Overview
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.
QuickBooks Online saves the day!
Caution - check with other users in your industry
QuickBooks Online is more interested in profit than providing a descent product.
The product is supposed to address accounting, but, in my experience, it is continuously problematic …
Essential online accounting system for UK businesses
Two Strikes for QBO in 2 Small Businesses
Atrocious Customer Service
Great until it became terrible, stay away from live bookkeeping!
QBO: Support that drives you over the edge
Always room for improvement
QuickBooks is a good program for users who are not accountants!
Don't do it. Just don't.
Best small business bookkeeping software!
QuickBooks online is a poorly written program with little help.
QuickBooks Online is the perfect fit for us!!
Awards
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Popular Features
- Bank reconciliation (137)6.262%
- Accounts receivable (131)6.060%
- Standard reports (128)5.353%
- Dashboards (124)4.646%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
Self-Employed
$15
Simple Start
$25
Plus
$75
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Product Demos
QuickBooks Online Demo | CAN
Features
Payroll Management
Provides for pay calculation and benefit plan administration, in addition to managing direct deposit, salary revisions and payroll tracking.
- 4.3Pay calculation(69) Ratings
Pay calculation provides for computation of employee pay with state and federal deductions.
- 3.8Benefit plan administration(32) Ratings
Benefit plan administration is administration of health insurance plans and 401k plans, and other benefits.
- 4.8Direct deposit files(65) Ratings
Direct deposit is the ability to electronically transfer pay to an employee’s personal bank account.
- 1.6Salary revision and increment management(44) Ratings
Salary revision is the ability to modify individual employee pay.
- 1.3Reimbursement management(46) Ratings
Reimbursement management provides cash reimbursement for employee expenses related to business travel or other.
Customization
This addresses a company’s ability to configure the software to fit its specific use case and workflow.
- 1.3API for custom integration(54) Ratings
An API (application programming interface) provides a standard programming interface for connecting third-party systems to the software for data creation, access, updating and/or deletion.
- 3.8Plug-ins(57) Ratings
A number of third-party plug-ins are available to expand the core functionality of the software.
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.
- 2.9Single sign-on capability(81) Ratings
The software system supports a centralized authentication mechanism allowing the user to access multiple systems with a single, centrally managed password.
- 4.5Role-based user permissions(102) Ratings
Permissions to perform actions or access or modify data are assigned to roles, which are then assigned to users, reducing complexity of administration.
Reporting & Analytics
Users can report on and analyze usage, performance, ROI, and/or other metrics of success.
- 4.6Dashboards(124) Ratings
Users can create, customize and share dashboards, which provide an overview of the most important metrics.
- 5.3Standard reports(128) Ratings
The software offers pre-built reports with metrics standard to the category.
- 5.9Custom reports(116) Ratings
Users can create custom reports.
General Ledger and Configurable Accounting
Financial management solution, including capabilities for general ledger and configurable accounting
- 5.4Accounts payable(122) Ratings
This includes the automation and tracking of payment to vendors and suppliers, with features such as payment scheduling, check printing, open purchase order alerts, document management, direct ACH bill payment, and vendor records.
- 6Accounts receivable(131) Ratings
This includes the management and automation of invoices and collections, with features like statements, invoices, receipts, payment reminders, customer records, auto billing, and refund checks.
- 6.3Cash management(120) Ratings
The software provides a complete picture of a company’s cash flows, streamlines payment processing, and includes cash forecasting.
- 6.2Bank reconciliation(137) Ratings
The software connects to a company’s financial institutions in order to reconcile accounting records with checking, savings and credit card accounts. Often month and year closing capabilities are included.
- 5.6Expense management(123) Ratings
The software can log and track business expenses and reimbursements, including travel-related expenses, with the ability to tie them to particular projects.
- 1.7Time tracking(56) Ratings
The software can track billable and non-billable employee time by project.
