QuickBooks Online vs Excel: Do You Really Need Bookkeeping Software?
Tim is a Certified QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) Pro, QuickBooks ProAdvisor, and CPA with 25 years of experience. He brings his expertise to Fit Small Business’s accounting content.
Danielle is a writer for the Finance division of Fit Small Business. She has owned a bookkeeping and payroll service that specializes in small business, for over twenty years.
This article is part of a larger series on Accounting Software.
QuickBooks Online is software that’s custom-designed to make tracking your business income, expenses, assets, and liabilities as simple as possible. Meanwhile, Excel is a spreadsheet program that can be programmed to do the same thing—if you have the time and expertise.
These solutions are so different that it’s a bit like comparing apples and oranges. With enough work, Excel can serve as rudimentary bookkeeping software, even though it’s much more useful for creating schedules to supplement your QuickBooks Online platform.
 |  | |
|---|---|---|
Best For | Freelancers and small business owners who want easy-to-use, automated accounting software | Spreadsheet-savvy and budget-minded microbusinesses |
Pricing | $30 to $200 per month | $6.99 to $9.99 per month |
Maximum Users | 1 to 25 | 1 to 6 |
Send Estimates | ✓ | N/A |
Send Invoices & Track Collections | ✓ | N/A |
Track Sales Tax Collections & Payments | ✓ | N/A |
Manage Unpaid Bills | ✓ | N/A |
Assign Time & Costs to Projects | ✓ | N/A |
Capture & Organize Receipts | ✓ | N/A |
Integrated Payroll | ✓ | N/A |
Track 1099 Payments | ✓ | N/A |
Print 1099s | ✓ | N/A |
Track Activity by Class & Location | ✓ | N/A |
Create Sales Orders | ✓ | N/A |
Customize Reports With Formulas | N/A | N/A |
Accessibility | Cloud | Desktop |
Cash Flow Forecasting | ✓ | N/A |
When To Use
QuickBooks Online vs Excel: Pricing
QuickBooks Online | Excel | |
|---|---|---|
Monthly Pricing | $30 to $200 | $6 per user for Microsoft 365 |
Number of Users | 1 to 25 | 1 |
License Fee | N/A | $159.99 for one PC or Mac |
Free Trial | ✓ | ✕ |
QuickBooks Online offers a choice of five subscription plans, which vary by the number of users and features included. You’ll need to purchase at least QuickBooks Online Essentials if you want to manage unpaid bills and QuickBooks Online Plus if you need to track inventory. QuickBooks Online Advanced allows for up to 25 users, a dedicated support manager, and enhanced reporting.
Read our QuickBooks Online version comparison for a detailed analysis of five QuickBooks Online plans.
Meanwhile, many users already own Excel, in which case it’s one less expense for them. If you choose to purchase Excel, a license is available for one PC or Mac at $159.99. You can also sign up for a monthly subscription to Microsoft 365 starting at $6 per month for each user. This not only gives you access to Excel, but also Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, and OneDrive, plus 1 TB of cloud storage.
Although QuickBooks Online users will have to commit to a monthly fee, all the accounting features you need are built-in, whereas you’ll have to program Excel from scratch. For a flat, one-time fee, you can download Excel or you can pay for it as part of a subscription to Microsoft 365. Either way, you’ll end up saving money as compared to the price for QuickBooks Online’s services.
QuickBooks Online vs Excel: Features
QuickBooks Online | Excel | |
|---|---|---|
Custom Chart of Accounts | ✓ | ✓ |
Connect Bank Accounts | ✓ | ✕ |
Categorize Spending | ✓ | ✓ |
Pay Bills | ✓ | ✕ |
Invoicing | ✓ | ✕ |
Account Reconciliation | ✓ | ✓ |
Profit and Loss (P&L) & Balance Sheet | ✓ | ✕ |
Payroll Integration | ✓ | ✕ |
Budgeting & Forecasting | ✓ | ✓ |
Customer Statements | ✓ | ✕ |
Payroll Integration | ✓ | ✕ |
Time Tracking | ✓ | ✕ |
Mobile App | ✓ | ✓ |
It may seem odd to compare QuickBooks Online and Excel features, given that QuickBooks Online is designed for small business bookkeeping, whereas Excel is a programmable spreadsheet program. While QuickBooks Online’s A/R and A/P capabilities are outstanding, Excel’s customizability and capacity for forecasting make it ideal for creating different business scenarios.
