major issues or complaints. I think there is always room for improvement; the software isn't flawless, but it has been super helpful in creating manageable financials for our start-up business. When I have needed support help, which hasn't been real often, usually the problem is resolvable. I have occasionally had to pay extra fees for help, but nothing unreasonable.
No
I was locked out of my system, and wasn't sure why. I contacted support and they were able, through logging in to my desktop, search, find the problem, correct it, and get me back working again. I only lost a day or two of accounting, which could have been much, much worse!
  • Posting transactions
  • Attaching invoices
  • Daily snapshot reports
  • None - after the learning curve, it's pretty easy to use.
No
QBP is easy to use, somewhat easy to learn and runs fairly smoothly when using it. It tells you automatically that you need to save, and helps delete old backup files so that your PC doesn't have too many old copies of previous backup storage.
December 23, 2015

Bookkeeping Ease

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use QuickBooks to do clients' payroll, general ledgers for year-end and make adjustments at year-end to do tax returns.
  • As CPA, can set up to track who makes entries. Can track what is added and deleted, in case a problem arises.
  • When used correctly, provides good information for generating financial statements and getting a trial balance to do annual tax returns with.
  • QuickBooks in general provides certifications so that employees new to QuickBooks can learn and get up to speed quickly to work with our clients.
  • Too easy to delete transactions.
  • Does not give enough warning to voiding invoices, checks, deposits, etc that relate to a prior period. Once financial statements have been done, and the tax return filed, you cannot just void items, because it will void them in the period it was entered. For instance a check written 2/14/14 is voided on 3-25-15. The retained earnings is thrown off from what was used on the tax return because it was posted to QB's on 2-14-14 and is voided back to that date. This is especially frustrating.
  • When you have an accountant's copy outstanding, when the client imports the changes, if any entry has been made to adjust cash, the client's bank reconciliations are undone and have to completed again. Very frustrating for the client and for the accountant, because the import of our changes caused the issue.

How many transactions do you expect to have? Large amounts of transactions, will slow the program down.

How many employees and how many states you have employees in? QuickBooks does not work with all states, and it does not work at all with local taxing agencies within a state. We have had issues with getting the information needed to print W-2's. Fairly large company.

General Ledger and Configurable Accounting (6)
78.33333333333333%
7.8
Accounts payable
70%
7.0
Accounts receivable
70%
7.0
Cash management
80%
8.0
Bank reconciliation
90%
9.0
Expense management
70%
7.0
Multi-division support
90%
9.0
Inventory Management (3)
36.666666666666664%
3.7
Inventory tracking
30%
3.0
Automatic reordering
40%
4.0
Location management
40%
4.0
Order Management (2)
75%
7.5
Credit card processing
80%
8.0
Cost of goods sold
70%
7.0
Payroll Management (4)
80%
8.0
Pay calculation
80%
8.0
Direct deposit files
80%
8.0
Salary revision and increment management
80%
8.0
Reimbursement management
80%
8.0
Reporting & Analytics (3)
76.66666666666667%
7.7
Dashboards
80%
8.0
Standard reports
80%
8.0
Custom reports
70%
7.0
Customization
N/A
N/A
Security (2)
50%
5.0
Role-based user permissions
50%
5.0
Single sign-on capability
50%
5.0
  • Definitely better customer service. Can help clients with issues and walk them through problems.
  • More efficient that other software and definitely more efficient that manual records.
  • Easy of accessing client information to do payroll, year-end work, etc.
Haven't really used much else. Excel spreadsheets for smaller clients. QuickBooks allows us to work on clients books with the accountant's backup, while the client can still work on the current year information. General ledger provided the detail needed. Balances can be adjusted with journal entries and are pretty simple to enter.
20

Administrative staff, staff accountants, senior accountants, supervisors, partners.

They do all from year-end adjustments, enter accounts payable and receivable. Reconcile bank accounts, balance credit cards, clean up accountants receivable and payable issues. Process payroll. The company's books are kept on QuickBooks by the office manager. We also help clients who use the inventory module.

