QuickBooks is the most popular accounting software suite that is widely used by small businesses to manage their financial transactions. You can use it to invoice customers, pay bills, generate reports, and print reports to be used to prepare taxes. The QuickBooks product line includes several solutions to support different business needs, including QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Payroll, QuickBooks Time, and QuickBooks Checking.
QuickBooks Products
Being one of the top accounting software providers in the market today, QuickBooks offers supplementary products to augment your overall QuickBooks experience. These include:
- QuickBooks Checking: You can open a business checking account with QuickBooks Checking for free and enjoy no monthly fees or account minimums. Instant deposit is available at no extra cost.
- QuickBooks Payroll: With this, you can manage payroll easily. What’s more, you can track employee hours and billable time effortlessly with QuickBooks Payroll and QuickBooks Online.
- QuickBooks Payments: Through this product, you can integrate payments seamlessly on QuickBooks Online. Get paid easily and process online payments effortlessly.
- QuickBooks Bill Pay: This new solution allows you to automate your accounts payable (A/P) workflows in QuickBooks Online.
- QuickBooks Time: Formerly known as TSheets, QuickBooks Time offers time-tracking features for employees for tracking client or project billable hours.
- QuickBooks Live: This is an online bookkeeping service wherein you can get a ProAdvisor to work with your bookkeeping needs.
- QuickBooks Capital: You can get additional financing options up to $150,000 with this product.
What Does QuickBooks Do?
- Create, send, and track invoices.
- Add and Track bills and expenses.
- Schedule bill payments with QuickBooks Bill Pay.
- Customize your expense classifications with a chart of accounts (COA).
- Print financial statements for your business.
- Generate consolidated multicompany reports.
- Track employee time and expenses.
- Monitor project profitability.
- Manage payroll.
- Track cost of goods sold (COGS) and inventory.
- Simplify taxes.
- Accept online payments.
- Scan receipts.
- Track mileage.
- Connect your apps.
- Perform accounting tasks on the go.
- Access your data through the QuickBooks Online desktop app.
- Collaborate with a QuickBooks ProAdvisor.
- Manage sales taxes.
- Manage and track fixed assets.
All of the features discussed and images presented below are primarily based on the cloud-based version, QuickBooks Online, which is our overall best small business accounting software. Other versions, such as QuickBooks Desktop, can handle most of these tasks but they may have other features unavailable in QuickBooks Online.
1. Create, Send & Track Invoices
All QuickBooks Online plans allow you to create invoices and either print them or email them to customers—you can learn how to do this through our tutorial on how to create and send invoices in QuickBooks Online. You can create a new invoice from scratch or by converting an existing estimate into an invoice.
QuickBooks Online is known for its professional-looking invoices—making it our overall best invoicing software. To customize your invoice, you can upload your company logo, select from different templates, change the invoice colors, edit invoice fields, and add personalized messages for customers.
Below is a sample invoice created in QuickBooks Online:
Since our last update: In the new QuickBooks Online version, you can view the final PDF look of your invoice as you input the details. This means you can customize your invoices on the spot without repeatedly clicking the preview button.
To help you stay on top of your receivables, QuickBooks will record the income and track how much each customer owes you automatically. You can view the number of your outstanding invoices—known as your accounts receivable (A/R)—and how many days they’re overdue by running an A/R aging report.
2. Add and Track Bills & Expenses
QuickBooks allows you to enter new bills and expenses and keep track of them automatically by connecting your bank and credit card accounts to the platform. By doing so, all your expenses are downloaded and categorized automatically. If you need to track a check or cash transaction manually, you can record it directly in QuickBooks in a few minutes. If you need a guide, you can check out our tutorial on how to import transactions into QuickBooks Online.
You can also add bills in QuickBooks when you receive them so that QuickBooks can help you track upcoming payments. Our guide on how to enter bills into QuickBooks Online covers this process in detail. Meanwhile, you can ensure that you pay your bills on time by creating an A/P report. This report will provide you with the details of your current and past-due bills. The ability to pay bills and track unpaid bills is available in QuickBooks Online Essentials and higher plans.
3. Schedule Bill Payments With QuickBooks Bill Pay
You can set up scheduled bill payments in QuickBooks using QuickBooks Bill Pay, a new built-in feature that replaces the Bill Pay powered by Melio integration. Available in QuickBooks Online Essentials and higher plans, QuickBooks Bill Pay allows you to pay bills via bank transfer or check directly from QuickBooks in a few seconds and pay several bills at once.