- 5.2Fixed asset management(53) Ratings
This includes the ability to track fixed assets (e.g., laptops), including location, check-in and check-out, maintenance scheduling, audit history, specialized property tax period reports, cost and depreciation.
- 1.4Multi-currency support(23) Ratings
The software supports transactions across multiple currencies.
- 1.4Multi-division support(42) Ratings
The software is flexible and supports bookkeeping practices along multiple dimensions such as locations, branches or products.
- 1.6Regulations compliance(38) Ratings
The software helps users adhere to typical accounting standards and regulations such as IFRS, GASB, or GAAP.
- 5.2Electronic tax filing(66) Ratings
The software provides a full electronic interface for the filing of repeatable taxes, such as payroll or sales tax.
- 2.5Self-service portal(66) Ratings
The software provides online portals for certain stakeholders to find information relevant to them, such as employees, vendors and customers.
- 1.3Global Financial Support(16) Ratings
Account using multiple ledgers, multiple currencies, and multiple entities
- 3.5Primary and Secondary Ledgers(35) Ratings
Record and report across multiple currencies and accounting standards with primary and secondary ledgers
- 4.9Intercompany Accounting(29) Ratings
Automatically balance and reconcile GL for intercompany transactions
- 4.1Localizations(21) Ratings
Meet reporting requirements with country-specific localizations
- 5.1Journals and Reconciliations(74) Ratings
Automate and synchronize ledgers and processes
- 1.8Enterprise Accounting(25) Ratings
Create accounting for disconnected ERP and non-accounting source systems
- 2Configurable Accounting(38) Ratings
Configure accounting rules and segments for each chart of accounts
- 2.9Centralized Rules Framework(24) Ratings
Integrate disparate ERP and transactional systems into single ERP instance
- 3.9Standardized Processes(48) Ratings
Centralize financial management to facilitate standardized financial processes
Inventory Management
The ability to track and manage the flow of goods or materials into and out of an inventory.
- 1.2Inventory tracking(45) Ratings
The software syncs orders and stock to maintain a real-time picture of inventory and supports multiple methods such as LIFO and FIFO.
- 1.2Automatic reordering(22) Ratings
The software can be set up to automatically reorder a good when it falls below a certain threshold.
- 1.3Location management(21) Ratings
The software can track multiple goods across multiple locations.
- 1.3Manufacturing module(17) Ratings
The software helps track and manage raw materials, work-in-progress items, and finished goods.
Order Management
The ability to process orders, and track them from quote to cash.
- 4.8Pricing(55) Ratings
Users can set up complex and unique pricing requirements.
- 4.8Order entry(53) Ratings
Users can enter an order once, and the data flows to all the necessary units such as fulfillment and billing.
- 2.2Credit card processing(63) Ratings
The software facilitates credit card processing.
- 3.8Cost of goods sold(68) Ratings
The software calculates the direct costs attributable to a finished product, such as materials and labor, and includes roll-up pricing.
- 4.7Order Orchestration(21) Ratings
Define and execute order fulfillment processes for products as well as services on the same order.
- 4.7End-to-end order visibility(20) Ratings
Get updates on orders, inventory, shipments, planned supply, and invoices, and improve the quality of decisions through in-context analytics
- 1.2Order exception Resolution(18) Ratings
Monitor fulfillment tasks and resolve issues, view and evaluate varios options via what-if analysis and define and enforce change order rules
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is QuickBooks Online?
QuickBooks Online Integrations
QuickBooks Online Competitors
QuickBooks Online Technical Details
Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(1811)Attribute Ratings
- 2.5Likelihood to Renew24 ratings
- 2.1Availability5 ratings
- 1.1Performance4 ratings
- 4.1Usability76 ratings
- 2.1Support Rating68 ratings
- 3Implementation Rating6 ratings
- 10Configurability1 rating
- 1.1Product Scalability2 ratings
- 1.4Ease of integration2 ratings
- 1.1Vendor pre-sale2 ratings
- 1.1Vendor post-sale2 ratings
- 7.4CPA Rating18 ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 32)The product is supposed to address accounting, but, in my experience, it is continuously problematic at that level.
