QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition Review 2023
This article is part of a larger series on Accounting Software.
QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition, a version of QuickBooks Desktop Premier, is tailored to businesses that bill customers by the hour. Hourly rates can be set by the type of service, employee, or customer, and unbilled time and expenses can be added to invoices easily. QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition has the same price as the general business edition of QuickBooks Desktop Premier, which starts at $799 per year for one user.
Overall Score:
4.10 / 5
What We Like
- Create billable and nonbillable service codes
- Assign billing rates by service code, employee, or customer and job
- Batch-create invoices for unbilled time and expenses
- Review billed, unbilled, and nonbillable time by employee, customer, or project
- Fast navigation and input compared to cloud-based programs
What's Missing
- Doesn’t track billing adjustments made for fixed-fee engagements
- Separate app required for employees to enter their own billable hours
- Cannot access program from the cloud
- New, upgraded mileage tracking app is only available for iOS devices
Use Cases
Visit QuickBooks Desktop Premier
Are you looking for something different? If you want to explore other comprehensive accounting software, see our guide to the best small business accounting software.
QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Deciding Factors
Supported Business Types | Small and medium-sized companies that bill customers based on the number of hours their employees work on a job |
Pricing | From $799 per year for one user to $1,999 per year for five users |
Money-back Guarantee | 60 days from the purchase date |
Standout Features |
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Ease of Use | Not as easy to use as a cloud-based software; recommended for businesses with on-site bookkeepers |
Customer Support | Phone support, live chat, chatbot, and self-help resources (e.g., blogs and video tutorials) |
QuickBooks Premier Professional Services New Features for 2023
- Cash Flow Hub: The new Cash Flow Hub can help professional service businesses project their future cash flow based on your bank and activity, helping you make budget-related decisions wisely.
- Automatic mileage tracking: The new mileage tracking app (only for iOS devices) lets you calculate your business mileage automatically. Enter your place of origin and destination, and the app will calculate the mileage automatically. This means you don’t have to track your odometer readings manually.
QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition Alternatives
 |  | |
|---|---|---|
Best for: Law firms needing triple reconciliation | Best for: Companies with over five accounting users | Best for: Businesses working with a remote accountant |
Custom quote | From $1,740 per year | From $30 per month |
QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition Pricing
The QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition costs the same as the general business edition. Prices range from $799 per year for one user to $1,999 per year for five users. Your QuickBooks Premier subscription includes free system updates, automatic data backup and recovery, and unlimited customer support. You can add payroll for an additional fee.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of QuickBooks Desktop Premier’s pricing:
- $$799 per year for one user
- $1,099 per year for two users
- $1,399 per year for three users
- $1,699 per year for four users
- $1,999 per year for five users
Businesses that require more than five users will need to upgrade to QuickBooks Enterprise, which supports up to 40 users.
Not sure which QuickBooks Desktop product is right for you? We provide a QuickBooks Desktop version comparison to guide you.
Fit Small Business Case Study
We devised an internal case study to create a detailed QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition review. Our case study, which uses a unique scoring rubric, analyzes how each accounting software performs against a set of parameters. Professional Services Edition has the general features of the business edition of QuickBooks Desktop Premier, so the rubric scores are the same, as summarized in the table below. These scores are explained in detail in our QuickBooks Desktop Premier review.
Categories | Score (Out of 5) |
|---|---|
Pricing | 1.00 |
General Features | 4.50 |
A/P | 4.80 |
A/R | 4.80 |
Banking & Cash Management | 5.00 |
Project Accounting | 5.00 |
Sales Income Tax | 4.00 |
Inventory | 5.00 |
Reporting | 4.80 |
Ease of Use | 3.90 |
Mobile App | 0.50 |
User Ratings | 4.30 |
Overall Score | 4.10 |
QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition Features
Besides the general business edition features discussed in our QuickBooks Desktop Premier review, professional service firms will find even more useful functions in Professional Services Edition.
The Professional menu in your Professional Services Edition dashboard gives you access to features that are most relevant to professional service companies. These include invoicing, proposal management, weekly timesheets, project costing, and professional service-specific reports.
Professional menu in QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition
In addition to estimates, you can create proposals. You can access the proposal form from the Professional menu on your dashboard. To complete the form, you need to enter details about the product or service you wish to provide, such as class, rate, amount, markup, and total.
Create a proposal in QuickBooks Premier Professional Services
You can set any number of billing rate levels and apply them to whichever employees you choose. For example, in a legal firm, you might want to set different billing rates for partners, paralegals, law associates, and outside consultants.
You can also set fixed or custom hourly rates by service item and assign them to employees. Then, every time you create an invoice, QuickBooks Desktop will provide the rate of each item automatically based on the assigned employee.
You can choose from the two billing rate types in QuickBooks Premier Professional Services:
- Fixed Hourly Rate: This applies a fixed hourly rate to an employee, which can be set in the Hourly Rate field.
- Custom Hourly Rate Per Service Item: Use this billing type when employees are billed at different rates based on the service being performed.
Set up bill rate level in QuickBooks Premier Professional 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.
Also, 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.
Set new price level in QuickBooks Premier Professional Services
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 can also choose to select a single job and view the detail of unbilled time and expenses to bill only a portion.
Invoice for time and expenses in QuickBooks Premier Professional Services
You can enter employee time in a weekly timesheet and assign it to a particular service code and customer job. Nonbillable time can be assigned to a nonbillable service item. The timesheet entry isn’t only used to accumulate hours to bill but also to calculate an hourly employee’s paycheck if you’ve subscribed to QuickBooks Payroll. Hours entered for salaried employees won’t affect their paychecks.
Weekly timesheet in QuickBooks Premier Professional Services
Project costing in QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition allows you to track the expenses for a project and compare them to your revenue, giving you an idea of how much you make and spend for each project. An important feature unavailable in QuickBooks Online, the cloud-based version, is the ability to compare job estimates and actual expenses.
Sample report on job estimates vs actual expenses
While Professional Services Edition includes all the traditional financial reports of QuickBooks Premier, it also has a list of reports that help track your billable expenses to ensure they eventually get assigned and billed to a customer or project.
- Expenses not Assigned to Projects: You can refer to this list to find expenses that haven’t been assigned to customer jobs.
Sample report on Expenses not Assigned to Projects
- Unbilled Expenses by Project: This 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.
Sample report on Unbilled Expenses by Project
- Billed vs. Proposal by Project: This 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.
Sample Billed vs. Proposal by Project report
- Billed and unbilled hours by employee and project: Here, you’ll find a list of hours that have been charged by employees to a customer’s job but haven’t been billed to the customer.
- 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.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is QuickBooks Desktop Premier Professional Services easy to use?
Professional Services has the same interface as the base Premier program, so if you have used other QuickBooks Desktop products, then you should find your way around easily. To get the most out of the software, we recommend that you have a dedicated on-site bookkeeper.
Who should use QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition?
Premier Professional Services is great for businesses that bill customers by the hour. Examples are engineering firms, accounting firms, and digital marketing companies.
Bottom Line
QuickBooks Premier Professional Services Edition helps businesses that bill clients by the hour (such as engineers, consultants, and lawyers) by managing billing rates so that they can invoice clients effectively. However, it doesn’t track billing adjustments by employee. Larger firms may want to use it for their core accounting needs while using specialized software to track employees’ billable-hour realization.