You can access QuickBooks Bill Pay directly from within your QuickBooks Online account. Select Expenses in the left menu bar and then click on Bills. Next, choose Add bill or select an existing bill to pay. If it’s a new bill, click Save and Schedule Payment; if it’s an existing one, select Schedule Payment. QuickBooks will take you to the QuickBooks Bill subscription page where you can select a plan.
QuickBooks Bill Pay is available in three subscription options:
- Basic: Free; can process up to five free ACH payments monthly
- Premium: $30 per month; can process up to 40 free automated clearing house (ACH) payments monthly
- Elite: $90 per month; can process unlimited ACH payments
Additional ACH payments for Basic and Premium users cost 50¢ per transaction, and if you need expedited payments (typically the next business day), then you’ll pay $10 per transaction. Additionally, plans include automated bill creation and automatic categorization, but the higher versions include additional features, like unlimited 1099 filing and custom bill approval workflows. You can sign up for Premium and Elite with a 50% discount for three months.
Meanwhile, once you’re subscribed to your selected plan, you’ll be prompted to enter your details, such as business information, payment method, your bank account details, the payment method you’d like to use, and how your vendor would like to receive their payment.
Once QuickBooks Bill Pay is completely set up, select Schedule Payment, and you and your payee will receive email information. You will also be notified once the bill payment is complete.
To learn more about this new feature of QuickBooks Online, read our detailed review of QuickBooks Bill Pay.
4. Customize Your Expense Classifications With a COA
Your COA in QuickBooks provides a complete listing of all the accounts you need to track your financial data. These accounts are useful for tracking income, expenses, assets, liabilities, and equity accounts that might be required on your tax return.
It’ll make tax time easier if your Chart of Accounts includes all the line items required on your tax return. In addition to those line items, create enough detail in your Chart of Accounts to provide whatever information will help you better manage your business. Our tutorial on how to set up a COA in QuickBooks Online walks you through how to add, delete, and customize accounts.
5. Print Financial Statements for Your Business
By managing all of your cash inflow and outflow activities in QuickBooks, you can print financial statements that provide useful information about how your business is performing. Lenders often require financial statements when you apply for a small business loan or line of credit.
You can produce three primary financial statements in QuickBooks: Profit and Loss report, Balance Sheet report, and Statement of Cash Flows. Below is a brief description of each, along with a snapshot of what they look like in QuickBooks Online.
6. Generate Consolidated Multicompany Reports
Using the new Spreadsheet Sync feature, QuickBooks Online extracts financial data automatically and imports them into an Excel spreadsheet. Once the data is edited in Excel, you can send it back to QuickBooks Online easily. This feature is a great tool for companies with multiple QuickBooks Online company files, as it allows them to create consolidated multicompany reports.
Spreadsheet Sync lets you generate customized reports in a single spreadsheet using data from different QuickBooks Online company files. The spreadsheet is updated automatically based on the data from each connected file so that your report is always up-to-date.
7. Track Employee Time & Expenses
Employees or subcontractors can enter their own time as they progress through the day, or a bookkeeper can enter their weekly time if the employee submits a manual timesheet. Time entered and assigned to a customer will be available to add to the customer’s next invoice.
Also, any expense entered can be marked as billable and assigned to a customer. As with time, these billable expenses will be available to add to the customer’s next invoice. You don’t need the payroll add-on to track employee time for billing purposes. You need at least QuickBooks Essentials to track billable hours and Plus to track billable expenses.
You may be interested in our review of QuickBooks Time for details of the platform’s pricing and features.
8. Monitor Project Profitability
You can use QuickBooks Online Plus or Advanced to create and manage projects, assign income and wages to a project, and track expenses associated with labor and materials. QuickBooks Online’s project accounting module also allows you to generate project estimates and include inventories, labor, and sales taxes. You can monitor the profitability of each project you’re working on by generating a project profitability summary report.
If you need to compare actual and estimated project costs, then you will need to upgrade to QuickBooks Online Advanced. It’s a new feature that allows you to compare your projected expenses for a project and the actual costs incurred during its completion. This helps you better track whether each project is profitable or not.
9. Manage Payroll
Payroll is an area that you don’t want to skimp on and try to do manually. Mistakes made in calculating paychecks can result in steep penalties and unhappy employees. QuickBooks has its own payroll function that can calculate and run payroll as often as you need automatically.
When you enter employee time as discussed above, the hours not only flow to your invoices but also to the payroll module. This way, you can be confident that every hour you pay your employee is also considered for billing to a customer.
The best thing about using QuickBooks Payroll is that it’s integrated with QuickBooks, so your financial statements are always up to date as of the latest payroll run. You have to purchase a QuickBooks Payroll subscription to run payroll, but you have several levels of service to choose from to fit your needs.
Running your payroll through QuickBooks will allow you to:
- Pay employees with a check or direct deposit
- Calculate federal and state payroll taxes automatically
- Have QuickBooks fill in the payroll tax forms for you
- E-pay your payroll taxes directly from QuickBooks
Here’s a video link from Intuit on how small businesses use QuickBooks Payroll:
10. Track COGS and Inventory
Available in Plus and Advanced, the inventory management feature helps you track the quantity and cost of your inventory. As you sell inventory, QuickBooks will allocate a portion of your inventory to the cost of goods sold (COGS) automatically, which is an expense account that reduces your income. This allocation is a requirement for calculating taxable income and very cumbersome to do by hand. QuickBooks can also remind you to order inventory automatically when quantities are low.
Below is a sample Inventory Valuation Summary report from QuickBooks Online. This report shows a list of your inventory products, quantity on hand, average cost, and their total value:
11. Simplify Taxes
Perhaps the most important thing QuickBooks can do for your small business is to simplify tax time. By far, the largest headache in preparing a tax return is compiling your income and expenses.
If you use QuickBooks during the year, all you need to do at tax time is print your financial statements. Better yet, with QuickBooks Online, you can invite your tax preparer to access your account directly so that they can review your numbers and print whatever information they need to prepare your return.
12. Accept Online Payments
One of the best ways to improve your cash flow is to offer customers the option to pay their invoices online. You can add QuickBooks Payments (formerly known as Intuit Merchant Services) so that customers can pay online directly from their emailed invoice.
QuickBooks Payments is similar to other merchant services. However, because it’s integrated completely within QuickBooks, the sale, credit card fee, and cash deposit are all recorded automatically as they occur.
You can learn more about this solution through our QuickBooks Payments review.
13. Scan Receipts
Another key to making tax time a breeze is being able to organize your receipts in QuickBooks. All QuickBooks Online subscribers can download the QuickBooks app to their mobile devices for free, take a picture of a receipt, and upload it to QuickBooks Online in a few minutes.
QuickBooks allows you to attach a receipt to the corresponding banking transaction. You can upload an unlimited number of receipts to QuickBooks Online as the receipts are stored in the cloud along with your data.
14. Track Mileage
Many self-employed individuals and employees use their personal vehicles for business purposes. This provides a generous tax deduction of 58.5 cents per mile for 2022. However, to receive the deduction, you must keep a record of the date, miles, and purpose of your trip.
QuickBooks Online makes this incredibly easy. Its mobile app will use the GPS in your phone to sense every time you’re in a moving vehicle automatically. Then, you can review your trips, classify them as personal or business, and mark them as billable to a customer. Billable mileage expenses will then be available to add to the next invoice you create for that customer automatically.
15. Connect Your Apps
QuickBooks Online integrates with hundreds of business applications available in the QuickBooks App Store. These integrated apps are designed to help you simplify the various aspects of your business, from bill management and payment acceptance to cash flow forecasting.
In addition to some native QuickBooks Online integrations—such as QuickBooks Payroll, QuickBooks Time, and QuickBooks Payments—QuickBooks Online connects with popular apps. These include PayPal, Melio, HubSpot, Expensify, LeanLaw, Square Payroll, and Expensify.
While QuickBooks Online has hundreds of integrations available, we believe there are a few that stand out. For this, we recommend the best QuickBooks Online integrations for small businesses. You should also look into integrations for industry-specific uses, such as our best QuickBooks Online construction integrations and best Shopify integrations for QuickBooks.
16. Perform Accounting on the Go
The QuickBooks Online mobile app allows you to execute various accounting tasks from your mobile devices. Available for Android and iOS devices, it lets you create and send invoices, accept payments online, and assign expenses to projects or customers.
You can also track your business mileage and view financial reports from your smartphone. The QuickBooks Online mobile app is available for download on Google Play and App Store, but you need an active subscription to use its features.
