What are QuickBooks Self-Employed users saying about the software?

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Sticken with Quicken

My overall experience with QuickBooks self employed is I am completely satisfied and enjoy the use of the software currently as my bookkeeper. It has been an asset to my small business

Pros

The thing I am most fond of with QuickBooks Self-Employed version is the ease of use. The software offers a user the functions that cover all necessary withholding categories that are required on a state and federal level. It inputs the correct taxes, insurance, fees etc. required by law within your area. And if you are not within regulation it notifies you and offers the user direction into making sure you are financially in accord to the law.

Cons

What I like least about the software is the exporting IOC information can get tricky sometimes depending on how it will be opened by the receiving device.

Good for the Money, QB still lacks features...

I think QB is really positive overall. The simple truth is that an accountant knows way more than I do. I did my taxes all wrong for 2+ years using QB. I probably could have gotten a lot more refund had I had more tax knowledge. Taxes are deep. That's why people specialize in it. I am a salesman and entrepreneur. I HATE doing taxes. After my carpal tunnel episode, (I was crunching and cursing QB and the IRS,) I realized how to actually do my taxes the right way. The best thing I can say is that QB gives a good overall picture and the reporting is good as long as you tag everything correctly. But that doesn't work easily if you have thousands of micro-transactions, such as myself. So I had to go through every line item and tag it for the appropriate enterprise. I have finally figured out how to do taxes... Use a program like QB and then deliver the reporting to a good accountant who can really find the tax breaks. They simply can't do it over the phone like an in person accountant. And I had to find a good one who was recommended to me by a friend. Not any accountant will do. DO your research on taxes!!! You can get a good refund if you have a good accountant and also do the prep work which QB is capable of but only for one company at a time. Tagging things one by one is terrible!!!

Pros

I like the account integrations, however, I could not get my Home Depot credit card to connect, so that was disappointing. I also thought the general ease of use was good. It did give me a good picture of my small business and that helped me with running my business better. I also really liked the reporting. The Profit and Loss statements were the most important report that I generated because I would use that to deliver it to my accountant and then do my taxes from there. QuickBooks can really only take you so far. Which is good. I would generally recommend it to all small business owners, like myself. I am not an accountant and truly suck at accounting. So I decided to give it a shot, and then realized that even with super detailed entry, I still needed a professional accountant to get the extra tax breaks that automation simply could not perform. Yes, I know they offer further services, like a live professional, but that just didn't work for me. I tried it one year and then compared it to a year when I hired an accountant and provided the reports and was able to get more refund. So overall, it is a good beginners tool.

Cons

I hated the fact that it asked me every time there was a new entry if I wanted to make a rule for that entry. I wanted QB to be fast as possible because I loathe accounting. I need to focus on selling my items. However, I understand how important accounting is, thus why I put such a focus on it in my business. I also hated the fact that I could not batch "Tag" items. For example, I actually have 3 companies and did my accounting ALL wrong... I had to go back and do it all over. I realized that I needed to "Tag" and "categorize" properly in order to separate the companies transactions so I could get accurate reporting. Basically, I had to manually tag each and every transaction, which SUCKED!! I have an e-commerce business with thousands of line items and I had to do it one by one, which ultimately made me want to cancel QB. Be it as it may, it was my fault. I did not do it properly from the start. I didn't realize how to separate different companies with one QB account. I tried to have 3 separate accounts but that was too costly and thought I could easily do it with one swift click of a button, and BOY was I wrong. I probably developed carpal tunnel from this years taxes. And then decided to close down 2 of the 3 companies because I realized how to actually run my entire enterprise better. I still have one LLC. I closed another LLC and an S Corp as a result of better understanding my taxes and how to be a better small business owner.

Quickbooks Self Employed Is The Single Worst User Experience Of My Career

I continue to receive an error message that my free trial has expired despite my purchase of an annual subscription in August. I have an email receipt, but Intuit appears uninterested in fixing my problem. I have been passed from one inept rep to the next and asked the same questions without resolution. I would LOVE a refund at this point, but Intuit points me to Apple since I purchased the product with Apple Pay.

Pros

I initially thought the functionality would be handy, however, I have changed my mind. I am unable to create an invoice due to a glitch in Intuit’s billing.

Cons

I have spent over 20 hours in the last two weeks trying to access the product I paid for 6 months ago. Customer Service is inept at best and I have yet to receive the promised callback from anyone I have spoken with.

Its pretty self explanatory

I use this to balance accounts and to enter deposits and withrawls from these accounts that require balancing each month, quarter, and year.

Pros

Ease of use, the ability to balance a multitude of accounts within one system. It is easier to use than other available programs and easier to understand entered data.

Cons

There are not many cons, at times it does freeze and you have to wait to reenter the information.

ONLY worth it if you need auto-mileage tracking

If you need mileage tracking and expense tracking, this is a great option for you. If you need recurring or auto invoicing though - this version of QB isn't for you.

Pros

To have it automatically track all of my mileage for me is just amazing. However, now that I'm not traveling, it's almost worthless, and certainly not worth the $16/mo I'm paying. I know you can scan receipts and stuff too, but I connected my bank accounts so I just select what's business and what's personal through there. It's free to have clients pay invoices through ACH Debit though, so that's awesome. You also get your money way faster than through other means.

Cons

You can't do recurring, automatic invoicing. That's the main sticking point for me. So I end up doing 90% of my invoicing in PayPal and then I'm only using QB for expense tracking and the occasional ACH Debit invoice. It's just annoying. I'm also not crazy about the user interface sometimes it's just not intuitive.

Solid product but lacking some features

QuickBooks Self-Employed has been the most cost-effective tool for tracking expenses that we have found so far for the Sole-Proprietor's small business. While it has its flaws, it is still better than the alternative...having no tools to help record business expenses. Still keeping our eyes open for other options. Thinking about moving up to QuickBooks Online if our profits go up and can justify the price tag.

Pros

This product was built for the person running a sole propriety. It is very easy to track business expenses. It takes less than a minute to enter an expense and upload a receipt. The mobile app can also track your mileage put on a vehicle for business purposes all year long. