Sage 50cloud vs QuickBooks Online: Compare Features & Pricing for 2022

Sage 50cloud and QuickBooks Online, two of today’s most popular accounting programs, have many similar features. Both offer multiple plans―priced on a monthly or annual subscription basis―and supply small businesses with entry-level solutions that are affordable. However, the main difference between these two software products is that we find Sage 50cloud more complicated and harder to use than QuickBooks Online.

When to Use Sage 50cloud

Sage 50cloud (formerly Peachtree Software) is a robust online accounting solution for small and medium-sized businesses that offers features such as taxes, inventory, budgeting, cash flow, and invoicing.

Sage 50cloud Is Best For

• Experienced bookkeepers: Though Sage 50cloud contains many great features, there’s a certain level of difficulty involved in using this software. Small business owners and managers will have a hard time learning how to use Sage 50cloud. We recommend Sage 50cloud only if you have an experienced bookkeeper helping you maintain the books.
• Project accounting: Sage 50cloud’s project accounting features are outstanding, even though the user interface is quite difficult to learn. With Sage 50cloud, you can create projects, assign project costs, and prepare budget-to-actual comparisons for monitoring.
• Multi-company accounting: Sage 50cloud is a good choice for consolidating multiple companies. You can generate consolidated financial statements, and Sage 50cloud will take care of intercompany accounts and transactions. If Sage 50cloud isn’t what you’re looking for, check out our list of the best multicompany accounting software for more options.

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When to Use QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Online is a web-based accounting solution that caters to bookkeepers, accountants, and small businesses. An international leader of the financial management software industry for over two decades, it’s used by more than 29 million businesses, 80% of which are small business operations in the United States.

QuickBooks Is Best For

• DIY business owners: QuickBooks Online offers an easy-to-use interface intended for small business accounting. If you’re a business owner or manager planning to manage the books on your own, you won’t find QuickBooks Online difficult to use, even if you’re a first-timer. Although it’ll take you a little while to learn everything, QuickBooks Online is easier than Sage 50cloud. For other options, check out our picks for the best small business accounting software for do-it-yourself (DIY) accounting.
• Mobile accounting: QuickBooks Online’s mobile app isn’t the best in the market today, but it’s much better than Sage 50cloud’s app. You can send invoices, receive payments, capture receipts, assign expenses, and view reports through the app. That’s why QuickBooks Online is one of our choices for the best mobile accounting apps.
• Freelancers: We chose QuickBooks Online as our best accounting software for freelancers collecting sales tax or scanning receipts. QuickBooks Online Simple Start is the most recommended plan for freelancers because it’s good for a single user, and it offers a lot of great tools for freelancer accounting needs.

Visit QuickBooks Online

When to Use an Alternative

Even though Sage 50cloud and QuickBooks Online offer great features worth considering, we think that these two software services aren’t suitable for:

• A free accounting software service: Wave is our overall pick for best free accounting software because its accounting and invoicing features are totally free. We also recommend Wave to companies with no experience in using accounting software services. Wave is a great stepping stone for beginners.
• Outstanding customer support: FreshBooks is one of the best in terms of customer support. You can call their support hotline or request that they call you. If you need quick help, FreshBooks has a chatbot that can provide quick information from the support page.
• An unlimited number of users without additional fees: If you have a large accounting team, Xero is our best recommendation. With Xero, you can add an unlimited number of users at no additional cost. Xero is our choice for the overall best QuickBooks alternative because of its low price point and outstanding inventory features that rival QuickBooks.

Fit Small Business Case Study

We created a case study to help us assess the performance of Sage 50cloud and QuickBooks Online. In our case study, we highlight 11 key areas that an accounting software program should have for small business accounting. Here are the results of our study:

Sage 50cloud vs QuickBooks Online at a Glance

Sage 50cloud vs QuickBooks Online: Pricing

Both Sage 50cloud and QuickBooks are billed on a monthly or annual basis. The price is dependent upon the number of users and the features required.

Sage 50cloud Pricing

Sage 50cloud offers three different pricing plans, which are billed on a monthly basis:

• Pro Accounting: $56.08 per month for one user
• Premium Accounting: $87.58 per month for one user to $201.58 per month for five users
• Quantum Accounting: $145.17 per month for one user to $371.08 per month for 10 users. Custom pricing is available for 11 users and above.