17. Access Your Data Through the QuickBooks Online Desktop App
The QuickBooks Online desktop app is a standalone application that you can install on your Mac or Windows app. The app offers all of the core features of the browser-based version, but it has additional features that you may find useful, including the ability to stay logged in for six months, switch to an interface similar to QuickBooks Desktop Pro or Premier, and open multiple tabs or windows easily.
Note that the QuickBooks Online Desktop app is different from the QuickBooks Online mobile app. The desktop app runs on your desktop computer or laptop while the mobile app is accessible on mobile devices. For more information, read our article on what the QuickBooks Online desktop app is.
18. Collaborate With a QuickBooks ProAdvisor
Collaborating with a QuickBooks ProAdvisor can be a valuable experience that optimizes your accounting and financial management processes for efficiency and accuracy. QuickBooks ProAdvisors are certified in QuickBooks, and they have extensive knowledge of the software’s features and capabilities.
This expertise can be helpful with setting up your accounting processes, troubleshooting issues, and maximizing the software’s capabilities. QuickBooks users can invite an accountant to view their books, and QuickBooks Desktop users are able to export an accountant copy and import any changes the accountant has made to their file.
The best way to find a QuickBooks ProAdvisor is to visit Intuit’s Find a ProAdvisor website. We suggest reading our article on how to find a QuickBooks ProAdvisor for step-by-step guidance—and we also include a list of other places to find ProAdvisors.
You could also choose to hire a QuickBooks ProAdvisor through QuickBooks Live, an add-on to QuickBooks Online. While QuickBooks Live charges a set monthly fee that is based on your company’s average monthly expenses, you have more flexibility to arrange a payment schedule and customize services with an independent ProAdvisor.
Read our review of QuickBooks Live for more information on the product.
19. Manage Sales Taxes
QuickBooks can help small businesses manage their sales tax obligations by calculating sales tax, preparing sales tax returns, and generating reports on sales tax liability. It can calculate sales tax for transactions automatically based on the tax rates and rules for the customer’s location. This can help ensure that the correct tax amount is charged on each sale. It can also track the sales tax collected on transactions and the sales tax owed to the various tax authorities.
The platform integrates with popular sales tax software providers, such as Avalara and TaxJar, to streamline the sales tax management process and ensure compliance with local and state tax regulations. It can also support businesses that sell products or services in multiple jurisdictions, with the ability to calculate and track sales tax rates and rules for each jurisdiction.
20. Manage and Track Fixed Assets
A new feature in QuickBooks Online Advanced, the fixed asset accounting tool allows you to add, manage, and track fixed assets, like buildings, vehicles, machinery, and equipment. Instead of computing depreciation expenses manually, QuickBooks Online does it for you automatically based on the depreciation method you choose, such as straight line and double declining. Advanced also creates schedules outlining the depreciation expenses over time.
To access fixed asset accounting in QuickBooks, select Advanced accounting in the left menu bar and then click Fixed Asset Accounting. Click the Add an asset button, and then enter the required details, such as the asset name and description and depreciation details.
QuickBooks Options & Pricing
QuickBooks comes in both a cloud-based online platform and a traditional desktop program. You can read about the pros and cons of each in our comparison of QuickBooks Online vs Desktop.
QuickBooks Product | Best For | Price Range |
---|---|---|
QuickBooks Online | Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) needing cloud-based access to financial data | $30 to $200 per month |
QuickBooks Desktop | SMBs in any industry that prefer locally installed software | From $549.99 per year (Pro) From $799 per year (Premier) From $1,410 per year (Enterprise) Form $799 per year, per ProAdvisor (QuickBooks Accountant Desktop) |
QuickBooks Self-Employed | Independent contractors, real estate agents, and Uber and Lyft drivers | $20 to $40 per month |
QuickBooks for Mac | SMBs in any industry that require a Mac desktop solution | From $549.99 per year |
QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks Online is a cloud-based product that doesn’t require software installation, allowing you to access your data from any computer with an internet connection by using your secure login. It is available in four subscription levels, Simple Start, Essentials, Plus, and Advanced, and is ideal for any business without complicated job-costing requirements.
Read our review of QuickBooks Online to learn more about the tool. We compared its four options in our QuickBooks Online plans comparison.
QuickBooks Desktop
QuickBooks Desktop comes in four versions and offers a specialized edition for Mac users, QuickBooks Desktop for Mac Plus.
