This can quickly become tedious if you don’t necessarily need all of those extra features. All the minor things missing from QuickBooks Online can quickly become apparent when running reports. However, setting up and reviewing your job costing metrics in QuickBooks Online is much easier than in QuickBooks Desktop. So if you’re a small construction business that isn’t focused as much on job costing, this will quickly help you track your projects and keep them from going over budget.
- QuickBooks offers traditional stand-alone desktop software – QuickBooks Desktop.
- With Webgility, you can minimize inventory mistakes and maintain centralized control over products, pricing, and profits.
- I was impressed with how you could do batch invoicing, something QuickBooks Online doesn’t offer.
- Until Intuit’s announced that they were no longer going to support QuickBooks Desktop products after May 2023, this was a hard question to answer.
Their easy-to-use web-based platform means you can access it from anywhere at any time. It also is routinely one of the least expensive solutions for a business looking for simple bookkeeping or accounting for their entire organization. Back then, you couldn’t pull industry-specific reports and could only access mildly customized reports within the system.
Each Desktop plan comes with one user; additional licenses cost extra. Small to midsize businesses that want a desktop solution or need advanced inventory and industry-specific what’s the difference between an ira and an annuity features. The two versions are independent of each other, which means the data you enter on Desktop doesn’t sync to the Online version and vice-versa.
For instance, if you choose the Simple Start plan, you’re the only person who can use the software—apart from your accountant, with whom you can share your business’s account at no additional cost. In the past, customers could choose between annually renewing plans and single-purchase software with a license that stayed valid for three years. If you purchased a Desktop Pro plan in 2021, your software will still work until 2024—but new customers who bought the 2022 software version can only choose annual subscriptions. However, if you’re not a Mac user, you can choose from all three QuickBooks Desktop plans.
What is QuickBooks Desktop?
QuickBooks is a suite of accounting software developed and marketed by Intuit, designed for small and medium-sized businesses to handle their financial management and automate accounting operations. It provides features that cater to invoicing, expense tracking, payroll management, and tax preparation. Its prominence also stems from its inclusion of tools its competitors lack, such as integrated advanced time tracking. With QuickBooks Desktop, users receive some of the most developed accounting tools on the market. The software offers comprehensive features, unique touches (such as lead management and sales orders), industry-specific versions of the software, and the potential to be more secure. Businesses that have purchased one-time licenses of the locally-installed QuickBooks Desktop versions that have been sunset can still use the software’s accounting features.
- For many home-service businesses, QuickBooks Online is the obvious choice.
- Most notably, Premier Plus has 150+ customizable reports for nonprofits, general contractors, and retailers.
- QuickBooks Desktop can be integrated with QuickBooks Desktop Payroll and QuickBooks Time.
- QuickBooks Online runs in your web-browser and thus is compatible on either a Windows or a Mac.
QBO’s integrations cover more business needs and include multiple payment gateway options. Both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Pro offer a good number of helpful integrations and add-on products. However, QuickBooks Online offers over 750 integrations to QuickBooks Pro’s 260+ integrations. Both include the basic reports you’d expect to find with accounting software, such as a balance sheet, a Profit & Loss report, a cash flow statement, etc. We recommend crunching the numbers to decide whether the online or desktop versions of QuickBooks are right for your specific business.
QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop starting plans and prices
While they share many of the same features, QuickBooks Desktop’s features are often more developed, except when it comes to invoicing. Both QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online utilize a subscription pricing model. Keep in mind that if you do decide to have QuickBooks Desktop hosted, there will be an additional fee.
What’s the difference between the QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop integration?
For the purposes of this graph, we’re comparing a 5-user instance of QuickBooks Online Plus 1-5 Users + Payroll, vs. a 5-user instance of QuickBooks Enterprise Gold (which includes payroll) over a 4-year period. We’ve included the current best available promotional price to illustrate how prices will change year-over-year. Most people believe that QuickBooks Online is the cheaper option, because it has a low monthly fee. This is true for a single user who doesn’t need many bells and whistles. Because QuickBooks Online is a SaaS product, that means you have access anywhere, any time, including on your phone.
Compare QuickBooks Online to Desktop
QuickBooks Online is cloud based, which means you can access your QuickBooks account anywhere you have the internet and an internet-enabled device. QuickBooks Desktop is desktop based, meaning you’ll buy a hard copy of QuickBooks’ software, then download that software once onto a single device. QuickBooks Online has been part of the Intuit accounting software family for a few decades now. Since QuickBooks Online is browser-based, not desktop-based, you can log on to your Quickbooks Online account from any web-enabled device with a sturdy internet connection.
Improve Profitability
Our complete QuickBooks Online vs. Desktop comparison covers key differences, pricing, features, and usability, so you can easily decide whether QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop is right for your business. Users can simply click on the Reports option to access reports in a variety of categories including Favorites, Business Overview, Expenses and Vendors, Employees, and Sales Tax reports, along with several others. All reports can be exported to Microsoft Excel for customizing, viewing on screen, printing, or emailing directly to recipients. Users can access features via the vertical menu to the left of the screen or by using the drop-down menu bar at the top, and the My Shortcuts option allows you to add a shortcut to frequently used features.
QuickBooks Online is better for business owners who want easy-to-use cloud-based accounting that includes anywhere online access, mobile apps, and tons of integrations with other business apps. QuickBooks Desktop Premier Plus and Enterprise plans have industry-specific reports for manufacturing and wholesale, retail, nonprofit, general contractor and professional service businesses, too. For example, nonprofits can use the desktop products to run donor contribution summary reports while manufacturing, wholesale and retail businesses have the ability to forecast product sales. Contractors and professional service businesses can use the software to compare revenue by city, customer and job type.