QuickBooks Online Pricing

QuickBooks offers a choice of four different plans:

• Simple Start: $25 per month for one user
• Essentials: $50 per month, which includes three users
• Plus: $80 per month, which includes five users
• Advanced: $180 per month, which includes 25 users
• QuickBooks Live: The cost of QuickBooks Live is in addition to the cost of the software:
  • Low volume: $200 per month for up to $25,000 in monthly expenses
  • Medium volume: $400 per month for up to $150,000 in monthly expenses
  • High volume: $600 per month for more than $150,000 in monthly expenses

QuickBooks Live is a virtual bookkeeping service that connects you with a certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor who’ll work one-on-one with your company and help you to streamline your processes. There are three levels of service, which depend on your business’ volume of bookkeeping. Once the bookkeeper gets your books cleaned up, they’ll maintain them on a monthly basis and also help you to prepare for year-end taxes.

QuickBooks also offers full-service payroll services as an add-on for each subscription level:

• Payroll Core: $45 plus $4 per employee per month
• Payroll Premium: $75 plus $8 per employee per month
• Payroll Elite: $125 plus $10 per employee per month

Takeaway: While Sage 50cloud offers three different pricing plans, QuickBooks gives users a choice of five subscription levels and the added support of QuickBooks Live, an assisted bookkeeping service. Comparing the prices for each, QuickBooks Online is much less expensive than Sage 50cloud, especially for multiple users.

Sage 50cloud vs QuickBooks Online: Features

Sage 50cloud Features Table

QuickBooks Online Features Table

Sage 50cloud vs QuickBooks Online: Banking and Cash Management

Sage 50cloud offers great banking features but misses on some minor aspects. With Sage 50cloud, you can establish bank feeds and reconcile bank statements. What we liked most is that Sage 50cloud shows the balances for bank reconciling items such as deposits in transit and outstanding checks while reconciling. We like this because it helps users keep track of unreconciled differences.

QuickBooks Online provides an easy-to-use banking module where you can establish bank feeds, reconcile bank statements, print checks, and manage cash transactions. Business owners and managers can manage cash and banking transactions easily because of QuickBooks Online’s user-friendly interface.

Takeaway: We recommend QuickBooks Online for banking and cash management because of its ease of use. However, experienced bookkeepers might want to choose Sage 50cloud.

Sage 50cloud vs QuickBooks Online: Accounts Receivable

Sage 50cloud offers many useful features in its accounts receivable (A/R) module. You can set up recurring invoices, issue sales receipts, view customer accounts, and issue credit memos. However, the AR module of Sage 50cloud can be overwhelming and difficult for nonaccountants. The interface design is old, and the navigation flow is complex.

QuickBooks Online’s AR module features an interface that’s convenient and easy to use, even for non-accountants. In QuickBooks Online, you can create customized invoices―which you can’t do in Sage 50cloud―view customer accounts, and manage invoices.

Takeaway: If we compare Sage 50cloud and QuickBooks Online on features alone, both products meet eye-to-eye. However, usage-wise, Sage 50cloud is harder for nonaccountants. We can’t recommend it to you if you want to do the books yourself. Instead, we recommend QuickBooks Online.

Sage 50cloud vs QuickBooks Online: Accounts Payable

Sage 50cloud features a powerful accounts payable (A/P) module. You can create vendors, record expenses, convert purchase orders into bills, set up recurring expenses, and record e-payments. We like the AP features of Sage 50cloud because it contains everything you need to manage your payables. However, the module is also overwhelming and difficult to use.

QuickBooks Online shares similar features with Sage 50cloud. You can create recurring expenses and even record credits from vendors. Though it’s a tie between Sage 50cloud and QuickBooks Online in terms of features, QuickBooks Online offers an easier interface that DIY business owners can use for bookkeeping.

Takeaway: Sage 50cloud and QuickBooks Online meet eye-to-eye in terms of AP features. However, we can’t recommend Sage 50cloud to non-accountants because of its difficult interface. QuickBooks Online is our pick for DIY accounting and Sage 50cloud if you have an experienced bookkeeper.

Sage 50cloud vs QuickBooks Online: Project Accounting

Sage 50cloud’s project accounting features are outstanding and complete. It contains features like creating estimates and projects, billing expenses to projects, and assigning costs to projects. But the most important feature here is Sage 50cloud’s ability to create a budget-to-actual report for labor and inventory.

QuickBooks Online offers all the features we mentioned above for Sage 50cloud, except for one: you can’t create a budget-to-actual report for labor and inventory. We see this as a significant miss for QuickBooks Online because budget-to-actual reports are vital for project accounting.

Takeaway: Both Sage 50cloud and QuickBooks Online offer optimum project accounting features. While they both can help you manage projects, we strongly recommend Sage 50cloud for its budgeting features, especially the actual-to-budget feature. We find this feature useful for decision-making and small business management.