3
We have our own IT professional to keep all our products up-to-date and troubleshoot. We also have a partner who is a QuickBooks Pro advisor in various QuickBooks products and he provides support when we have issues to troubleshoot. We use their expertise, before calling QuickBooks support for help.
  • General Ledger for client's activity for the year.
  • To have information to do tax returns for clients
  • To process payroll
  • To obtain financial statements for clients who just have Excel spreadsheets of activity. We can enter activity totals and get a balance sheet and income statement for them.
  • Keep track of locations, departments, classes of clients.
  • Get clients on electronic data for ease in using for tracking how the company is doing.
  • Budgeting
  • Inventory more
  • Fixed Assets
We use it with all our clients and have several QuickBooks Pro Advisors and will renew and continue to use it with our client base. It is easy to use, helps with collecting annual data and makes compiling of information for filing annual tax returns much easier. It makes our job a lot easier, than using manual records.
No
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Prior Experience with the Product
  • Implemented in-house
No
Change management was minimal
  • Training new users
  • Damage to some files
  • Inventory
No not really. I am not an IT person. Once I knew how to use it, it was quick and easy.
Get transferred a lot between people. Have gotten disconnected and it is impossible to get back to the same support person. Seems like always get the incorrect department for my issues and I have to be transferred. Sometimes the support people are very helpful and polite. They try to help, but are not always able to. Some support personnel are clueless when it comes to some issues.
No
When trying to get access to process payroll reports for clients under my QuickBooks Pro Advisor membership. Always efficient and capable of getting the client set up so we could process the quarterly and year-end payroll reports. Always eager to help and very pleasant to work with. Always asked if there was anything else they could do to help us.
  • Bank reconciliations are a breeze with this product.
  • Easy to enter checks or bills. Can enter bills and have system write all checks you want to pay at one time.
  • Credit and Debit memos
  • Undeposited funds. When client does not use it properly, it is cumbersome to fix the account.
  • Inventory very frustrating and cumbersome. Cannot rely on values. Clients not knowing how to use it properly. Junk put in, junk comes out.
It does the job. Mistakes can be corrected and it provides overall the information needed to complete financial statements or tax returns.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use QuickBooks Pro to access our clients' information as well as track our own accounting income/expenses. Everyone in the organization is trained to use the program. In most cases QuickBooks Pro is fairly intuitive and easy to use, however, some of the users have trouble coding the entries into the proper categories. The biggest problem I've seen with QuickBooks is that users generate an invoice and then just write a check which leaves the invoice unpaid and double books the entry.
  • QuickBooks Pro works like a checkbook and is intuitive to use.
  • QuickBooks Pro makes it easy to track income and expenses by requiring a category to save the entry.
  • QuickBooks Pro tracks 1099 vendors and can print the 1099's directly from the program (if set up to do so).
  • QuickBooks Pro could use improvement with setting the category for the transaction. Most users aren't accountants and some can easily incorrectly categorize assets as expense items. A short accounting tutorial for users might be beneficial on types of expenses or assets like inventory.
  • QuickBooks Pro could use improvement with invoices to be paid. Some users will set up an invoice and then just write the check leaving the invoice in accounts payable and doubling the entry. More could be done to remind users to either pay the invoice or take them to that area and ask if they were paying an invoice or match up transactions easier.
  • QuickBooks Pro could use improvement with fixing transactions that are either doubled or need to be matched up but some of the categories cannot be changed with a journal entry and require countless hours of time to go back and edit transactions. It would be nice if there were some kind of override for accountants so we could easily manipulate any and all categories with a journal entry to fix problems we encounter when reconciling the books for tax purposes.
I would recommend the desktop version of QuickBooks Pro but not the online version. Our firm has a few users in the cloud with the online version and the features you get for free in the desktop version you pay extra for in the online version. Just about anyone can use QuickBooks if you know how to write a check but larger firms might want a more robust accounting system if they have more than 10 users or need to track inventory better.
General Ledger and Configurable Accounting (7)
20%
2.0
Accounts payable
20%
2.0
Accounts receivable
40%
4.0
Cash management
N/A
N/A
Bank reconciliation
60%
6.0
Expense management
N/A
N/A
Time tracking
10%
1.0
Fixed asset management
10%
1.0
Inventory Management (3)
3.333333333333333%
0.3
Inventory tracking
10%
1.0
Automatic reordering
N/A
N/A
Location management
N/A
N/A
Order Management (4)
20%
2.0
Pricing
30%
3.0
Order entry
N/A
N/A
Credit card processing
20%
2.0
Cost of goods sold
30%
3.0
Payroll Management (5)
8%
0.8
Pay calculation
20%
2.0
Benefit plan administration
N/A
N/A
Direct deposit files
10%
1.0
Salary revision and increment management
10%
1.0
Reimbursement management
N/A
N/A
Reporting & Analytics (3)
60%
6.0
Dashboards
40%
4.0
Standard reports
70%
7.0
Custom reports
70%
7.0
Customization (2)
N/A
N/A
API for custom integration
N/A
N/A
Plug-ins
N/A
N/A
Security (2)
40%
4.0
Role-based user permissions
80%
8.0
Single sign-on capability
N/A
N/A
  • QuickBooks Pro makes it easy for any member of the team to quickly and efficiently pay a bill or record a deposit leaving more time for other aspects of the business.
We have used Sage and Peachtree as alternatives to QuickBooks Pro and have found for the money and ease of use for any employee QuickBooks is a better option for our firm. Sage and Peachtree require more training to use and some reporting is harder to locate in the program than in QuickBooks Pro. We have clients who use other accounting solutions such as FreshBooks, Quicken and Wave but again the reporting on QuickBooks is quick and easy to use, print, and share.
3
We are all accountants using the software both for our business and for our clients. We mainly decided to go with QuickBooks for the cost for our own firm use. We recommend it to clients for the ease of reporting and ease of use. Given we are a small firm one person does all of our accounts payable, accounts receivable, billing and check writing but all three users could use the program for that as well.
1
Personally I've been a QuickBooks Pro advisor the entire time I have used QuickBooks Pro but I don't believe that is a requirement to support the QuickBooks Pro program. I think anyone who has a bit of technical knowledge with a computer could use the program.
  • Tracking expenses
  • Reporting for income tax purposes
  • Budgeting
  • Finding ways to cut the costs and money with the 2 year comparisons
  • Using budgets to stay on track with our planned expenses.
We've used the program for more than 20 years in our firm both with clients and as our software. For the cost and value of the program it works well for our firms needs and desires for an accounting software program. At this point to switch would not make sense.
Yes
We used Sage before and when our firm split off from our former partner we needed something cheaper with excellent reporting properties to fulfill the needs of our firm. In using the software for clients we had experience with QuickBooks Pro so that use facilitated our transition and selection process and helped make it a seamless transition.
  • Price
  • Product Usability
  • Prior Experience with the Product
As a small firm price was the single most important factor to our firm. As an accounting firm we needed to purchase the software for our clients anyway so it also made sense for us to purchase it for our own needs as well. We haven't regretted our decision.
If we had to do it again we might do more research to see what other products were available at the time as we aren't aware of each and every software available for accounting needs, however, I am fairly certain the results would be the same and we would still choose QuickBooks Pro over the competition for the reporting. It meets our needs.
  • Implemented in-house
No
Change management was minimal
We didn't really experience change management while implementing QuickBooks Pro.
  • Making sure that all the opening balances were correct.
  • Getting the journal entries posted to reflect all the proper account balances from our previous software.
In hindsight I would've gone back further and input another year back of historical data for 2 year comparison purposes in the account balances. It makes all the difference in our firm to compare the balances from year to year and would've helped to at least be able to see the historical data for comparison from our prior tax returns.
No
Rarely need expert support as they have the frequently asked questions support and Google often has the answer to some support questions as well. Sometimes what I would like to see just simply isn't available yet on the program either.
The functionality of the program is such that I haven't had to use support overly often but they are available when I've needed them to reinstall the program in the event of a computer crash or answered questions that arise that Google hasn't been able to answer. Many times though I find the frequently asked questions section faster and easier than contacting support.
Yes
Yes, mostly. We had a client that had lost backups and needed a restored version from an accountants copy. QuickBooks was able to recondition the accountants copy to a usable version of QuickBooks for a separate fee but we reported that they should be able to allow the client to use the accountants copy as well as if they had just sent a backup rather than the accountants copy he would've been up and running again for free.
When a client had his computer stolen and his desktop crashed he was unable to retrieve any backup files from his QuickBooks. We helped him contact QuickBooks in order to restore the file we had to his system as he'd only sent us the accountants copy rather than a backup. In a few weeks he at least had his customer database back up and running without recreating it even though he lost a few months of transactions.
  • Using QuickBooks is as easy as writing a check
  • Reports are just a click away
  • Classifying transactions properly for accounting purposes if you have no accounting knowledge
  • If you've generated an invoice and forget to pay the invoice but have written the check anyway it's nearly impossible to fix
QuickBooks is readily available and simple to learn to use. Many people can start using it with ease as it is very intuitive. The problem is that no accounting knowledge is required (or introduced) so if you have no idea what an expense is or what an asset is many items can be misposted in the wrong category causing your books to need a lot of work with an accountant.
I haven't experienced a time when QuickBooks Pro was unavailable when I needed it in the entire 20 years of using the software.
November 11, 2014

