QuickBooks Professional Services Edition includes all the great features of QuickBooks Premier Edition, which we rate as one of the best small business accounting software. This review focuses on the features of the professional services edition that will most benefit professional service firms, such as independent lawyers and law firms. Be sure to read our QuickBooks Premier review to learn about the general features that are also included in QuickBooks Professional Services.
What We Recommend QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition For
QuickBooks Professional Services Edition is good for any business that bills customers based on the number of hours their employees work on a job. Unfortunately, QuickBooks Professional Services does not track pricing adjustments made once the unbilled hours are added to an invoice.
QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition Is Especially Good For
- Businesses billing customers by the hour: QuickBooks Professional Services allows employees to assign their hours to particular customers and jobs. Invoices can be created easily by selecting the hours and expenses to bill.
- Businesses that need to vary their hourly rate: Hourly rates can be set by employee, service code or customer and job.
- Businesses with experienced bookkeepers: Companies with experienced bookkeepers that don’t require customer service can purchase QuickBooks Premier for a one-time fee, that when allocated over the three-year life of the software, is a great value.
QuickBooks Premier Professional Service Edition Is Not a Good Fit For
- Law Firms needing a triple reconciliation: If your law firm needs software to help with your triple reconciliation between your bank account, client trust account, and client ledgers, you should check out the options available in Best Law Firm Accounting Software.
- Businesses with more than five users: QuickBooks Premier Professional Services allows only five accounting users, but an unlimited number of employees for time tracking purposes. If you need more accounting users, consider purchasing QuickBooks Enterprise Professional Services Edition, which has the same features as Premier Professional Services, plus 40 users and advanced features for reporting and pricing. Read our QuickBooks Desktop comparison to learn about all the differences in Enterprise vs Premier.
- Businesses that want to track billing adjustments by employee: You will need additional specialized billing software, such as TimeTracker by eBillity, if one of the factors you use to evaluate employees is the percentage of their billable hours actually realized.
- Bookkeepers working with an outside accountant: If you don’t have experience with bookkeeping, you’ll need to hire an outside accountant to ask questions and keep you on track. It’s harder to share your QuickBooks data with your accountant using the desktop product than with QuickBooks Online. Our article, QuickBooks Online vs Desktop, can help decide which product is right for you.
QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition Pros and Cons
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| Create billable and nonbillable service codes | Does not track realization percentage automatically |
| Assign billing rates by service code, employee, or customer and job | Doesn’t track billing adjustments made for fixed-fee engagements |
| Batch create invoices for unbilled time and expenses | Separate app required for employees to enter their own billable hours |
| Review billed, unbilled, and nonbillable time by employee, customer, or project | Can only access from the computers where it is installed |
| Fast navigation and input compared to cloud-based programs | Difficult to share company file compared to cloud-based programs |
The professional services edition is available for the same price as the base edition of QuickBooks Premier. The QuickBooks Premier software can be purchased for a one-time charge, or the software can be bundled with services, including customer support, for an annual subscription. After purchasing Premier, be sure to select the Professional Services Edition prior to downloading.
QuickBooks Premier Software Only Purchase | QuickBooks Premier Plus Professional Services Edition Subscription | |
|---|---|---|
Price | $649.99 for 1 user $999.99 for 2 users $1,399.99 for 3 users $1,749.99 for 4 users $2,099.99 for 5 users | $499.95/year for 1 user $799.99/year for 2 users $1,099.99/year for 3 users $1,399.99/year for 4 users $1,699.99/year for 5 users |
Required Edition Upgrades | Every 3 years | Annual upgrades included in price |
Free Maintenance Updates | ✔ | ✔ |
Free Edition Upgrades | N/A | ✔ |
Unlimited Customer Support | N/A | ✔ |
Online Data Backups | N/A | ✔ |
Intuit QuickBooks Payroll Pricing
QuickBooks Premier Edition has integrated payroll capabilities for an additional $50 per month plus $2 per employee. QuickBooks Desktop Payroll comes in your choice of Enhanced, which provides you the tools to run payroll, or Assisted, which will assist you in running payroll and filing the required returns.
Get started now to receive $200 to $800 off your first-year subscription to QuickBooks Premier Plus.
QuickBooks Professional Services Edition Key Features
Service firms will find these useful features in QuickBooks Professional Services Edition:
- Set billing rates by employee: You can set any number of billing rate levels and apply them to whichever employees you choose. For example, you might specify that managers bill a specific rate.
- Set price levels for different services: You can set a per-hour price level and assign it to particular types of work. For example, you can create a service item for lawn care and set a price level of $50 per hour, regardless of which employee performs the service.
- Set special price levels for certain customers: You can set special price levels to be applied to particular customers. For instance, you can set a friends and family special price level equal to 90% of the standard rate for all services. After assigning the friends and family rate to the desired customers, it would be used automatically when an invoice is calculated:
QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition Special Price Level.
- Assign time and expenses to customer jobs: You can enter employee time in a weekly timesheet and assign it to a particular service and customer job. Nonbillable time can be assigned to a nonbillable service item. The timesheet entry is not only used to accumulate hours to bill but also to calculate an hourly employee’s paycheck. Hours entered for salaried employees won’t affect their paycheck. Expenses can also be assigned to customer jobs as vendor invoices are input.
- Create batch invoices for unbilled time and expenses: You can batch create invoices for unbilled time and expenses. QuickBooks will provide a screen showing all unbilled time, expenses, and mileage by job. You can select the clients you want to bill, and invoices will be generated automatically. You also have the choice to select a single job and view the detail of unbilled time and expenses to bill only a portion:
QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition Invoice for Time & Expenses.
- Generate reports: While QuickBooks Professional Services Edition includes all the traditional financial reports of QuickBooks Premier, professional service firms will also have these useful reports:
- Expenses not assigned to projects: You can refer to this list to find expenses that have not been assigned to customer jobs.
- Unbilled expenses by project: This report will provide a list of expenses that have been assigned to a customer’s job but not yet billed to the customer on an invoice.
- Billed and unbilled hours by employee and project: Here, you will find a list of hours that have been charged by employees to a customer’s job but haven’t been billed to the customer.
- Billed vs proposal by project: This report compares the proposed fee for a customer job to the amount that has already been billed. You can refer to this report to determine if additional unbilled time and expenses should be billed.
- Actual project costs detail: You can analyze this report to determine the actual cost incurred on a customer job. This is different from the amounts billed for a job. For example, while you might bill a customer $100 per hour for a particular employee, the actual project cost report will only show the amount you paid the employee, such as $25 per hour.
QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition Alternatives
Best for: Professional service firms needing more than five users | Best for: Inexperienced bookkeepers that need frequent help | Best for: Tracking time realization by employee, customer or project |
Software from: $180 per month | Software from: $25 per month | Software from: $22.50, plus $12.50 per user, per month |
Bottom Line
QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition helps engineers, consultants, and any other businesses that bill clients by the hour to accumulate hours and manage billing rates to invoice clients effectively. However, QuickBooks Professional Services Edition does not track billing adjustments by employee. Larger firms may want to use QuickBooks Professional Services for their core accounting needs while using specialized software to track employees’ billable-hour realization.
To purchase QuickBooks Professional Services Edition, first purchase QuickBooks Premier and then choose the Professional Services Edition before downloading the program. Visit QuickBooks today to get started.