Sage 50cloud vs QuickBooks Online: Ease of Use

Sage 50cloud is harder to learn than QuickBooks Online. There’s also more than one way to get to each task for both programs. Both Sage 50cloud and QuickBooks offer similar features, but Sage 50cloud has more extensive capabilities.

Sage 50cloud Ease of Use

For all of its benefits, depending on your prior bookkeeping experience, you might feel that Sage 50cloud has a steep learning curve, and its large number of features may be overwhelming at first. However, with time, it’ll become more user-friendly. Our review of Sage 50cloud has more information about its capabilities. It’s only available for Windows.

An appealing aspect of Sage 50cloud is that it has built-in accounting and compliance controls that maintain accuracy and prevent common errors. This is especially beneficial because, often, mistakes are made without even realizing it. Security functions include suspicious transaction flagging, audit trails, and user access settings. Data can be backed up locally or to the cloud:

Your dashboard allows a quick view of five important reports, which are accessed by clicking on Business Status: Account Balances, Revenue, Vendors to Pay, Customers Who Owe Money, and Aged Receivables.

1. Business Status: Click here to display your dashboard shown above.
2. Account Balances: View the balances of all of your accounts here.
3. Revenue: Year to Date: View your company’s revenue, which summarizes total revenue, cost of sales, gross profit, and expenses. This report can be customized.
4. Vendors to Pay: A list of bills that are currently due is shown here, with the vendor name, amount due, and due date listed for each.
5. Customers Who Owe Money: View a list of amounts due for each customer, which shows due dates for each invoice.
6. Aged Receivables: View a graph that illustrates your A/R data.

You can also click on the tabs at the top to navigate to various functions, such as accessing the chart of accounts, invoicing customers, generating and customizing reports, and creating journal entries. Here’s a screenshot that shows how you can quickly initiate transactions using shortcuts in the menu bar. In this case, you can access the Invoice Time and Expenses feature under the Tasks shortcut:

Sage 50cloud doesn’t offer assisted bookkeeping services per se, but Sage Expert Services is designed to help you obtain maximum performance from the software. Available exclusively to Sage customers, these services are conducted by senior analysts that have advanced technical knowledge of Sage 50. The fee-based services include installation and upgrades, customization services, year-end walkthroughs, and data services.

QuickBooks Online Ease of Use

Our review of QuickBooks Online details the software’s best features and how easy they are to use, as well as the types of businesses that would qualify as the best fit for it.

Similar to Sage 50, QuickBooks Online opens to a dashboard with useful reports. Below is a snapshot of the QuickBooks Online dashboard with a description of what you’ll find there:

1. Left menu bar: Create invoices, generate reports, and track mileage from this menu bar.
2. Cash flow: Fully customizable and shown in graph form, this gives you a snapshot of your income, cost of goods sold, and expenses.
3. Invoices: Access customer invoices that have been paid and are awaiting payment and view your A/R report.
4. Expenses: Shown in chart form, you can view your top three categories of expenses here.
5. Profit & loss: Access your income statement here, which can be customized for a certain time period.
6. Bank accounts: Check your available bank balances directly from the dashboard. Once QuickBooks is connected to your online accounts you can access both the bank and QuickBooks balances.

The quickest way to add a new transaction is to click on the New button above the left menu bar. Here’s an example:

QuickBooks also offers assisted bookkeeping services in the form of QuickBooks Live. A network of QuickBooks-certified virtual bookkeepers, these professionals will work with you to clean up your books and maintain them on a monthly basis. However, this isn’t a substitute for someone who can handle day-to-day bookkeeping tasks such as sending invoices, processing A/P and A/R, and managing inventory.

In addition to QuickBooks Live, there are thousands of independent QuickBooks ProAdvisors that you can hire to assist you with your QuickBooks bookkeeping.

Takeaway: Sage 50cloud is harder to use compared to QuickBooks Online. We can only recommend Sage 50cloud to small businesses with an experienced bookkeeper on board. Otherwise, QuickBooks Online is the better choice.

Sage 50cloud vs QuickBooks Online: Integrations

Sage 50cloud has 73 integrations available, as compared to 825 for QuickBooks. While Sage 50’s integrations are mainly focused on the apps associated with Microsoft 365, QuickBooks offers a wide range of integrations including QuickBooks Payroll, Shopify by OneSaas, Service Trade, and Fathom.

Sage 50cloud Integrations

Sage 50cloud leverages the power of Microsoft 365 to make your data accessible via the cloud and a range of integrated apps. It integrates with Microsoft 365 Business Standard and the full Microsoft Small Business Productivity Suite, which will save time and money while also boosting productivity.