Thinking Out of The Box

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
QuickBooks Pro is currently being used in an altered state by our organization. Instead of using one account, we use multiple accounts to track individual grant funds. Each grant has its own account. We do not use the time tracking/payroll feature within it. We strictly use it for the reports and to track expenses. It functions very well for this, however there was a lot of report customization that needed to be done to get it to match our needs.
  • Expense Tracking
  • Report Customization
  • Multi-level budget
  • Report customization is an awesome feature, however it is very cumbersome to use at times.
  • Entering data into the budget is not the smoothest. It takes some time to learn how to navigate the entering functionality.
I believe QuickBooks Pro offers a good foundation in order to customize it to match the functionality of most businesses or non-profits. Even if using a very small portion of the software's functionality, it is worth the purchase. However, prior knowledge of the software is beneficial if purchasing the software to use other than for the intended purpose.
  • Better reporting.
  • Easier reporting.
  • Seamless tracking of expenses.
We tried Quicken for awhile. However, it did not allow for the reporting customization nor for a file to run on more than a standard fiscal year.
It meets our needs the best.
4
Business Managers- Daily expense tracking and management of funds.
1
A very good working knowledge of the software is needed to support users.
  • Reporting
  • Expense Tracking
  • Exporting Features
  • Adapted the software for use of grant funding.
  • Customized the reporting features to work on a custom reporting cycle.
  • Been able to track payroll without using the payroll feature in the software.
  • New reports
  • Exporting data.
  • Setting up files.
  • Expense recording.
  • Entering data into the budget.
  • Customizing reports.
Yes, but I don't use it
There are some areas of the software that could be updated to be made more user friendly.
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