- In my experience, change the labels and locations on buttons to make you click on their sales items rather than complete tasks.
- In my experience, waste huge amounts of screen space with useless information and pop-up advertising
- In my experience, change the meanings and names within their program of accounting terms that have been in use for over 100 years.
- In my experience, block users from doing certain accounting transactions because they are smarter than the accountants that use the program.
- Support - In my opinion, their support staff does not understand accounting, basic logic, and in most cases, the QBO program itself.
- Terminology - Use the terms "Debit" and "Credit" with or instead of the terms "increase" and "decrease." And stop making up new terms to describe old things.
- In my opinion, stop trying to make more money off of your customers by forcing them to make extra clicks to accomplish tasks.
Two Strikes for QBO in 2 Small Businesses
- Integration with banking transactions has been good
- Don't ever enter an incorrect date for a bank rec. It is impossible to reverse.
- lack of calculator buttons in fields where they are obviously needed
- Invoice customisation
- PO customisation
QuickBooks for non-accountant business owners
- Receive payments
- Invoicing
- Tracking expenses
- Reporting
- They will no longer support their desktop app, which they pushed us to use
- They drastically increased their ACH fees (with the benefit of quicker deposits--but this is not a justifiable benefit for our business model)
- Some features are limited
- Easy to link to bank accounts and credit cards.
- Intuitive interface for most things.
- Manageable chart of accounts that allows for good customization of products and services.
- Basic customization of invoices and language to be used in customer facing invoices/emails.
- All major financial reports are a few clicks away, most can be customized, filtered, saved, exported.
- Allows for rules to be set for common, recurring revenue and expenses - with some limitations.
- The budgets feature leaves a lot be desired - difficult and clunky to populate and maintain.
- Reporting for Budget vs Actual is available but the ability to reforecast based on updated data is not.
- The rules function to default common types of expenses isn't perfect and will get confused if like amounts or a number of similar items present.
- Easy to create invoices, especially when using the multiple invoices feature.
- User-friendly.
- East to create financial reports.
- It would be nice to have better customization of automatic email replies for things like payment receipts and payment reminders.
- I would like a testing feature for customer correspondence, like being able to see what an automated payment reminder would look like to my customers before I set one up and implement it.
- Payroll
- Recurring Invoices
- Credit Card Tracking
- UX
- Confusing
QuickBooks Online and Shopify
- Linking to bank, credit cards, and Shopify
- Fairly fast to enter transactions
- Flexible reporting
- It's hard to see the audit trail of a transaction as debits and credits to the General Ledger.
Quickbooks and Me
- QBO Advanced has extremely excellent customer service via the telephone. Agents are knowledgeable, helpful, and usually determined to solve the (user caused) problems. I think that he agents used to be hired to troubleshoot issues but they really have become almost-accountants because this is what is demanded by users.
- The accountant likes the ability to see in real time any problems that we have. Sometimes it is just a category selection issue--such as which is the proper category to put a particular expense
- I like the ability to WFH with immediate integration with my boss and his part of the work equation
- Although there is a steep learning curve for new (never before)users, it is extremely easy to navigate once you accept that QBO must be obeyed. It is difficult to make a mistake as QBO sort of guides your thinking to reach the correct and logical conclusion
- There are too many self advertisements which pop up. Although it is interesting to note what QBO can offer, I have yet to take advantage of any.
- QBO has power outages, or whatever they are called when we simply cannot use QBO, which are distressing interruptions to our work.
- Updates are somewhat frequent and have no warnings
- It is expensive to maintain and QBO credit card swipe fees are quite uncompetitive
When isn't it appropriate? I don't know. We have been in business for
Can't go wrong with QuickBooks
- Integrates with 3rd party software
- Stores receipts
- Sends invoices & reocurring bills
- Reporting is sub par. Their monthly statements and dashboard overviews are some of the worste in the industry.
