Which quickbooks

Simple Start includes payroll processing, which allows you to calculate and track payroll taxes. QuickBooks Online Simple Start is also preferable if you need to track assets and liabilities and use automated sales tax on invoices. If you need a dedicated expert to handle your ongoing bookkeeping work, you can sign up for QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping , available in Simple Start and all other higher plans. Takeaway: Schedule C businesses should go with the higher-priced Simple Start if they have employees, need to charge customers sales tax, or need a balance sheet showing assets and liabilities.

The advantages of Essentials vs Simple Start are the ability to manage unpaid bills and assign hours worked to specific customers. In addition to helping you pay bills on time, recording unpaid bills is necessary if you need to produce accrual-based financial statements.

Very small businesses that bill customers for hourly services usually find that QuickBooks Essentials meets their needs. Takeaway: Most companies that choose Essentials over Simple Start do so because they need more than one user. However, service-based businesses that charge customers by the hour should also choose Essentials to assign time to customers.

The most crucial improvements are that Plus allows your company to track inventory costs and calculate profit and loss by project. Other helpful features that are included in Plus, but not available with Essentials, are budgets, classes, customer types, locations, and unlimited report-only users.

Businesses that sell products and need to keep track of the quantity on hand and cost of products sold should subscribe to QuickBooks Plus. While Plus is the best QuickBooks Online option for retailers, wholesalers, and contractors, you should also consider checking out our QuickBooks Desktop vs QuickBooks Online guide as QuickBooks Desktop offers more features and flexibility for dealing with inventory and projects.

Takeaway : Retailers and wholesalers should choose Plus so they can track the cost of inventory. Contractors should also choose plus to track the profitability of individual projects.

QuickBooks Advanced has many bells and whistles compared to QuickBooks Plus, but no additional features that are crucial to good bookkeeping. However, as your business grows from small to midsize, you will probably need to upgrade from Plus to Advanced for the additional users. In addition to allowing up to 25 users, Advanced removes the limitations on the number of classes, locations, and accounts imposed by Plus.

This makes Advanced ideal for a business with a growing staff, especially considering the maximum number of users for QuickBooks Online Plus is only five. QuickBooks Online Advanced is also the only product with a dedicated success manager and free training for your entire staff.

The most likely limitation that will cause you to upgrade is requiring more than five full-access users. QuickBooks Online Plus is the best option for most small businesses, especially those that deal with inventory or large projects. However, if you are self-employed with no employees, then QuickBooks Self-Employed is a good low-cost option. The remaining products — the QuickBooks lineup — do have business features.

But they do not all have the same features. Depending upon what you sell and how you operate your business, some of these products will be obvious wrong choices. And some of them will be right for right now, keeping in mind that you may find it useful to change products as you grow and your business needs change. Why so many product names? Is Intuit just trying to confuse us?

We can partially blame the internet for the incredible range of product names. When QuickBooks started out, software was something you bought at a physical store, loaded onto your computer, and used on your personal workstation. They include:. You can think of QuickBooks Self-Employed as Mint plus some features an independent contractor or freelancer with no employees might find helpful.

With the Self-Employed product, you can send invoices, track mileage, and keep images of expense receipts right in the app. You might find you outgrow Self-Employed quickly if you want to use your data to help you make decisions for the future forecasting or even just to make simple profit and loss statements. If you have employees or inventory, QuickBooks Self-Employed is probably not the right product for you.

All business owners benefit from QuickBooks Desktop reports. They help you see at a glance how your business is doing. The reporting benefits include the typical profit and loss statement, balance statements, cash flow projections, outstanding invoice reports, and best-selling item reports, to name just a few reports all businesses will benefit from. Beyond the more common reports though, QuickBooks Desktop products track employee information, too.

By using the free TSheets by QuickBooks app in conjunction with their QuickBooks Desktop product, businesses can keep track of employee time and employee-related expenses.

If your business employs several employees who perform a lot of project work, this tracking is especially helpful. It gets down to the granular level — if you want to find out how much the business paid for particular employees to work on particular projects, you can! These programs also help you calculate sales and income tax. Deciding which QuickBooks Desktop Version is right for you depends on which features you need or want and deciding how much money you want to spend. For example, if you know you will want more than 3 users to access your QuickBooks Desktop product, you also know QuickBooks Pro will not work for you but QuickBooks Premiere might.

He most recently spent two years as the accountant at a commercial roofing company utilizing QuickBooks Desktop to compile financials, job cost, and run payroll. Mark Calatrava has been working for Fit Small Business as a review writer specializing in accounting software since Sign up to receive more well-researched small business articles and topics in your inbox, personalized for you.

Fit Small Business content and reviews are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More. Published July 26, Table of Contents. Simultaneous users: QuickBooks Online comes with a set number of users included in your subscription price, and all users can simultaneously access the program. QuickBooks Desktop can have multiple users set up, but only one user at a time can access the program unless you purchase additional licenses.

Mobile app: QuickBooks Online has a mobile app capable of performing all the functions needed to keep your books. The only mobile app available for Desktop is to capture receipts, and it requires a Plus subscription to Desktop. Future development: New features and improvements to QuickBooks Online have been developed at an incredible pace during the past couple of years. Pricing: QuickBooks Online is a monthly subscription that includes a set number of users. QuickBooks Desktop can either be purchased for a one-time fee that varies with the number of users, or as an annual subscription with some additional benefits.

See our pricing section below for more information. Sharing with your tax pro: You can give an external accountant complete access to your QuickBooks Online company without it counting towards your maximum users. Any changes made by your accountant must then be imported into your QuickBooks Desktop company file.

QuickBooks Desktop has editions for construction, retail, professional services, manufacturing and wholesale, and nonprofit companies that include industry-specific reports and workflows. Customer service: All QuickBooks Online subscriptions include unlimited customer service. QuickBooks Desktop does not include customer service unless you purchase the software as an annual subscription. When to Use QuickBooks Online You should consider QuickBooks Online if you need to provide access to your books for more than one person, including an outside accountant, such as a tax professional.

Question 1. How many hours per day will you or your primary bookkeeper spend in QuickBooks? Question 1 of 3. More than 4 hours. How often do you or your bookkeeper contact an external accountant or CPA to help correct errors or give advice on your bookkeeping?

Question 2 of 3. Once per Week. Once per Month. Once per Quarter. Question 3 of 3. A service industry. Construction, manufacturing or wholesale, or retail. To determine which version is best for you, read our comparison of QuickBooks Desktop products.

QuickBooks Desktop Home Page. Tim Yoder Tim Yoder is a subject matter expert at Fit Small Business focusing on small business bookkeeping, accounting, and tax content. Mark Calatrava Mark Calatrava has been working for Fit Small Business as a review writer specializing in accounting software since