QuickBooks Online Comparison: Which Version Is Right for You?

QuickBooks Online offers five versions: Self-Employed, Simple Start, Essentials, Plus, and Advanced. Pricing varies between $15 and $150 per month. Based on our QuickBooks Online comparison, your ideal plan depends on the number of users you need and whether your business requires features like accounts payable (A/P), inventory, or advanced reporting.

We rated QuickBooks Online among the best small business accounting software. To help narrow down the best plan for your business, answer a few short questions below. This will offer you a customized recommendation based on the responses you give. Afterward, continue reading the article for a more detailed comparison of the five QuickBooks products.

Which QuickBooks Online Is Right for You

• QuickBooks Online Self-Employed: Best for owners of small service businesses that report business income on Schedule C of their personal tax return and have no employees
• QuickBooks Online Simple Start: Best for small service businesses that want to track assets, liabilities, income, and expenses, and only need access for one user
• QuickBooks Online Essentials: Best for small businesses that need to assign billable hours to customers, track bills due, and provide access for up to three users
• QuickBooks Online Plus: Best for retailers, wholesalers, contractors, and other small businesses that require inventory tracking, job costing, budgeting, and access for up to five users
• QuickBooks Online Advanced: Best for small to midsize businesses that want more detailed reporting, custom user permissions, a dedicated support manager, and up to 25 users

QuickBooks Online Comparison: Features

All five versions of QuickBooks Online can:

• Track your income and expenses
• Invoice customers and receive payments
• Invite your accountant to access your data
• Download your bank and credit card transactions
• Track mileage via a mobile device
• Capture and organize receipts via a mobile device
• Access unlimited customer support

QuickBooks Online Comparison Chart of Features

QuickBooks Self-Employed vs QuickBooks Simple Start

QuickBooks Online Self-Employed works very well for people who work for themselves in a service industry and don’t have any employees. However, if a self-employed person hires an employee, then they will need to issue paychecks and file payroll tax returns. An upgrade to QuickBooks Simple Start will allow integration of QuickBooks payroll.

QuickBooks Self-Employed vs Simple Start at a Glance

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. If your Schedule C business has inventory, you will need to upgrade to QuickBooks Online Plus to calculate your cost of goods sold and ending inventory.

QuickBooks Simple Start vs QuickBooks Essentials

QuickBooks Essentials allows three users vs only one user allowed by QuickBooks Simple Start. 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.

QuickBooks Simple Start vs Essentials at a Glance

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.

QuickBooks Essentials vs QuickBooks Plus

QuickBooks Plus is a substantial upgrade compared to QuickBooks Essentials. 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.

QuickBooks Essentials vs Plus at a Glance

Takeaway: Retailers and wholesalers should choose Plus so you can track the cost of inventory. Contractors should also choose plus to track the profitability of individual projects. Other businesses should consider whether tracking profit and loss by class and location is worth the extra $30 per month subscription price.

QuickBooks Plus vs QuickBooks Advanced

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. In addition to allowing up to 25 users, Advanced removes the limitations on the number of classes, locations, and accounts imposed by Plus.

QuickBooks Plus vs Advanced at a Glance

Takeaway: Upgrading from Plus to Advanced isn’t crucial unless you’re running up against the size limitations of Plus. The most likely limitation that will cause you to upgrade is requiring more than five full-access users.

QuickBooks Online Comparison: Self-Employed

QuickBooks Self-Employed is ideal for individuals who work for themselves and report their business income on Schedule C of their personal income tax return. Self-employed individuals may need to upgrade to one of the more advanced QuickBooks Online options if they have employees or inventory.

QuickBooks Online Self-Employed Pricing

• $7 per month for three months, then $15 per month for a maximum of one user

QuickBooks Online Self-Employed Features

• Connect bank accounts: Checking and credit card transactions automatically transfer and can be classified into business expenses or marked as personal.
• Generate invoices: Generate invoices and either print or email them to customers.
• Track mileage: The mobile app captures all trips (even if the app is closed) so that you can classify them as business or personal at your leisure. This can be disabled easily if you prefer to enter trips manually.
• Receipt capture: Take a picture of receipts with the mobile app and create new transactions or match existing transactions automatically.

QuickBooks Online Comparison: Simple Start

QuickBooks Simple Start is a great fit for your small business if you will be doing the bookkeeping yourself, don’t have inventory, and don’t require help tracking your unpaid bills. QuickBooks Online Simple Start is the most affordable double-entry bookkeeping system, which means it tracks your assets and liabilities as well as your income and expenses.

