It's accrual world, but QuickBooks Online Advanced can make it better!
February 26, 2021
It's accrual world, but QuickBooks Online Advanced can make it better!
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with QuickBooks Online Advanced
I've used QuickBooks Online Advanced at two clients. At both clients, it was used in conjunction with a QBO desktop version like Enterprise. At one client, it was specifically used for accounting for the company's sole international subsidiary. QBO Advanced allowed the company to have users in their US and European offices working together without the need for a large investment in a remote server to host a desktop version. My other client is a new, small start-up company in its beginning stages. They initially started out with QB Enterprise desktop version but quickly transitioned to QBO Advanced since it has all the features the client needs to get their finances on the right track from the outset and due to its versatility. Plus, with so many people working remotely in today's society, QuickBooks Online Advanced makes working together seamless.
- QBO Advanced makes entering and editing transactions simple. Some of the big ERP systems are very clunky when it comes to editing transactions and some don't allow editing of transactions at all, but QuickBooks Online Advanced makes it simple and tracks all changes in the background so you can easily go back and see the Audit Trail.
- QBO Advanced is great for invoicing as well. It allows the user to create the invoice and email it directly from QBO. When the user receives the emailed invoice, they can pay directly from the email, making it simple for your customers to pay you as well.
- QBO's ability to link directly to your bank account makes loading cash transactions simple and efficient. It also makes the reconciliation process go smoother by eliminating the human error factor inherent with manual data entry.
- QuickBooks Online Advanced is also great for managing your sales tax, or in the case of my client in the UK, managing, filing and paying VAT taxes. In QBO Advanced, everything is done for you. When filing time comes around, you only need to review the details, then with a few clicks, you can have your tax return filed and paid. It was very helpful to me when I was learning the ins and outs of UK's VAT filing process.
- QBO Advanced could improve its data upload features. A common upload for accountants is large, recurring (or non-recurring) journal entries. While it can be done in versions of QBO, it is not an easy feature to find, learn or do in practice.
- Reporting is an area where I sometimes hit a wall (and resort to Excel to create exactly what I need). QBO's integrated reporting features some great standard reports, but custom reports are not as great. Users must start with a standard report and customize it with filters and other criteria, but you can't just create a new report from scratch, something for which I often find a need.
- Another area I've had issues with is applying credits to both vendors and customers. If you have QBO set up to automatically apply credits, QBO will apply it to the oldest invoice. But often I want to apply a credit to a specific invoice. You can delete the entry that is automatically generated easy enough, but if you have a large number of bills, manually scrolling through the long list in the Bill Payment screen to find the right bill and credit memo can be time consuming. Trying to do it in a batch can also be problematic because the batch payment feature doesn't give the user enough flexibility in choosing how to apply the credit memos to the selected bills.
- With one of my clients, the UK VAT tax filing automation was a life-saver. When we did our first few filings manually, the process was slow and prone to errors. It took over 60 hours to review and verify each transaction on the report, then manually prepare the filing and submit it to HMRC. After setting up the automation, this time was reduced to about 2 hours to review the reports generated from QuickBooks Online and submit the filing (a 97% increase in efficiency). Better yet, QuickBooks Online automatically reminds you when you need to file your taxes, so you won't miss a deadline and get hit with significant penalties.
- The invoicing feature allowed my client to bill and receive payments within 10 days rather than 30 days before implementing this feature, which means the frequency of cash inflows increased by 67%!
The setup process is very simple and easy to implement. When I first started working with QuickBooks Online Advanced, I had never used it before, but I was quickly able to pick up what I needed to know to get the company set up and running within a few hours. Using data uploads, you can quickly populate beginning balances and have a simply company ready to go within a day. For larger companies, it may take a few days to complete the process of formatting the data uploads, but it's still the same process regardless of the size of the company, so the basic setup process is the same. QBO online training is very helpful and I have trained many people on the use of QB products, including QBO Advanced. Most people are able to grasp the training very quickly and can be up and running in no time.
I'm based in Texas, but I've worked side by side with employees across the United States and in the United Kingdom using QuickBooks Online Advanced. From my office in Texas, I was able to process and file the company's UK VAT filings. I could send invoices directly to our UK customers and everything worked seamlessly. I've work[ed] with AP Clerks, payroll processors, managers, and others around the US and UK using QuickBooks Online Advanced and it was as easy as 1-2-3, literally! If an AP Clerk in England was having trouble entering a bill, she could contact me and I could jump right into QBO, review her work, and explain how to fix the issue virtually instantly. A significant part of my work with QBO Advanced was after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and everyone was working remotely, but going remote did not impact my work at all since I'd already been working remote through the use of QBO Advanced, email, and videoconferencing software. So, when many people's work was impacted by the pandemic, my transition to full-time remote work was smooth as silk, thanks in large part to QuickBooks Online Advanced.
While I haven't personally worked with the project tracking features in QBO Advanced, some of my clients' subsidiaries use them extensively for tracking internal projects from inception to completion. Having all the project data separately tracked allows the companies to look at various KPI for the different projects to determine profitability, efficiency and other variables and compare them across the projects to help drive future business decisions when considering new projects to undertake.
QuickBooks Online Advanced is a highly powerful tool and provides the backbone for any accounting/finance department; however QB Enterprise is a much more robust product with more features. However, QB Enterprise requires a much higher investment in software and hardware to initially implement, so if you're running a small business on a budget, you may not need all those extra features and QBO Advanced will easily fill your needs. Also, QB Enterprise is not as user-friendly or portable as QBO Advanced, so if having quick, easy, remote access to your accounting software is what you want, then QuickBooks Online Advanced is definitely a worthwhile investment.