Item: QuickBooks Online
Rating: 1
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The only department that used it was the finance department. It was a short term solution for a rapidly growing company. It was used for over a year there before transitioning to Oracle's netsuite. We used the system for the entirety of the accounting function for which I oversaw payroll and accounts payable.

Pros and Cons

User Friendly
Easy to learn
Works well for small, low employee count companies with inexperienced accounting personnel

Lack of accounting controls across the board
Updates are pushed down from QBO that affect current GL mapping within payroll without notification or explanation of changes
Lack of ability to truly track audit trail items, QBO does not track everything
It will let you adjust or put anything, anywhere, therefore allowing easy non accountant users to make errors

Return on Investment

Easy to use when company small
Streamlined for SMALL business to do full cycle accounting
intuitive for non accountants

Alternatives Considered

NetSuite ERP

QuickBooks pales in comparison to netsuite. Netsuite is a fully functional cloud based ERP system that is a mid tier solution for companies that have outgrown small business solutions. It was intuitive and allowed for full cycle accounting, procurement processing with requisitions, advanced approvals with delegatory permissions. QuickBooks was not a full company solution unlike netsuite. We were able to utilize netsuite across the board instead of only in accounting.

Key Insights

Do you think QuickBooks Online delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with QuickBooks Online's feature set?

Did QuickBooks Online live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of QuickBooks Online go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy QuickBooks Online again?

Other Software Used

NetSuite ERP, SAP Enterprise Portal, Sage Intacct

Usability

QuickBooks is fine for a small business with very repititious sales/AR, as well as low employee count with few changes to employee personnel. It allows those without an accounting degree to do full cycle accounting to an extent. It is not great at this because the non accountant user has full free reign to do whatever they can figure out on their own within the system with few if any checks and balances in place to make sure there is proper usage.

Support Rating

We tried to call QuickBooks support on MANY occasions and were unable to get solutions to the issues we were having. Even the issues that were "resolved" by customer support, the answers they gave were usually incorrect, which we would have to learn the hard way. Online support was a joke as there was never a clear way to get to a specific topic with real answers.

Likelihood to Recommend

QuickBooks is NOT something I would recommend to a colleague. It is antiquated, and not well designed. It is designed for the small business owner who needs to do very little detailed accounting work, and is handled by someone without accounting knowledge. otherwise as an accountant I would constantly run into things where QuickBooks would make recommendations that did not make sense for true accounting and GAAP.

QuickBooks Online Review

Overall Satisfaction with QuickBooks Online