QuickBooks Simple Start Pricing

• $12 per month for three months, then $25 per month for a maximum of one user

QuickBooks Online Simple Start Features

• Connect bank accounts: Checking and credit card transactions transfer automatically and can be classified into business expenses or marked as personal.
• Generate custom invoices: Software allows you to create a customized invoice template for your business and print or email invoices to customers.
• Track mileage: Use the mobile app to capture all trips automatically and then classify the mileage as business or personal.
• Receipt capture: You can capture receipts by using the mobile app, uploading from your computer, or emailing your QuickBooks Online account.
• Track sales tax: QuickBooks charges the correct amount of sales tax automatically based on the address you provide. You can track sales tax collected and paid to help file your sales tax return from within QuickBooks.
• Use QuickBooks Live: QuickBooks Live is an online bookkeeping service―for an additional charge―offered by QuickBooks for people who want the convenience of accessing their information anywhere with QuickBooks but prefer to have help with bookkeeping.

QuickBooks Online Comparison: Essentials

QuickBooks Essentials can be used to manage all aspects of A/P, including entering bills and paying them later. Essentials also allows your company to track billable hours by customer. Very small businesses that bill customers for hourly services usually find QuickBooks Essentials meets their needs.

QuickBooks Essentials Pricing

• $20 per month for three months, then $40 per month for a maximum of three users

QuickBooks Essentials Features

QuickBooks Essentials includes all features of QuickBooks Simple Start plus:

• Track unpaid bills: Enter bills as they are received and track until they are paid.
• Track employee time: An unlimited number of time-tracking-only users can input their hours via the mobile website and assign their time to specific customers.
• Create custom fields: You can create custom fields attached to either customer records or transactions that can then be used to filter or create custom reports.

QuickBooks Online Comparison: Plus

One of the key differences that makes QuickBooks Online Plus stand apart from Simple Start and Essentials is it allows you to track inventory quantities and cost. QuickBooks Online Plus is good for a business that sells products and needs to keep track of purchasing and selling products to customers. While Plus is the best QuickBooks Online option for retailers, wholesalers, and contractors, you should also consider QuickBooks Desktop vs QuickBooks Online as QuickBooks Desktop offers more features and flexibility for dealing with inventory and projects.

QuickBooks Online Plus Pricing

• $35 per month for three months, then $70 per month for a maximum of five users

QuickBooks Online Plus Features

QuickBooks Online Plus includes all features of QuickBooks Essentials plus:

• Create custom classes: Classes can be created to track profit and loss by anything you wish. A popular use of custom classes is to track profit and loss by product type.
• Create locations: Online Plus also lets users track profit and loss by location. Locations are separate from classes so that you can also track profit and loss by classes for specific locations. For example, you can view the profit and loss of a product line (class) for a particular store (location).
• Track inventory cost: Users can also use the software to track the cost of inventory items. Using the FIFO method of accounting, QuickBooks Online Plus determines the cost of inventory remaining at the end of each period.
• Set pricing rules: Special pricing rules can be assigned to customers or customer types. For instance, you can create a customer type for your most loyal customers and then assign a pricing rule that gives them a 10% discount automatically on certain purchases.
• Create projects: QuickBooks Online Plus also lets users create projects to track the profit and loss for individual jobs. Expenses and labor can be assigned to projects as incurred. Then, when labor is assigned to a job, the associated cost of payroll taxes and employee benefits is also assigned to the job.
• Budget expenses: Fiscal-year budgets can be created by inputting expected expense amounts for each account. The budget can be broken down by class, location, and project.

QuickBooks Online Comparison: Advanced

The primary feature setting QuickBooks Online Advanced apart from Simple Start, Essentials, and Plus is the ability to give up to 25 users access to your data. 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.

QuickBooks Online Advanced Pricing

• $75 per month for three months, then $150 per month for a maximum of 25 users

QuickBooks Online Advanced Features

• QuickBooks Online Plus features: QuickBooks Online Advanced includes all features of QuickBooks Online Plus.
• Create multiple transactions: Checks, expenses, and invoices can be created in large batches on a single screen, potentially saving hours of data input time.
• View key performance indicators: You can view 17 key performance indicators (KPIs) on a single “Smart Reporting” dashboard along with an optimal value for each KPI and the recent trend in your KPI. Clicking on a KPI creates a graph of the KPI automatically over a time period you can customize.

Bottom Line

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. If your business is service-based, without any inventory, then QuickBooks Essentials should provide everything you need while saving you $30 per month compared to Plus.