- Exporting information to an accountant that isnt using quickbooks is a pain.
- They don't scan receipts and auto upload information like other softwares do.
- Financial reports
- Integration with our financial institutions.
- Integration with our outside accounting firm.
- Bank and credit card account feed goes back 90 days.
- Giving a bit of control over your data.
- Expensive to maintain and add features.
QBO Expert and Easy
- Simplicity of use.
- Completely oriented towards accounting, well designed.
- Intuitive to use.
- Great help functions.
- Slow performance.
- Hard to navigate between modules.
For the last few months, we have run into a problem that QB's customer support and technical teams can not seem to fix. Our bank feeds only work for some of our accounts when they have been working normally for years. This is our 6th and probably the final year of using QBO. We are currently looking to get rid of the product all due to their crappy, horrible, non-responsive, and disorganized lack of support.
- Easy to get reports.
- Very fluid chart of accounts.
- Good dashboard where I can see my important financial concerns.
- Customer service is nil.
- Tech support is very difficult and time consuming to work with.
- Cases and case numbers get lost or are not entered properly meaning start all over.
- Automatic matching is very unreliable and if not closely watched your finances may be wrong.
If you are not accounting savvy you need a bookkeeper. The program is not designed for a parttime user.
The "Bookkeeping Live" service that they offer is good and priced decently.
Before the bank feeds crapped out (and their support can't fix) the system was good.
- Ease of use
- Simple to understand
- I think some of the reports that you can generate are designed for as if you are an accountant or have a background in finance. It would be nice for them to be a little more straightforward or the terminology more simple and straightforward.
- It sometimes takes days and days to receive the money that you are sent, meaning that sending payments through your bank could likely be quicker and easier.
- Streamline quarterly billing. By creating a recurring sales receipt that goes out to my clients, it saves me time each quarter by not having to manually push them through.
- The secure portal (attachments) enables me to quickly upload monthly credit card and bank account statements to my bookkeeper for reconciliation purposes.
- Mobile access seems confusing at times due to a slightly different interface on the mobile app compared to the online version.
- ACH and credit card process fees, while norm for the industry, seem like they should be reduced given the overall size of the QuickBooks organization.
Every small business should use QuickBooks Online!
- Connects to banking for daily updates.
- Shows profit and loss at a glance.
- It is sometimes hard to find the functions that I need.
- At times it could be more user-friendly.
Feature Rich but a Little Sluggish
- Large list of features. There is a lot of functionality packed into QuickBooks Online. It can fill the role of multiple other tools.
- Being the industry standard. Need an app to interface with QuickBooks Online? It will. Need to connect an accountant? They all know how to use it.
- Constant innovation. New features get added constantly and improved constantly.
- Sluggish platform. The interface itself is slick, but slower than it needs to be. A lot of time is wasted waiting for loading.
- Service unavailability. At times certain parts of the QuickBooks Online platform go down. It's more frequent than it should be.
Keeps things easy and up to date
- Syncing financial data
- Tracking invoices
- Tracking and sorting credit card transactions
- Creating checks was buggy sometimes
I use QuickBooks Online to generate P&L reports and reconcile all of our bank accounts and credit cards.
- Integrations with different services, such as Bill.com and Float.
- Our P&L is really clean now. We transitioned from Cash to Accrual in 2017 and QBO has helped tremendously.
- Customizing invoices using a template was something we took advantage of, since our old customers were used to an existing format.
- The user management has been broken at times. I had a support ticket out for nearly a year before my issue was resolved.
- They've increased the price recently and I wasn't expecting it. Although, it's still a value for us.
- The Mac app has been unstable in the past. Fortunately you can still use the website in the rare case that the desktop app fails to load.
