QuickBooks Online Plans Comparison: 2023 Pricing & Subscription Levels

The biggest difference between Simple Start and Essentials is that Simple Start doesn’t allow you to pay and manage bills. This is a bit inconvenient since even solopreneurs or freelancers have bills that need to be paid. However, if you only need to record expenses as you pay them, then Simple Start might be enough.

With Essentials, you can track your unpaid bills easily and pay them directly within QuickBooks. You just need to select the bills you want to pay from the Pay Bills window, place a checkmark next to the bills, and then select Save & Print.

Pay Bills screen in QuickBooks Online Essentials

With QuickBooks Essentials, you can track billable time by job and assign it to a specific customer—something you can’t achieve with Simple Start. Once you’ve recorded your billable time, you can add them to your invoice and then send it to your client. This feature is ideal for service-based businesses that charge work by the hour, such as lawyers and independent contractors.

Simple Start runs basic reports, including cash flow statements, profit and loss (P&L) statements, and balance sheets. Some of the other 20-plus built-in standard reports available include P&L by month and customer, quarterly P&L summaries, and general ledger.

Meanwhile, Essentials gives you access to more than 40 reports, including those you can generate in Simple Start. Its additional reports include accounts payable (A/P) and accounts receivable (A/R) aging, transaction lists by customer, expenses by vendor, uninvoiced charges, unpaid bills, expenses by supplier summaries, and more. You can drill down to a list of your outstanding invoices instead of only the total outstanding.

Plus includes inventory accounting that allows you to monitor stock items and quantity—a necessity if you’re selling products. It uses first-in, first-out (FIFO) inventory tracking, an essential feature that helps manufacturers or retailers determine how their inventory affects their profitability. It also lets you update inventory costs and quantities, separate taxable from nontaxable items, and set up alerts if you’re running out of stock.

With Plus, you can make POs, track them, and send them to vendors. POs are essential because they help you specify what products and services you need from your vendor or supplier and by when you need them. When creating POs in Plus, you can input specific items you want to purchase. When your POs are fulfilled, you can convert them to a bill easily.

Plus allows you to assign classes and locations to your transactions, so you can see how your business performs across divisions, locations, rep areas, or any units that are relevant to your business. If you run businesses in multiple locations and you want to see which one is most profitable, an upgrade to Plus from Essentials is worth the price.

Sample report on profit and loss by class run in QuickBooks Online Plus

With Plus, you can create projects and add income, expenses, and wages. The Projects tool helps you manage different jobs and projects for your clients and track costs related to labor and materials. However, the problem with Plus or any of the other versions is that you can’t compare cost estimates to actual costs by project.

Nonetheless, Plus has an advanced job costing capability, which is helpful for construction and contracting firms. If comparing estimated costs to actual job costs is critical to your business, check out Xero.

Project tool in QuickBooks Online Plus

Other features of Plus not present in Essentials include the ability to:

• Create and manage budgets
• Generate 60-plus reports, including unbilled charges, unbilled time, and budget overview and budget vs outturn
• Track time via QuickBooks Time

QuickBooks Online Advanced is slightly better than Plus and the other QuickBooks Online plans in A/P and A/R because of its batch invoicing and expense management features. Batch invoicing allows you to create multiple invoices at once rather than creating them one at a time. This can be useful if you have many customers who need to be invoiced for the same products or services. You just need to create a single invoice template and then apply it to all the customers who require the same invoice.

Meanwhile, Batch expensing allows you to record and categorize multiple expenses at once instead of entering them individually. This is especially useful if you have many expenses to record, such as business travel expenses, office supplies, and equipment purchases. You can upload expense receipts in bulk, categorize them according to the appropriate expense account, and then submit them for approval.

QuickBooks Advanced provides greater flexibility in customizing reports than the other QuickBooks Online plans. Users can tailor their reports by filtering and grouping data and creating custom fields and dashboards. Additionally, Advanced lets you generate multi-company reports and schedule emailed reports to be sent to specified email addresses.

A notable new feature is Spreadsheet Sync, which helps you generate consolidated reports across multiple entities easily. It is an advanced feature that lets you import and export data between QuickBooks and Microsoft Excel.

With Spreadsheet Sync, you can easily generate custom reports in a single spreadsheet, create complex calculations, and use Excel’s built-in tools to work on your data. Once the data is finalized in Excel, you can easily post it back to QuickBooks Online Advanced.

It’s easy to set up Spreadsheet Sync. Click on the cogwheel on your company dashboard and select Spreadsheet Sync under TOOLS. Next, activate the Spreadsheet Sync add-on by clicking Let’s Go in the pop-up window. Follow the screen prompts, and you’ll be able to install Spreadsheet Sync and sign in using your login details.

Spreadsheet Sync add-in in QuickBooks Advanced.

Advanced users receive better customer support through its Priority Circle membership. As a Priority Circle member, you get access to a dedicated customer success manager who can assist you with any questions or issues you have with your software. You will get priority support through chat and phone, with shorter wait times than non-Priority Circle members.

The right QuickBooks Online plan depends on the size of your business and the features you need. For example, Self-Employed is best for freelancers or solopreneurs, while Simple Start is ideal for small businesses wanting to track assets and liabilities. Essentials is preferable if you need to track unpaid bills, while Plus is great if you require inventory and project management. If you scale to 25 users, then upgrade to Advanced.

Yes, you can. You may check out our guide on how to switch from QuickBooks Self-Employed to QuickBooks Online.

QuickBooks Online is better than QuickBooks Desktop if you prefer a cloud-based accounting software to a locally installed one. QuickBooks Online’s biggest advantage is its ability to be accessed from anywhere with an internet-enabled device. Learn about all the differences in our comparison of QuickBooks Online vs Desktop.

QuickBooks Online isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Some instances where you need to find an alternative include when:

• You want free accounting software: If you’re looking for a free invoicing and accounting solution, then check out our article on the best free accounting software.
• You need parts inventory management: While QuickBooks Online has strong inventory management features, it can’t track parts and inventory assemblies. If you’re a manufacturing company that needs this feature, QuickBooks Desktop Pro is a good alternative.
• Fixed assets are a big part of your business: QuickBooks Online can’t track fixed assets. We recommend Xero if you need to track depreciation for your fixed assets, like office equipment, machinery, and vehicles.

If you think QuickBooks isn’t for you, check out our top alternatives to QuickBooks to see if you can find something better.