Here’s a sample of the integrations that are currently available for Sage 50cloud:

• Microsoft apps: Microsoft365, Microsoft OneDrive, MileIQ, One Drive, SharePoint, Teams, Outlook Customer Manager
• Time tracking: Sage Timeslips, Journyx
• Manage expenses: SnapAP
• Process payroll: PayClock
• E-commerce and brick & mortar stores: ProShop, Shopfront
• Payment management: Sage Payment Solutions, Credit Hound, Stripe, PayPal

QuickBooks Online Integrations

For businesses with employees or the need to track time, you can access QuickBooks Payroll and QuickBooks Time directly through QuickBooks. There are also many third-party apps that integrate with the software.

• QuickBooks Payroll: Click on QuickBooks Payroll from within QuickBooks and access full payroll functionality.
• QuickBooks Time: Use the mobile app to track time and then bill it to customers or use it for payroll within QuickBooks Online. Time has many advanced features, which include GPS tracking of employees and timeclock terminals with facial recognition.

Here’s a sample of the integrations that are currently available for QuickBooks Online:

• Time tracking: QuickBooks Time, ClockShark, and eBillity
• Inventory tracking: eBay by OneSaas, Shopify by OneSaas, Amazon Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), Seller Fulfilled Accounting by Entriwise, and Katana Inventory and Manufacturing
• Pay bills and receive payments: Bill.com, Deluxe eChecks, Plooto, and Veem
• Manage customers: Method:CRM, Insightly CRM, WORKetc, and Capsule CRM
• Manage projects: BigTime, Service Trade, Jobber, Corecon, and Knowify for Contractors
• Perform analytics: Syft Analytics, Qvinci, Fathom, and LivePlan
• Process payroll: QuickBooks Payroll, Gusto, ADP, and Paychex

Takeaway: With many more integrations than its counterpart, QuickBooks Online offers solutions that can be accessed through the software and third-party apps. The most appealing feature of Sage 50cloud is its ability to integrate with Microsoft 365, giving users access to a wide range of Microsoft products.

Sage 50cloud vs QuickBooks Online Mobile App

Sage 50cloud has a mobile app called Sage Capture that’s available for both iOS and Android devices. It’s limited to capturing receipts and entering transactions and is updated in real-time across all devices, enabling immediate access to your dashboard.

With the QuickBooks Online mobile app, all of your financial data is at your fingertips. You can use your device to enter transactions, record expenses, and send reports. It backs up the data to the cloud automatically and syncs it across all of your devices.

Takeaway: Both Sage 50cloud and QuickBooks offer mobile solutions that enable you to manage your bookkeeping functions while on the go. While the QuickBooks Accounting app offers the full range of features, such as tracking miles, creating invoices, and managing contacts, the Sage 50cloud app is limited, offering only the ability to record receipts and enter transactions.

Sage 50cloud vs QuickBooks Online: Customer Support

Both Sage 50cloud and QuickBooks have various options for customers seeking support, including an extensive array of online resources that can provide assistance with basic questions. These support options include articles, videos, online chat, phone support, or in the case of QuickBooks, paid assistance by a QuickBooks ProAdvisor.

Sage 50cloud Customer Support

With over three million customers worldwide and over 35 years of business expertise, Sage has put together a wealth of resources that are available to all of its customers. These resources include Q&A Live, a virtual meeting room where Sage analysts answer questions on specific topics in real-time. You can also talk with an expert online or by phone, submit an online case, or connect with Sage Expert Services. Users can also contact customer support through a chatbot or a live chat person. Otherwise, they can email Sage for inquiries.

QuickBooks Online Customer Support

QuickBooks offers a variety of customer support options depending on the complexity of your needs. You can visit the Learn and Support page, which includes articles and videos on frequently asked questions. You can also email the support team if the answer isn’t immediately apparent, and questions are usually addressed within 48 hours.

Customer service representatives are also available via online chat or telephone, although it isn’t possible to call QuickBooks Support directly; rather, you must submit a call request online. For a complicated issue, you may wish to hire a QuickBooks ProAdvisor. Certified by Intuit, these financial professionals must pass an exam to certify that they’re proficient with QuickBooks.

Takeaway: Sage doesn’t have assisted bookkeeping services in the US. We highly recommend QuickBooks if you’re planning to hire a local bookkeeper to assist you with your bookkeeping.

Bottom Line

Sage 50cloud is a great accounting software program packed with outstanding features. However, the difficulty of using Sage 50cloud poses a barrier to entry for small businesses who plan to self-manage the books. We recommend Sage 50cloud only to experienced bookkeepers. Otherwise, QuickBooks Online is our choice for small business accounting.