QuickBooks Online is all you need!
- I like to create my own reports and can quickly access them and easily change them as needed.
- This is our second year of implementing our budget into the software; it is a great feature to add to my reports and helps to keep us on track.
- Recording expenses from our credit card is a great tool and saves me a lot of time.
- The invoicing function lacks customization options.
- The software does not allow you to have multiple screens open at one time.
- Setting up the reoccurring payments feature is difficult.
- The user interface is clean and things are easy to find. This saves us time from having to look for things we need. If we can't find something, the Help and Search features are easy to use.
- There is a bar graph at the top of my Customers page that shows a breakdown of overdue invoices, open invoices, and those that have been paid in the last 30 days. This is nice because I can see all this information quickly when I need it.
- We can customize invoices as much as we need to and it is very user-friendly. We can email individual invoices or in bulk to save time. We can send invoice reminders and statements in a flash as well. All of these things help us get paid on time.
- I've had a hard time linking Quickbooks with my bank account and then categorizing my income/expenses. I'm not sure why, but I wish there was someone who could help with this.
- I wish that I could make the emailed invoices come from my own email address so they have less of a chance of going to clients' spam inboxes.
- It's a little annoying that they really try to push the Online version versus the software version. I asked a sales rep on the online chat about it once and he really tried to discourage me, saying that they don't offer ANY support if you have the software. I suppose they make more money with online subscriptions.
- Easy to access from any computer. As long as you can check your email for the verification code, you can access your QuickBooks Online file from any computer.
- Download activity from your bank or credit card account. QuickBooks Online makes it easy to download the activity from most banks and major credit cards and to review and post that activity to the books.
- Statement reconciliations. The reconciliation function makes it easy to do bank reconciliations or reconcile credit card statements. You can edit from the reconciliation screen, or easily click to edit a transaction if needed.
- Customizing reports. The Customize screen is clunky. For instance, it is harder than it should be to show a Debit and Credit columns instead of just an Amount. It takes several clicks and dragging.
- The payroll module is awkward and rigid. There is almost no option for customization or correction. The reports are terrible and almost impossible to convert for use in excel format. Any correction or alteration involves a call to customer service when it should just be a simple fix (as it is in the desktop version of QuickBooks payroll). I avoid using QuickBooks Online payroll if at all possible.
- Preparing 1099. Working in the Forms 1099 wizard is no good. You cannot easily go back once you click on a link. The filters reset and you have to start over. You cannot scroll or sort by amount, you have to page through sometimes dozens of screens to review the items.
Online is so easy to access and stay up to date
- The online banking is very helpful with balancing my accounts. I like the merging of entries.
- The categories help me budget and plan my income and expense workflow.
- The merge of credit cards into our account is helpful in tracking.
- It is sometimes time intensive to label each transaction.
- I like that it merges the online account into my ledger, but the repeat entries don't always categorize as I like.
- Great for setting budgets and tracking.
- Great for seeing the overall picture of your business at any point of time.
- Great for comparing year to year and month to month.
QuickBooks Online Pros and Cons
- Sync with online banking and credit card accounts
- Integration with third-party apps
- Data is always backed up
- Data is available anywhere there is an internet connection
- Inventory tracking for clients with huge turnover, backorders (there are third-party app integrations that work on a smaller level, but we had to go to QuickBooks Enterprise Hosted for one of our large retail clients because of the more robust inventory reporting features).
- Pricing continues to go up over time.
- While great for the average business owner, there are a few features that are built-in to virtually all professional accounting systems that I believe they should make available at least in the Accountant version of QBO (things like closing distributions into retained earnings when closing an S Corp's books for the year).
QuickBooks Online
- Ease of use
- Make changes to program more often rather than each year
- Ability to have access to business financials as long as you have an internet connection
- Reports look different on QuickBooks Online from QuickBooks PC verison
- Not able to see AJE report with QuickBooks Online (or at least easily)