QuickBooks Online vs Solopreneur: When to Use Each

We are driven by the Fit Small Business mission to provide you with the best answers to your small business questions—allowing you to choose the right accounting solution for your needs. Our meticulous evaluation process makes us a trustworthy source for accounting software insights. We don’t just scratch the surface; we immerse ourselves in every platform we review by exploring the features down to the finest nuances.

We have an extensive history of reviewing small business accounting software, and we stay up-to-date with the latest features and enhancements. Our first-hand experience, guided by our internal case study, helps us understand how the different products compare with each other and how they work in real-world scenarios.

QuickBooks Online lets you fully customize the chart of accounts, allowing you to organize your financial data in a way that makes sense to your business. You can rename and edit existing accounts, add account descriptions, and set account types and detail types based on your unique needs.

In comparison, QuickBooks Solopreneur uses a more standardized approach to your chart of accounts. Basically, it will decide your chart of accounts based on your company information, and you can’t modify and customize it to your unique needs. If you need to customize your chart of accounts, you should consider QuickBooks Online.

As a double-entry accounting system, QuickBooks Online provides a balance sheet that shows your company’s assets, liabilities, and equity. You can easily run a balance sheet report, and customize it by adjusting the date range, selecting specific accounts, and applying filters. You can also print it if needed. Meanwhile, you can’t generate a balance sheet in QuickBooks Solopreneur.

One of the unique features of QuickBooks Solopreneur is its growth goal-tracking tool. It allows you to create target goals (e.g., increasing revenue or reducing expenses) and set a timeline for achieving these goals. The program then provides the tools you need to track your progress toward your goals in the form of key performance indicators (KPIs) displayed on the dashboard.

Meanwhile, QuickBooks Online doesn’t have a specific built-in growth goal-tracking feature, but there are many ways you can track your business growth. For instance, QuickBooks Online Advanced allows you to create budgets and compare actual performance against these budgets to see if you are meeting your financial goals.

QuickBooks Online and Solopreneur use different approaches to track income and expenses. QuickBooks Online uses a double-entry accounting method, which provides more comprehensive tracking and reporting capabilities but may also be more complex, especially for those without accounting experience. Also, QuickBooks Online allows you to create classes and locations, which provides more detailed income and expense tracking.

On the other hand, Solopreneur uses a single-entry accounting system which is more straightforward for users without accounting knowledge. However, you can’t use tags, meaning Solopreneur provides more of an overview than detailed tracking compared to QuickBooks Online. We believe this is sufficient for most solopreneurs as they just need a basic overview of where their money is being spent.

QuickBooks Online and Solopreneur have similar invoicing and estimate management capabilities. You can create and customize estimates and invoices on the spot and send them directly from your QuickBooks account. You can personalize your sales forms by uploading your company logo, choosing from several invoice templates, or creating your own and adding custom fields.

Note that QuickBooks Self-Employed had no estimate management feature, so this is a significant improvement for many users.

QuickBooks Solopreneur offers the same payment options as QuickBooks Online, including invoiced, in-person, credit card, and ACH payments and payments made through Venmo, Apple Pay, and PayPal. This is a huge improvement as QuickBooks Self-Employed supported only invoiced, credit card, and ACH payments.

However, QuickBooks Online provides added flexibility by allowing users to set up recurring payments. This makes it a more suitable option for businesses that provide ongoing or subscription services.

One of the biggest deciding factors to help you decide between QuickBooks Online and Sololpreneur is the availability of the receipt capture feature. This feature was available in QuickBooks Self-Employed, so it’s surprising that Intuit excluded it in QuickBooks Solopreneur.

With QuickBooks Online, you can capture paper receipts, upload them to the system, and then QuickBooks will generate a transaction based on the information included in the photos.

Both QuickBooks Online and Solopreneur offer bank feeds, which allow you to connect your bank and credit card accounts to your QuickBooks software. Alternatively, you may also choose to manually upload your transactions if you prefer that approach. Furthermore, both programs have a bank reconciliation tool that allows you to reconcile your transactions against your bank statements.

You can enter expenses in both programs, but you can’t record bills in QuickBooks Solopreneur. With QuickBooks Online, you can enter and track expenses and bills and you can even pay bills directly from the platform. While expense tracking in Solopreneur might be enough for most one-person businesses, some may still need the ability to manage and enter bills, especially those who want to track upcoming expenses for budgeting purposes.

After you connect your bank and credit card accounts to QuickBooks Online or Solopreneur, the program automatically imports the latest transactions and categorizes them based on how you classified similar transactions. However, QuickBooks Online provides more flexibility for categorizing transactions. For instance, you can use tags and labels to mark transactions as personal or business.

Solopreneur offers a more straightforward option for tracking personal vs business transactions. It allows you to easily separate and categorize these transactions, which is particularly useful if you’re using the same bank account for personal and business expenses.

QuickBooks Online offers more flexible reporting options than QuickBooks Solopreneur. You can generate a wide range of reports in QuickBooks Online, including balance sheets, P&L, and cash flow statements. Depending on your subscription, you can also generate reports on specific aspects of your business, such as A/P, A/R, projects, and inventory.

Meanwhile, there are very limited report options in QuickBooks Solopreneur. You can’t generate a balance sheet report or financial statements, as well as A/P and A/R reports like aging summary reports. Some of the reports available include P&L and sales by customer summary reports.

Both programs offer the same capabilities in terms of mileage tracking. They automatically track business trips using GPS, so there’s no need for you to log your odometer reading manually. You can then categorize your trip as either business or personal. As the apps track your mileage, they automatically calculate the deductible amount based on the business miles driven and the current IRS mileage rates.

Just like QuickBooks Online, Solopreneur automatically calculates sales tax rates based on your customer’s location. For instance, when creating an invoice, it will automatically calculate the applicable sales tax based on the location of the sale or the “ship to” address in the invoice. If you’re billing customers for tax-exempt items, you can turn off tax tracking in the invoice and Solopreneur will exclude them from the totals.

Some of the features available in QuickBooks Online that are not offered in Solopreneur include:

• Class and location tracking: You can track activity (e.g., income and expenses) by class and location, allowing you to generate detailed reports on specific areas of your business. For instance, if you have multiple product lines, you can track how much money you make and spend on each product line.
• Contractor payments: QuickBooks Online lets you set up contractors as vendors, process payments by checks or direct deposits, and generate reports on contractor expenses.
• Inventory management: You can set up inventory products and monitor stock levels in real time. As you sell items, QuickBooks Online automatically calculates and records COGS, helping you keep precise inventory records.
• Project accounting: You can set up projects, assign them to team members, and track those projects until they are completed. You can also add income and expenses to a project and enter time entries if needed to track profitability.
• Fixed asset management: When you upgrade to QuickBooks Online Advanced, you’ll be able to set up fixed assets, calculate and track depreciation, and generate depreciation schedules.

QuickBooks Online is for SMBs, while Solopreneur is built for one-person businesses.
Online is more scalable as there are four subscription options, as opposed to Solopreneur, which offers only a single plan.

Yes, it is. Solopreneur offers a more streamlined version and has additional features, like expense entry and tracking, estimate management, and more options for processing online payments.

No, as it’s already discontinued. However, existing users can continue using it and receive support from QuickBooks.

No, as QuickBooks Online currently doesn’t offer a direct migration option to Solopreneur. If you need to make the switch, you have to cancel your QuickBooks Solopreneur subscription and then purchase a QuickBooks Online plan. You have to set up your company from scratch.