QuickBooks Online Accountant Review: Features & Price

I evaluated real estate accounting software using a weighted rubric that reflects the needs of landlords, real estate agents, investors, and property managers.

• Pricing (10%): I considered the cost for one, three, and five users, free trials or money-back guarantees, monthly plan availability, and discounts for new customers.
• Accounting features (25%): I reviewed whether each platform supports double-entry accounting, chart of accounts customization, multiple users, vendor and customer records, unpaid bill tracking, invoice creation, recurring invoices, check printing, bank connections, bank reconciliation, balance sheets, profit and loss statements, A/R and A/P aging, general ledger reports, trial balance reports, adjusting journal entries, and accountant access.
• Real estate-specific features (20%): I evaluated whether the software can separate profit and loss by property or sale, track vehicle mileage, allocate common area expenses, receive online payments, provide a tenant portal, and manage maintenance workflows.
• Customer support (15%): I considered overall support availability, formal training or onboarding, outbound phone support, inbound phone support, chatbot support, live chat, email support, user communities, self-help resources, and the availability of independent bookkeepers familiar with the platform.
• Ease of use (20%): I reviewed user feedback related to usability, dashboard readability, dashboard customization, interface design, whether users can open new transactions from the dashboard, overall ease of use, cloud-based access, and Mac compatibility.

• Firms and accountants looking for free accounting practice management software: QuickBooks Online Accountant, one of our best accounting practice management software, is available for free for accounting professionals.
• Firms with clients using QuickBooks Online: If your clients use QuickBooks Online, our overall best small business accounting software, then you’ll need QuickBooks Online Accountant to access their accounts.
• Firms wanting to manage their clients and their own business all in one place: The program lets you access all of your clients’ financial data from one central dashboard. You’ll also have access to QuickBooks Online Advanced so that you can manage your own books.
• Firms requiring assistance with marketing their services: QuickBooks Online Accountant allows you to obtain the leads you want by showcasing your services in a custom Find-a-ProAdvisor profile, which is free with certification as a QuickBooks ProAdvisor. In addition, the Intuit Marketing Hub provides a library of guides and templates for expanding your brand and converting leads to clients.
• New bookkeepers and accountants looking to become QuickBooks ProAdvisors: QuickBooks Online Accountant includes free training courses that you can tailor based on your schedule and experience level to help you learn how to use QuickBooks Online correctly. Read our guide on how to become a QuickBooks ProAdvisor if you are interested in becoming one.

There are two ways you can add a new client in QuickBooks Online Accountant—depending on whether they already have a QuickBooks Online account.

If your client already has a QuickBooks Online account, ask them to send you an invitation link to become their accountant. Once you receive it, sign in using your user ID and password, and select the correct firm if you manage multiple firms.

For clients paying for their own QuickBooks Online subscription, you can transfer their account to your billing plan. To do this, refer to QuickBooks’ page on transferring clients to your discount plan. If your client prefers to handle their own billing, you can still provide them with a Direct Discount option.

If your client has no QuickBooks account and doesn’t intend to sign up for QuickBooks, you can still add them to your QuickBooks Online Accountant account. To do this, select the Clients menu from the left navigation bar, click Add Client, and then provide the required client information. Ensure to select No subscription under the Products section. Click Save to add your new client.

The QuickBooks ProAdvisor program offers valuable benefits that grow alongside your firm. You can earn ProAdvisor points and rewards, such as free training and software discounts, by completing actions like doing QuickBooks Online training, adding clients, and achieving QuickBooks certifications.

That said, earning ProAdvisor points isn’t a requirement to use the platform or its features. It’s more of a reward system for ProAdvisors who continue building their expertise and engaging with the QuickBooks ecosystem. To view your ProAdvisor points, simply select ProAdvisor from the left navigation menu and click Benefits.

Once you complete the training, pass the exam, and become a QuickBooks ProAdvisor, you’re eligible to list your profile for free in the Find-a-ProAdvisor Directory. Essentially, the faster your firm grows and earns points, the faster you’ll elevate your status and gain access to rewards.

When you sign up for QuickBooks Online Accountant, you get access to QuickBooks Online Advanced. This version includes features like Batch Transactions, which lets you automate specific tasks and workflows for greater efficiency. It also integrates smoothly with Google Sheets, making it easier to stay organized. Meanwhile, the Performance Center helps accountants track business performance and create customizable, presentation-ready reports that provide valuable insights.

Project management can be accessed through the Work menu. This feature lets you create projects or tasks and assign them to your team members. One of the most useful features is the ability to create recurring projects, which makes sense as accounting professionals often manage projects that are repeated regularly. You can specify how often the project will be repeated and the end date.

The “Books Review” feature is an expanded version of “Month-End Review,” and it’s designed to help QuickBooks Online accountant users streamline their workflows for initial transaction review, reconciliation, and final review.