Self-Employed | Simple Start | Essentials | Plus | Advanced | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Users Included | 1 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 25 |
Connect & Reconcile Bank Accounts | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Scan & Upload Receipts | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Customize, Create, and Send Invoices & Estimates | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Integrated Third-Party Payroll (Fee) | N/A | N/A | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Assign Time & Expenses to Jobs | N/A | N/A | N/A | ✓ | ✓ |
Print a Balance Sheet | N/A | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Automated Late Payment Reminders | N/A | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Track Project Profitability by Class & Location | N/A | N/A | N/A | ✓ | ✓ |
Manage Bills | N/A | N/A | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Pay Bills Online Via Bank Transfer or Credit Card | N/A | N/A | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Dedicated Account Support | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | ✓ |
Automated Workflows | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | ✓ |
Dedicated Account Manager | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | ✓ |
QuickBooks Online has a few standout features that set it apart from its competitors, including the ability to import and classify bank and credit card transactions, pay and track bills, invoice customers, and generate reports,
- Bank transaction import: You can connect your bank and credit card accounts to QuickBooks Online easily, which will download your transactions automatically. If you dread reconciling your bank account manually, you can use QuickBooks Online’s powerful bank reconciliation feature and generate reconciliation reports to view cleared and uncleared transactions.
- Transaction classification: QuickBooks Online allows you to classify transactions, and the auto-recall feature will assign the same category to transactions from the same vendor automatically. You can also customize your chart of accounts to make these categories as broad or specific as you desire.
Classifying imported transactions in QuickBooks Online
- Bill payment and tracking: QuickBooks Online’s A/P features allow you to view a list of unpaid bills to track them effectively, and you can create recurring transactions, record partial payments of an invoice, and print checks instead of writing them manually.
Paying bills in QuickBooks Online
- Invoicing: QuickBooks Online’s A/R features are equally as strong as A/P, and its customization features will help you to distinguish your business from others. You have the option of uploading your logo, using a template, changing the invoice colors, and adding personalized messages. You can also set up recurring invoices and print or email them to customers.
Creating an invoice in QuickBooks Online
- Reporting: QuickBooks Online is arguably one of the best accounting software programs for reporting. It can generate more than 100 reports, depending on your subscription. Whether you need standard reports like balance sheets and P&L statements or sales reports by customer, location, and class, you can do it all.
Example of income statement in QuickBooks Online
Excel is best suited to users who want a completely customized experience, especially if they need to switch back and forth between their desktop and the cloud. Its robust forecasting features and strength with data analysis provide great insight for decision-making and projections for the future:
- Customizable templates: You can use Excel to create, calculate, and analyze your tables and spreadsheets. Graph with familiar formulas quickly to run calculations and analyze your data. Its rich productivity features and formatting options will make your workbooks easier to use and read.
- Data analysis: Excel allows you to use spreadsheet features, such as adding and editing chart labels to highlight key insights in your data. You can also access the pie chart maker to create charts and graphs.
- Accessibility on both cloud and desktop: Excel can be accessed on both your desktop and on the cloud. You can also download the mobile app for when you’re on the road. Excel can accommodate multiple users, and you can share your files in real-time so that others can collaborate.
- Forecasting: Many businesses use Excel to predict and plan for their financial future. Using your actual financial data and information about general industry performance, you can build a forecast of the company’s income and expenses for defined future periods. You can create multiple spreadsheets to model how the business would perform under different conditions and use this data to build projected versions of the key financial statements.
