It's okay, but plan to spend some time categorizing your entries.
August 06, 2018

It's okay, but plan to spend some time categorizing your entries.

Tim Vahsholtz | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with QuickBooks Self-Employed

I use QuickBooks Self-Employed for my sole proprietor business. (I also use Quicken, which I find to be a little easier to manage, actually.) My main reason for choosing QuickBooks Self-Employed was the mileage tracking feature, as well as the ability to have transactions auto loaded. The mileage feature works pretty well, but the auto transaction feature tended to miscategorize many of the entries. This resulted in a lot of extra time spent.
  • QuickBooks Self-Employed does keep a running total of your income and estimated taxes. Of course, this requires that your entries are accurate.
  • The mileage feature is particularly helpful. One just needs to either use the phone app in conjunction with QuickBooks Self-Employed, or keep a log of all mileage.
  • When tax time comes around, it's easy to use TurboTax software and import your data from QuickBooks.
  • Automatic entries could be improved. QuickBooks Self Employed requires you to login every day or two to check on your entries to ensure they are in the correct category. You can mark certain entries for certain categories
  • I find the whole site to run a little slow. While going through and marking the entries to the correct category, the page will sometimes get stuck and entries won't update very quickly. It slows down the process.
  • Overall, QuickBooks has a fairly steep learning curve. It does try to intuitively do some things for you, but if you have to go and correct them, I think you spend more time, and it defeats the purpose of the software.
  • A positive impact on my business is, of course, keeping track of income and expenses, and approximate quarterly taxes. QuickBooks is a little better at this than Quicken, I think.
  • By using QuickBooks (and Quicken) it saves me having to spend money on an accountant. (At least up to this point.)
  • However, the time I spend on daily or weekly entries takes billable time away from other things.
Alternatively, I use Quicken to manage bank entries and create reports for tax purposes.
QuickBooks Self-Employed is a very detailed software to keep track of your finances and tax obligations. I'm reviewing the online version here and honestly, if you are into QuickBooks, it might be worth looking into the stand-alone software version. Ideally, if you work remotely, in various places and on more than one computer (desktop or laptop) then QuickBooks online is a good idea. But the slow interface is troubling to me and I spend a lot of time going through and correcting entries QuickBooks imports from my bank account. In fact, I've gone back to my stand-alone version of Quicken.

QuickBooks Self-Employed Feature Ratings

Accounts payable
Not Rated
Accounts receivable
Not Rated
Cash management
5
Bank reconciliation
Not Rated
Expense management
5
Time tracking
Not Rated
Fixed asset management
Not Rated
Multi-currency support
Not Rated
Multi-division support
Not Rated
Regulations compliance
Not Rated
Electronic tax filing
5
Self-service portal
Not Rated
Global Financial Support
Not Rated
Primary and Secondary Ledgers
Not Rated
Intercompany Accounting
Not Rated
Localizations
Not Rated
Journals and Reconciliations
1
Enterprise Accounting
Not Rated
Configurable Accounting
Not Rated
Centralized Rules Framework
Not Rated
Standardized Processes
3
Inventory tracking
Not Rated
Automatic reordering
Not Rated
Location management
Not Rated
Manufacturing module
Not Rated
Pricing
Not Rated
Order entry
Not Rated
Credit card processing
Not Rated
Cost of goods sold
Not Rated
Order Orchestration
Not Rated
End-to-end order visibility
Not Rated
Order exception Resolution
Not Rated
Pay calculation
Not Rated
Benefit plan administration
Not Rated
Direct deposit files
Not Rated
Salary revision and increment management
Not Rated
Reimbursement management
Not Rated
Dashboards
6
Standard reports
5
Custom reports
5
Not Rated
API for custom integration
Not Rated
Plug-ins
Not Rated
Not Rated
Role-based user permissions
Not Rated
Single sign-on capability
Not Rated