If you're a Marketing Agency, this may not be the best solution for you.
April 06, 2021
If you're a Marketing Agency, this may not be the best solution for you.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with QuickBooks Online
We initially began using QuickBooks Online as our financial reporting and invoicing system and began using it for time tracking in January of 2021 which includes Payroll and associated taxes. As an agency, we bill our clients for our time (our primary revenue stream), so we try to use it to manage how much time we spend vs. how many hours the client has authorized.
- The canned reports are very helpful, and the ability to customize them makes them even more useful.
- I use the Dashboard daily since it provides a good snapshot of our monthly status.
- Views by Customer are helpful, allowing me to see invoices and payments in one place, which I had been doing on a spreadsheet.
- The invoices tab lets me see which invoices are due at a glance rather than having to dig through each customer record.
- It times out too quickly, frustrating that I have to log in again on the same computer multiple times a day.
- The chart of accounts is frustrating, we need to find a better way to tell people how to categorize expenses. And it's not set up very well for a SERVICE business, specifically an agency.
- Really hating Quickbooks Time (TSheets) that we moved to in January 2021. We made the move with the promise that it would associate time with the related client billing, and we take great pains to make sure time entries are added to the invoices when we create them, but when I go to pull a report by customer it doesn't show the related time expense for an accurate P&L. Tragic mistake to have chosen TSheets, we did it only at our Accountant's recommendation because he could help us with implementing it, but I ended up paying him a couple thousand dollars for his help which was really just a learning curve. And it still doesn't give us the info we wanted. If I had it to do again, I would have chosen an app for our time tracking that was created for agencies, NOT TSheets.
- Helps us see slow-paying clients, which impacts profitability
- Very helpful for getting the info we needed for PPP loan forgiveness
- Cash Flow reporting is something we weren't doing at all prior to QuickBooks
Peers in our industry who are using FreshBooks seem to be exceptionally happy with it, putting me on the defensive to stand up for QuickBooks. I don't seem to win those arguments though, but perhaps I need to be more of a power user with Quickbooks to up my game in that particular debate. It works for the most part for our purposes, which is just giving us the basic financial reports and professional-looking invoices that our clients can pay online. I do wish we had chosen something though that was built for agencies that are in the service industry, that's a drawback, and we would like to be able to track budget vs. actual progress on jobs. It would be great if they had a model for how to set up your account if you're an agency/service business, but I still haven't found that anywhere.
Do you think QuickBooks Online delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with QuickBooks Online's feature set?
No
Did QuickBooks Online live up to sales and marketing promises?
No
Did implementation of QuickBooks Online go as expected?
No
Would you buy QuickBooks Online again?
No