Some of the features we looked into include the ability to create and send invoices, accept online payments, enter and track bills, and view reports on the go. Although QuickBooks Online earned a perfect score and Enterprise took a slight hit in this criterion, we consider this a tie. Both allow you to create essential reports, including profit and loss (P&L), cash flow statements, and balance sheets. While Enterprise missed a few points because it doesn’t provide income/loss by location reports, it offers many other advanced reporting options and features that provide additional value for many businesses. In addition, the Premier and Enterprise plans offer more than 150 reports, with industry-specific reporting options available. Its highest-tiered plan is the Advanced option, which costs $100 per month for the first three months, then $200 per month after that.
Accountants often find QuickBooks Pro and Premier to be more traditional, but you don’t have to be an accountant or professional bookkeeper to learn QuickBooks Online. With QuickBooks Online, you can add QuickBooks Online Payroll starting at $50/month. While QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop offer contact management, only QuickBooks Desktop allows you to manage and track leads as well as contacts. Both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop offer a large number of features. While they share many of the same features, QuickBooks Desktop’s features are often more developed, except when it comes to invoicing.
- You can easily connect to any third-party app from within the application, saving you a ton of time in the process.
- QuickBooks Online is generally easier to use than QuickBooks Desktop as it has a more streamlined navigation menu.
- QuickBooks Desktop can feel rigid and resistant to modification or integration—the same way Apple products and iOS felt rigid back when everyone had overheating, self-cooking Android phones.
- All QuickBooks Online plans include good reporting options, with the Advanced plan offering the most comprehensive reporting options, including key financial metrics such as revenue and cash flow.
QuickBooks Desktop plans and pricing
However, if you need access to add-on services to replicate some or all of the features of QuickBooks Desktop software, you may wish to explore QuickBooks Online options instead. That’s because access to online apps for Desktop users is being discontinued after May 31, marginal cost formula 2023. To expedite product setup, you can choose to use the default chart of accounts that is included in the application. You also have the option to import products and services into the application to avoid having to re-enter the data. You can download a 30-day trial version of QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise only—both the Premier Plus and Pro Plus plans come with a 60-day money-back guarantee, but no free trial. Alternatively, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial with QuickBooks Online.
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. With QuickBooks Desktop, you can set recurring invoices, send payment reminders, send batch invoices, and track invoices, but you’ll miss out on many of the other modern, cloud-based automations that QBO provides. We recommend crunching the numbers to decide whether the online or desktop versions of QuickBooks are right for your specific business.
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Ultimately, your specific business’s size, type, and needs are the real deciding factors in determining which of the QuickBooks versions is best for your business. Just remember, you will need to make a decision quickly if you want QuickBooks Desktop Pro or Premier, as sales of these products will be discontinued this year. One big drawback of QuickBooks Pro in the past was that it didn’t have mobile apps. Fortunately, a mobile app is now available with the introduction of QuickBooks Desktop 2022.
Integrations: QuickBooks Online Wins
No matter which version of QuickBooks Desktop you’re using, you can switch to QuickBooks Online quickly and seamlessly. With our online migration tool, you can move all your data or move only what’s key—like balances and specific lists. If you need help, we can migrate your data for you at no additional cost. For those customers that choose to stay on Desktop Plus subscriptions, we’ll continue to focus on product maintenance and security.
Keep in mind that if you do decide to have QuickBooks Desktop hosted, there will be an additional fee. As an added convenience, if you outgrow your current edition of QuickBooks Online, upgrade to a more powerful plan in minutes. QuickBooks Desktop’s user interface is very different from QuickBooks Online, offering navigation using a flowchart style menu. Katherine Haan is a small business owner with nearly two decades of experience helping other business owners increase their incomes. To get the best possible experience please use the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Microsoft Edge to view this website.
QuickBooks Online users can sign up for QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping to assist with getting the books up to date and managing bookkeeping tasks. As far as other add-ons, QuickBooks Online integrates with over 750 business apps and programs — well over twice the number of integrations you’ll find with Desktop. What stands out most about QuickBooks Online when compared to Desktop is that QBO is cloud-based accounting software. Because of this, QuickBooks Online is much easier to use and has many more integrations and time-saving invoicing automations, such as auto-scheduling. While we’re on the topic of invoicing, QuickBooks Online has the superior product, offering six invoice templates and multilingual invoicing in six languages.
Unlike QuickBooks Online, Desktop differentiating job costing from process costing Pro includes built-in inventory management. And if data analysis is an important part of growing your business, QuickBooks Desktop is a solid pick. It includes 100+ reports, while QuickBooks Online Simple Start includes around 40.
Both QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online offer multiple service tiers that cater to different business needs, such as the number of employees who need to access the software. We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers. The Ascent, a Motley Fool service, does not cover all offers on the market. QuickBooks Desktop wins this head-to-head competition, with better reporting, industry-specific features, a better price structure, and more comprehensive features. However, if things like integration and cloud access are important to you, QuickBooks Online may be accounting principles first chapter 1 quiz survey the way to go. Once you decide, if you need some assistance with your QuickBooks Migration, be sure to check out our comprehensive QuickBooks Tutorial.