Each requires you to install the software on your computer.
- QuickBooks Pro Plus is sufficient for businesses with up to three users and those with minimal inventory.
- QuickBooks Premier Plus is ideal if your business falls into one of these industries: manufacturing, contractors, professional services, retail, or nonprofit.
- You may be interested in our articles to learn more about each:
- QuickBooks Enterprise is for large enterprises with complicated pricing and heavy inventory.
- QuickBooks Accountant Desktop is optimal if you’re a bookkeeper serving a client using QuickBooks.
- QuickBooks Desktop for Mac Plus: QuickBooks for Mac is the only QuickBooks desktop product available for Mac users. This edition is very similar to QuickBooks Desktop Pro, and it works well for most small businesses that don’t manufacture products. Read our QuickBooks for Mac review to learn more.
In the know: QuickBooks Desktop Pro, Premier, and Mac Plus will no longer be available for new users starting July 31, 2024. Existing users, however, can still renew their subscriptions even after the said date.
If you want to learn more about the four QuickBooks Desktop versions, read our:
- QuickBooks Pro review
- QuickBooks Premier review
- QuickBooks Enterprise review
- QuickBooks Accountant Desktop review
In our QuickBooks Desktop comparison article, we break down each of these to help you understand the various versions.
On a tangent, you can be more productive with QuickBooks Desktop by getting a hosting provider. QuickBooks hosting lets you access your desktop software anywhere through a remote server, and a good place to start would be our list of the best QuickBooks hosting providers. You may also want to switch completely to cloud-based software. Our guide on how to convert QuickBooks Desktop to Online walks you through the simple process.
QuickBooks Self-Employed
QuickBooks Self-Employed is ideal for freelancers, real estate agents, and independent contractors, like Uber and Lyft drivers. Similar to QuickBooks Online, it’s a cloud-based product that can be accessed with your secure login from any computer with an internet connection.
It includes unique features that are unavailable in QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop, like the ability to track business and personal expenses from the same bank account and transfer data to TurboTax. It will even calculate your estimated quarterly tax payments and remind you when they’re due.
If you’re a startup with plans of expanding your workforce, QuickBooks Self-Employed won’t be the best fit as it cannot be upgraded to other QuickBooks versions.
There are three QuickBooks Self-Employed pricing plans: Self-Employed, Self-Employed Tax Bundle, and Self-Employed Live Tax Bundle. To learn more about it, read our review of QuickBooks Self-Employed.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Depending on your QuickBooks product and plan, you can use QuickBooks to create and send invoices, manage and track unpaid bills, handle inventory, keep track of project profitability, view financial reports, and more.
QuickBooks Online is a cloud-based software that can be accessed anytime and anywhere from any internet-enabled device and has monthly subscription options. Meanwhile, QuickBooks Desktop is an on-premise software that needs to be installed on the computer where you’ll use it and is available as an annual subscription. For more information about the differences between the two programs, read our comparison of QuickBooks Online vs QuickBooks Desktop.
No, there’s no free version of QuickBooks for businesses, but there’s a 30-day free trial for new users. Meanwhile, QuickBooks Online Accountant is free for professional bookkeepers. For accounting software with free options check out our top-recommended free accounting software.
Excel and QuickBooks are drastically different programs. QuickBooks is by far the most popular small business bookkeeping program in the United States, whereas Excel is a spreadsheet program that advanced users may be able to use to create their own custom bookkeeping program. While we don’t recommend using Excel as your base bookkeeping program, Excel has many great accounting uses. Our comparison of QuickBooks Online vs Excel will help you better understand the differences between the two programs.
The best QuickBooks product depends on your needs and the size of your business. SMBs needing remote access to their account files should choose QuickBooks Online. If you want the speed and usability of desktop software, then QuickBooks Desktop is preferable. If you’re a freelancer, consider QuickBooks Self-Employed.
One of the best things about QuickBooks is that it has a user-friendly interface. All QuickBooks Online products have the same interface, and so do all the QuickBooks Desktop products. There are also available free online training resources that you can use to get up to speed quickly. To get started, check out our free QuickBooks Online tutorials.
Bottom Line
QuickBooks is the most popular small business accounting software suite. It comes in a variety of editions and has web-based and desktop programs. QuickBooks includes features that allow you to keep track of your income and expenses, pay your employees, track your inventory, and simplify your taxes.