Instead of showing clear images of your cash balance, outstanding invoices, and upcoming bills like the QuickBooks Online dash, the desktop version’s dash is a flowing series of connected folders and files. Unless you’re an accountant, the learning curve will likely be a little higher for you than it would with QuickBooks Online. Different software packages include licenses for 1 to 10 users, up to 20 users, up to 30 users, and up to 40 users. The A/P section focuses on vendor management, bill management, bill payments, and other payable-related transactions. A/P features include creating vendors and bills, recording purchase orders and converting them to bills, creating service items, and recording full or partial bill payments. While both QuickBooks Online and Desktop are supported by a large network of independent ProAdvisors, it’s much easier to share your books with your ProAdvisor using QuickBooks Online.
QuickBooks Online VS Desktop: Features
Each Desktop plan comes with one user; additional licenses cost extra. For $27.50 per month for the first three months, then $55 per month after that, get up to three users, manage and pay bills and track time with its Essentials plan, which is its most popular plan. Upgrade to Plus for $42.50 per month for the first three months, then $85 per month afterward, and you will receive access for up to five users, inventory tracking and the ability to track project profitability. The two versions are independent of each other, which means the data you enter on Desktop doesn’t sync to the Online version and vice-versa. If QuickBooks Online and Desktop are on your list of potential accounting solutions, you may want to also consider some similar alternatives.
What stands out most about QuickBooks Online when compared to Desktop is that QBO is cloud-based accounting software. Because of this, QuickBooks Online is much easier to use and has many more integrations and time-saving invoicing automations, such as auto-scheduling. While we’re top 12 key business principles examples you need to know on the topic of invoicing, QuickBooks Online has the superior product, offering six invoice templates and multilingual invoicing in six languages.
All feedback, positive or negative, helps us to improve the way we help small businesses. This easy-to-use and feature-rich software is ideal if you have no bookkeeping experience and want top-notch customer support. Both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Pro and Premier have notoriously poor customer support (QuickBooks Enterprise support has better priority support). The online version of QuickBooks is much easier to use than the desktop version. Even though QB Desktop has more comprehensive features in general, there are some key features that only QuickBooks Online has, such as bookkeeping support.
How We Evaluated QuickBooks Online vs Desktop
Features include mileage tracking, basic reporting, income and expense tracking, capture and organize receipts and estimation of quarterly taxes. If you invoke the guarantee, QuickBooks will conduct a full n evaluation of the Live Bookkeeper’s work. Work from anywhere with the power of the cloud and real-time, secure collaboration. The key difference between QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop is how the data is stored and hosted — cloud vs. desktop. Meaghan Senn is a writer from North Carolina with experience in B2B, technology and digital marketing topics.
Why QuickBooks Online is a better choice
- You can send email invites to your accountant from within the software.
- Just know that doing so waives your option to get 50% off your QuickBooks Online subscription for your first three months.
- QuickBooks Online is cheaper than QuickBooks Desktop if you need multiple users.
However, QuickBooks also provided help bubbles and other guidance throughout the platform when we opened certain features for the first time. Though QuickBooks Desktop is more expensive and can be more confusing to learn, it has its place with large businesses that need advanced accounting. Both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop are designed to handle small business’s bandwidth and needs. Strictly based on ease of use and basic functionality, QuickBooks Online is an easier-to-adopt option that can handle small business accounting needs well. You can (almost) always trust your local access, and QuickBooks Desktop reinforces that by keeping your accounting data on your local drive or network. As I was testing them out, I found QuickBooks Online a lot sleeker, more modern, and easier to navigate than QuickBooks Desktop.
The dashboard is super intuitive with large, easy-to-understand charts, and the mobile app is similarly easy to use. The maximum amount of users you can have with a QuickBooks Online subscription is 25 (plus an accountant). If you need more users than that, you can contact QuickBooks Online’s customer support to see if you can create a custom plan with custom user access. Otherwise, you’ll need QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise, which supports up to 40 users.
Working from the cloud means you need an internet connection, so a poor signal or an intermittent connection can be an issue. Its highest-tiered plan is the Advanced option, which costs $100 per month for the first three months, then $200 per month after that. QuickBooks Online gives small-to-mid-sized businesses the ability to host their accounting on a cloud-based system, allowing for access and collaboration across devices.
The assisted migration offer is eligible to Desktop customers that are migrating their data and setting up QuickBooks Online. Personalized setup is limited to a 1-hour session with a customer success product expert. Intuit reserves the right to limit the number of sessions and the length and scope of each session. Assisted migration results may vary based on business complexity and file size.