- Account reconciliation: To aid with bank and credit card account reconciliation, you can use an Excel spreadsheet to show the money entering and leaving each account. This is particularly useful for revealing transactions that are still in transit.
Excel’s features are much better suited to supplement QuickBooks Online than to replace it. Here are some great ideas for how Excel can be used for accounting.
QuickBooks Online vs Excel: Ease of Use
QuickBooks Online | Excel | |
|---|---|---|
Overall Ease of Use | Easy | Easy |
Accessibility | Cloud | Desktop or cloud |
Online Help Section | ✓ | ✓ |
User-Friendly Dashboard | ✓ | ✕ |
QuickBooks Online is fairly easy to set up, and once you create your account, the default dashboard will display shortcuts to essential functions alongside an overview of your business. From the left menu bar of your dashboard, you can access all of the software’s core features easily, which include Banking, Sales, Cashflow, Expenses, Projects, and Payroll. You can also view reports that display your paid and unpaid invoices, P&L, total expenses, and total sales for any period.
On the other hand, Excel, as a basic spreadsheet program, is easy to use but may require more advanced skills to use it as bookkeeping or accounting software. Since it wasn’t designed with accounting in mind, it requires that you design your own bookkeeping process. This includes designing journals, ledgers, a trial balance, and financial statements. This can be confusing and completely unnecessary for many business owners since QuickBooks Online is available for a very reasonable price.
QuickBooks Online vs Excel: Integrations
QuickBooks Online | Excel | |
|---|---|---|
Built-In Integrations | 3 | 0 |
Third-Party Integrations | 750-plus | 4,000-plus via Zapier |
Three built-in integrations can be accessed directly within QuickBooks Online—QuickBooks Payroll, QuickBooks Payments, and QuickBooks Time. It also integrates with over 750 popular third-party business apps that allow data to flow automatically into your books so that you can review everything in one place. QuickBooks Online also connects with thousands of apps through Zapier, just like Excel allows for over 4,000 third-party integrations via Zapier.
- QuickBooks Online integrations include Google Sheets, Salesforce, PayPal, Square, Stripe, HubSpot, WooCommerce, Gmail, and Amazon Business
- Excel integrations via Zapier include Google Sheets, Trello, Facebook Lead Ads, Cognito Forms, HubSpot, Slack, Google Calendar, SurveyMonkey, Airtable, and Salesforce
QuickBooks Online vs Excel: Mobile App
QuickBooks Online | Excel | |
|---|---|---|
Accessibility | iOS and Android | iOS and Android |
Invoice Customers | ✓ | ✕ |
Reconcile Accounts | ✓ | ✕ |
Pay Bills | ✓ | ✕ |
Mileage & GPS Tracking | ✓ | ✕ |
Financial Reports | ✓ | ✓ |
Budgeting | ✕ | ✓ |
Receipt Scanning | ✓ | ✕ |
Time Tracking | ✕ | ✕ |
File Sharing | ✕ | ✓ |
Available for both iOS and Android, you’ll find that the QuickBooks Online mobile app has a layout similar to the online dashboard and the ability to perform most accounting functions. It allows you to track your mileage with GPS, and you can also scan receipts to upload into the software. Two limitations are that you can’t view or pay outstanding bills or record hours worked within the mobile app—but it’s easy to use and free with a subscription to QuickBooks Online.
Microsoft Excel also has an app that’s available for both iOS and Android, and it allows you to create, view, edit, and share files. You can review spreadsheets and run data analysis while on the go and use the app’s robust formatting tools to customize tables. The app even allows you to share your files and invite others to edit, view, or leave comments directly in the file. On devices with touch capabilities, you can use the draw tab feature to make notes or write equations.
QuickBooks Online’s mobile app gives you access to most accounting functions, while you’re limited with Excel’s mobile app. Just like the software itself, you cannot invoice customers, enter and pay bills, or generate reports easily.
