New User of QuickBooks Online Advanced - Getting Organized and starting the new year out right!
Overall Satisfaction with QuickBooks Online Advanced
As we grow the business, it has become very important to have consistent and organized projects, estimates, and invoices all in one place and accessible online by everyone on the team, whenever they need to see it. [QuickBooks Online] Advanced was the right move for us as we ruled out some other more costly project management solutions. Within the first month, correcting some very basic issues with invoicing and estimates, as well as, connecting our client list to transactions, has really helped us see the data we need to manage the business.
Pros
- The workflow from new client, to estimate, to invoice, to confirming the deposit is very smooth once you get the hang of it.
- Creating a Project upfront helps keep us organized as we can track profit and loss by customer.
- Having a regular look at where expenses are categorized and discussing amongst the team has helped us improve our management data and decision making.
Cons
- Would really like to see more robust project management features and custom data fields. That way we can work in one program, online, all together.
- Assigning a specific vendor to an expense or income category can be tricky at first if you don't know where to look.
- Sometimes I just want to see the current clients that I have projects with. Maybe there is a way to have those filter when searching for clients. Currently, I select customers and type in their name.
- Quick insight into who are main clients are.
- Easily see what has been invoiced and accounts receivable.
We transitioned and uploaded from QB Desktop version all in a few hours. Even without going through specific training modules, we were able to get up and running. Updating customer and vendor information has been great as we are able to work together with our bookkeeper online. Agreeing upon the right chart of accounts has been a yearly debate, this year was much easier thanks to [QuickBooks Online] Advanced.
Our accountant and bookkeeper both live in different states, and our office and other part-time employees are also each in different states. Now we can all see the data realtime and keep consistency with invoice numbers and categorizing expenses. Really cuts down on phone calls and e-mails.
We need to be able to send out estimates and then invoice quickly once the project starts. We also utilize the ability to invoice partial charges at various stages or collect an upfront retainer. The flexibility to attach a manual invoice helps us meet our clients needs, while maintaining a consistent work flow for us.
At this point, I'd say cost was a major factor in our decision. The features and connectivity of BQE to QuickBooks is really great, but it was more than we needed at this point. Training costs were very high for other similar products and we felt that a program shouldn't be cumbersome to use or it won't get used. So far, keeping up with data that we need to track in QuickBooks Online Advanced has been very manageable. We have a long way to go as we just started this year, but we are very happy with the features and progress made.
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