QuickBooks Self-Employed Review: Features & Pricing

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The dashboard includes a left navigation bar where you can access its features, including income and expense entry, tax tracking, invoicing, and reporting. It also shows important numbers, including your profit and loss (P&L), expenses, accounts, invoices, mileage, and estimated taxes.

QuickBooks Self-Employed’s dashboard

You can categorize the transactions downloaded from your bank account or those that you have entered in QuickBooks Self-Employed manually from the Transactions menu. When an income or expense is recorded, you can mark it easily as personal or business.

If you’re using the desktop interface, click the transaction entry you wish to categorize. Then, select the Mark as business or Mark as personal button in the top menu bar of the Transactions screen as shown below.

Categorizing transactions as business or personal (desktop interface)

An easier way to categorize your transactions is by using the mobile app. You can categorize your expenses with a swipe—swipe left to categorize it as business and swipe right for personal.

There’s no law preventing a Schedule C business from paying personal expenses out of their business checking account, but an IRS audit will go much more smoothly if you keep personal activity out of your business. It’s better to keep business and personal activity in separate checking accounts with a periodic transfer from your business checking account to your personal account as needed for personal expenses. For other helpful practices, see our bookkeeping and accounting tips for small businesses.

QuickBooks Self-Employed allows you to classify income and expenses using categories that align with the IRS Schedule C, such as utilities, legal fees, and commissions. Once this information is entered, you can view and print a summary of your taxable income and expenses, which can take some of the guesswork out of filing your taxes. If your plan doesn’t include the Tax Bundle, you can use this summary to input your Schedule C information into a tax program of your choice manually.

If you drive for business reasons, you can deduct a standard rate per mile or actual vehicle expenses. QuickBooks Self-Employed has a mileage tracker app that you can download on your Android or iOS phone. It’ll log all of your car travel automatically and keep a running tally of your business miles, calculating the corresponding deduction at the current IRS mileage rate.

You can download your bank and credit card transactions directly into your QuickBooks Self-Employed account. From there, you can categorize each transaction into the appropriate expense category or designate it as a personal expense.

QuickBooks Self-Employed’s invoicing feature allows you to generate and track invoices. It also lets you sign up to make the invoices payable online. If you choose this option, be aware that while bank transfer transactions are free, credit card payment rates are 2.99%. Once your invoice is completed, you can email it to your customer as a PDF attachment. You can also send invoices through the mobile app.

Compared to invoices in QuickBooks Online, invoices in QuickBooks Self-Employed are not that customizable. While you can upload your logo and change the font color, there are no templates to choose from. Here’s an email and PDF preview of a sample invoice in QuickBooks Self-Employed.

PDF and email preview of a sample invoice in QuickBooks Self-Employed

The QuickBooks Self-Employed mobile app for iOS and Android allows you to take a picture of a receipt and attach it to a transaction directly from your mobile phone. Not only will this save you time, but it’ll also provide the documentation required by the IRS to deduct an expense.

QuickBooks Self-Employed Labs is a place where Intuit experiments with new features. It can be accessed by clicking the gear icon on the desktop site and then selecting “Labs” under TOOLS.

You’ll be able to view the latest integration and innovations available for you to opt into, such as its integration with Amazon. When you link your Amazon account to QuickBooks Self-Employed, you can label individual items in your order as business or personal without having to calculate the split yourself. Other items featured in the lab include custom color-coded tabs and the ability to import mileage trips from Google.

The QuickBooks Self-Employed Tax Bundle includes a subscription to TurboTax. You can transfer all of your Schedule C information automatically to TurboTax to complete your tax return. You should choose this plan if you prepare your own taxes.

QuickBooks Self-Employed Tax Bundle includes both a federal and state tax return for $15 per month or $180 per year. Purchased separately, TurboTax Home & Business costs $130 and includes the state return.

Based on the tax profile that you complete during setup, QuickBooks Self-Employed will project your annual profit, calculate your estimated tax payment, and alert you of tax due dates. This valuable tool helps protect you from an underpayment penalty because of not making the required quarterly estimated tax payments. Just be sure to stay up to date on categorizing your transactions and inputting your business income.

It’s important to note that QuickBooks Self-Employed only offers federal quarterly tax estimates. So, if your state collects income tax and requires estimated quarterly payments, then you’ll need to calculate that on your own.

The platform will calculate your quarterly tax liability, and the QuickBooks Self-Employed Tax Bundle allows you to pay the quarterly tax online. It may help avoid a federal underpayment penalty but excludes state-estimated tax payments, which might be due, depending upon where you live. Remember that to pay your federal quarterly taxes through QuickBooks Self-Employed Tax Bundle, you need to sign up for the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS).

No, it isn’t, as it supports only one user and lacks advanced features. When your business and accounting needs grow, you need to switch to a different solution, like QuickBooks Online.

Yes, it is. The cloud-based software has a streamlined interface that’s easy to navigate. It uses simple language and doesn’t have unnecessary features, so it takes very little time to get acquainted with it.

If you want options similar to QuickBooks Self-Employed, you can choose from our top-recommended QuickBooks Self-Employed alternatives, which includes QuickBooks Online Simple Start, Zoho Books, ZipBooks, and Wave.

While QuickBooks is a full-featured small business accounting software that’s available both for desktop and online, QuickBooks Self-Employed is suitable for freelancers needing to track their income and expenses for tax purposes. However, it has limited features and customization options, no integration with other software, and limited customer support.