QuickBooks Online vs Excel: Assistance
QuickBooks Online | Excel | |
|---|---|---|
Monthly Pricing | $200 to $600 | Starting at $29.99 |
Access to Experts | ✓ | ✓ |
Communication | Phone or one-way video chat | Phone or online chat |
Account Reconciliation | ✓ | ✕ |
Bookkeeping Advice | ✓ | ✕ |
User-Friendly Dashboard | ✓ | ✕ |
If you’re a QuickBooks Online customer, then you’re eligible to enroll in its add-on service called QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping. This service gives you access to a QuickBooks-certified bookkeeper who will handle your books and provide the reports you need. They’re available to answer your questions anytime, and you can meet with them through a one-way video chat. The service provided includes setting up your chart of accounts, categorizing transactions, reconciling your bank statements, and generating reports.
Prices for QuickBooks Live’s full-service bookkeeping scale with the monthly expenses of your business, which means higher costs for businesses with higher expenses. Below is a breakdown of QuickBooks Live’s pricing:
- Low-volume bookkeeping: $200 per month for businesses with $25,000 in monthly expenses
- Medium-volume bookkeeping: $400 per month for businesses with $25,001 to $150,000 in monthly expenses
- High-volume bookkeeping: $600 per month for businesses with $150,001 or more in monthly expenses
Learn more about this service by reading our QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping review.
If you’re looking for instant expert help with Excel, Got It@Work for Microsoft Excel is a partner of Microsoft that gives you access to hundreds of vetted and ranked experts. The service is available 24/7 and works via live chat. You just need to post your issue—whether it has to do with charts, formulas, pivot tables, or other spreadsheet questions—and you’ll be able to connect with an expert for at least twenty minutes, with the option to extend the session.
There are three pricing tiers for this service, which are as follows:
- Select: $29.99 per month for up to three sessions, billed on a monthly basis
- Unlimited: $129.99 per quarter with unlimited sessions for three months
- Business: $199.99 one-time billing, 10-session bundle with Advanced Project Support
QuickBooks Online vs Excel: Customer Support
QuickBooks Online | Excel | |
|---|---|---|
Unlimited Support | ✓ | ✕ |
Community Support | ✓ | ✕ |
Email Support | ✓ | ✕ |
Live Chat Support | ✓ | ✕ |
Phone Support | ✓ | ✕ |
Searchable Knowledge Base | ✓ | ✓ |
Online Help Resources | ✓ | ✓ |
There’s no comparison when it comes to customer support options, as QuickBooks Online is by far superior in this category. You can speak with someone over the phone or connect via live chat or a chatbot. There’s also a vast database of resources for further reading, such as accounting blogs, setup guides, community forums, and troubleshooting tips. If you have critical bookkeeping needs, you might consider hiring a QuickBooks ProAdvisor.
Other than articles provided on its website, Excel doesn’t provide live bookkeeping support but there are resources on the website that will assist with common frequently asked questions (FAQs). However, it does provide help through Got It@Work for questions about how to use the software.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is QuickBooks Online easier to use than Excel?
QuickBooks Online is much easier to set up and use than Excel for bookkeeping. Excel requires a thorough knowledge of both bookkeeping and Excel formulas in order to create the necessary journals, ledgers, trial balance, and financial statements that are key to a bookkeeping system.
Is it possible to export QuickBooks Online reports to Excel?
Yes, you can export reports within QuickBooks Online as an Excel spreadsheet or a PDF.
How much does Excel cost?
You can purchase one Excel license for PC or Mac for $159.99 or sign up for Microsoft 365, which includes Excel, for $6 per user, per month.
Bottom Line
QuickBooks Online and Excel are vastly different, but with a little customization and maintenance, Excel can be an adequate accounting system—as long as you have the time to devote to it. However, if you’re looking for software that focuses on automating aspects of your accounting, then QuickBooks Online is the clear solution.