The Books Review includes two new review phases:

1. Setup phase allows you to find and fix errors made during setup, including errors on the existing balance sheet, P&L reports, and opening balances and chart of account issues, like bank accounts that haven’t been linked to bank feeds, missing system accounts, and incorrectly classified account types.
2. Wrap-up phase lets you add finishing touches to your work. With this new tool, it’s easier to prepare a customized report of your client’s monthly financial data and business performance, helping you provide them with better information for more strategic business decisions. The feature also enables you to email the report to your client and close the books for the accounting period.

In the “Your Practice” section, you’ll have access to built-in tools for workflow tracking, document sharing, and team assignments. This enables you to streamline your communications by sharing client documents and keeping them organized in a password-protected environment.

You can also view your firm’s upcoming deadlines and urgent tasks and filter by clients, assigned team members, or type of task. Additionally, you can manage employee permissions by allowing access to specific information. The client menu lets you add new clients, edit existing clients’ details, or make a client inactive.

With these accountant-only tools, you can streamline your work and access customizable reports, so you can advise clients quickly. The accountant toolbox includes quick links to your chart of accounts, journal entries, and reports, as well as tools for performing several functions like reconciliation and reclassifying transactions.

Quick Links

• Chart of accounts: Review the list of your client’s chart of accounts to ensure they’re still relevant to their business.
• Journal entries: Create an accounting journal entry easily to track money spent and received by your client.
• Reconcile: Match your client’s transactions on QuickBooks to their bank and credit card statements to make sure their books are accurate.
• Reports: Build and view different types of reports. You can pick from standard reports, like balance sheets, P&L statements, and cash flow reports—or you can create a customized report based on your client’s business needs. The Performance Center gives a visual chart of your financial data, which is easier to comprehend than plain numbers:

• Void/Deleted transactions: Quickly run a report of voided or deleted checks. You can select your desired date range and track which user made the transaction.
• Close books: Reconcile your client’s books to the prior year’s tax return. If everything is accurate and complete, you can close the books to prevent unwanted changes.
• New window: Open a new window within the same browser session. This feature is useful when you need to work simultaneously on different areas or tasks within QuickBooks Online Accountant.
• Chart of accounts: Review the list of your client’s chart of accounts to ensure they’re still relevant to their business.
• Journal entries: Create an accounting journal entry easily to track money spent and received by your client.
• Reconcile: Match your client’s transactions on QuickBooks to their bank and credit card statements to make sure their books are accurate.
• Reports: Build and view different types of reports. You can pick from standard reports, like balance sheets, P&L statements, and cash flow reports—or you can create a customized report based on your client’s business needs. The Performance Center gives a visual chart of your financial data, which is easier to comprehend than plain numbers:
• Reclassify transactions: Reclassify income, expenses, cost of goods, and balance sheet accounts to make sure that no transactions are incorrectly paired up with classes or accounts.
• Reports options: Specify the period for which you want to generate the reconciliation report.
• Write off invoices: Record uncollectible invoices as a bad debt by using the Write Off Invoice tool. This feature helps you keep your net income and accounts receivable up to date.
• Prep for taxes: Review and adjust your client’s accounts to prepare for the tax season. After you review their accounts, you can export the pre-filled form to ProConnect Tax Online to help you file your client’s tax returns easily.
• ProConnect Tax Online: Prepare your client’s tax returns using this integrated cloud-based tax preparation software. Read our review of ProConnect Tax Online for more information.

While there isn’t a mobile app designated for managing clients or their books within QuickBooks Online Accountant, you can access your own books through the QuickBooks Online mobile app, just like any other user. The app has most of the same features as the software itself, such as entering transactions, recording expenses, invoicing customers, and sending reports.

This tool reduces time spent on manual data entry by exporting your clients’ QuickBooks Online data directly into their tax returns prepared with Intuit ProConnect and correcting entries to simplify end-of-year duties. This includes adjusting entries and mapping account balances to specific tax lines.

The Trial Balance tool is particularly useful during the preparation of financial statements. It serves as a preliminary step before generating reports like balance sheets and income statements. Additionally, it allows you to easily identify any unbalanced accounts, missing entries, or misclassified transactions, helping you catch and correct errors before finalizing financial statements.

If your client wants you to handle their payroll, you can add QuickBooks Workforce to their account. You can choose from three plans (Core, Premium, and Elite), starting at $50 per month plus $6 per employee.

All plans include full-service payroll, including unlimited payroll processing, tax payments and filings for federal and state taxes, and employee benefits management. If you upgrade to Premium or Elite, you’ll get access to HR tools, such as onboarding checklists and performance tools.

If you drive for work, you can use QuickBooks Online Accountant to record your deductible mileage. With the free QuickBooks mobile app, you can automatically track your business mileage without manually recording your odometer readings. Alternatively, you can manually enter your mileage each time you drive.