Accounting software allows small businesses to spend less time on entering data, tracking expenses, or organizing receipts. Online accounting software like QuickBooks Online gives business owners the time to focus on their business and develop ideas. Companies get more organized, manage all things financial using one application, keep accurate records and prepare for taxes, and understand the health of their business more clearly.
Table of contents
- What is QuickBooks Online?
- QuickBooks Online Use Cases
- Cons or Disadvantages of QuickBooks Online
- Pros or Advantages of QuickBooks Online
- Ready to decide on using QuickBooks Online?
- Featured Partners: Project Management Software
What is QuickBooks Online?
QuickBooks Online (QBO) is an online accounting solution by Intuit for small and growing companies. When Intuit — founded in 1983 — released QuickBooks, it quickly became very popular with small business owners with no formal accounting training. QuickBooks, at one time, reached up to 94 percent share in the retail unit in the business accounting category.
Following these early successes, Intuit released QuickBooks Online as a cloud service where users pay a monthly subscription fee for its use. It is a distinct product from the desktop version and offers integration with numerous third-party solutions, as well as services like banks, credit card companies, and other financial services providers.
QuickBooks Use Cases
QuickBooks Online is applicable to a variety of business types and sizes.
New Businesses
QuickBooks Online can help new businesses, solo entrepreneurs, gig workers, and freelancers get their businesses up and stay on track through the critical launch and growth phases. QuickBooks Online allows them to see their income, track their expenses, and have visibility on their overall financial picture at any time. Users also get the essential tools to invoice customers, connect to their banks and credit accounts, track sales tax, and run basic financial reports.
Professional Services
In addition to basic finances, professional services firms can use QuickBooks Online to handle more complex business needs like job costing, managing cash flow, and tracking their clients’ billings and payments. Users can organize bills, schedule payments, pay online, and choose how vendors receive payments. They can also track employee time by client or project and add it to invoices automatically.
Online & Retail Sellers
QuickBooks Online works for both in-store and online retail sellers. Built-in features track products, monitor the costs of goods, and show which products are popular. Users can also create purchase orders, manage vendors, and record daily sales from every channel.
Non-profits
Charities, religious groups, and private foundations can track donations, customize invoices, and manage all their accounting needs. QuickBooks Online can categorize their expenditures by funds or programs, create custom reports, and track donors, grants, vendors, and other items.
Cons or Disadvantages of QuickBooks Online
Here are some drawbacks users have encountered in using QuickBooks Online:
Data Restoration
Users cannot easily restore their accounts data to a specific date and time unless they subscribe to QuickBooks Online’s highest-priced tier. This limits the ability of those on a tight budget to roll back changes made to vendors, customers, or settings.
Manual Followups
Users have to manually monitor transactions with due dates, such as invoices, payments, or deposits. Automatically routing invoices on an approval workflow, or notifying customers of their received payments are only available in the Advanced plan, which is 6 times more expensive than QuickBooks Online’s Simple Start plan.
Customer Support and Training
QuickBooks Online has available online support such as help articles and video tutorials. However, support is more community-based where users need to go to online forums to get the fastest help. Training is also expensive, which can amount to $3000 for a small team.
Limited Integrations
Users need to subscribe to the highest-priced plan access to more complex integrations such as HubSpot, DocuSign, or Salesforce. Otherwise, they face limitations in creating more tailored end-to-end business solutions.
Pros or Advantages of QuickBooks Online
Many users are happy with QuickBooks Online for enabling them to organize and manage their accounts, all in one place.
Online Bill Management
Users can organize, track, and pay business bills online. Its bills dashboard shows amounts, due dates, and vendors at a glance. QuickBooks Online automatically matches and reconciles the bank’s bill payments with vendor invoices. It also tracks partial payments.
Income and Expense Tracking
QuickBooks Online allows users to track business expenses easily. It can sync with bank accounts, credit cards, PayPal, and Square, so business owners know where their money goes. It automatically matches receipt information from e-receipts or photos to existing transactions. QBO also sorts expenses into categories for better account organization.
Built-in Invoicing
Users can create and send professional-looking invoices from QuickBooks Online. They can create custom invoices by personalizing an invoice template. The software has a recurring invoice feature that users can auto-send daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. It also integrates with QuickBooks Time and Google Calendar.
Business Reporting
QuickBooks Online includes real-time reporting functionality to provide cash flow and business performance data. The business dashboard easily shows the health of the business from income statements and balance sheets. It also has advanced features for customizing reports that users can share with business partners.
Tax Deductions
Users can uncover tax deductions with the help of QuickBooks Online. The accounting software can match receipts with transactions and sort them into tax categories. It also has automatic mileage tracking, quarterly tax calculations, and sales tax liability reports.
Ready to decide on using QuickBooks Online?
QuickBooks Online addresses the requirements of many small business owners for their accounting needs. Like any other software solution, it has strengths and weaknesses. Every business is unique, so the important thing is to know your requirements first, and find out if QBO is more suitable for your needs.
Featured Partners: Project Management Software
Now that you’ve got your business’s finances wrapped up, it’s time to streamline project planning and tracking with project management software. If you’re interested in learning more about top-rated project management software, project-management.com actively recommends the following:
1 Wrike
Wrike is the most powerful work management platform on the market, enabling teams to plan projects and collaborate in real time. Our award-winning software is trusted by 20,000+ companies across the globe, including Sony, Estée Lauder, and Siemens.
Wrike’s customizable features include Gantt charts, request forms, dashboards, cross-tagging, time tracking, and proofing. Integrate with 400+ apps from the likes of Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce. Automate repetitive tasks and achieve 50% faster planning. Work from anywhere with 100% access to your files via our mobile and desktop apps.
Whether you’re a small startup or an established brand, Wrike has the solution for you. Paid plans start at $9.80/user/month. Join our community of 2.3 million — start your free two-week trial today.
2 monday.com
monday.com Work OS is an award-winning no-code work management platform that helps teams manage projects and workflows more efficiently.
Used by 152,000+ customers worldwide, this fully customizable software lets you plan, manage, and track every project in one place. monday.com offers time-saving and easy-to-use features such as automations, time tracking, document sharing, and real-time collaboration. Multiple board views such as Gantt and Kanban help you structure and navigate tasks and projects the way you prefer, and dashboards give a high-level overview of your progress.
In addition, integrations with apps such as Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Gmail, and Excel, allow you to easily continue working with your favorite tools from within the platform. monday.com also offers dedicated solutions, such as monday dev and monday sales CRM, designed to answer the needs of specific industries.
3 Smartsheet
Smartsheet is a leading work execution platform that has real-time work management features, collaboration and automation tools. Users are presented with a familiar and easy-to-use spreadsheet-like interface. However, it has enterprise-grade capabilities that even Fortune 500 companies like Cisco, Bayer, HP, and PayPal are confident to adopt in their business. Strong project management features enable teams to utilize different views of real-time data, and switch easily from Gantt, card, grid and calendar views. Smartsheet has automatic update requests, and can be used for waterfall and agile projects, product launch, sprint planning, and more. The resource management feature provides users the visibility who is busy, and who is not, in real-time. They can also attach files, share sheets, get notified, view the activity log, export, email, and print.
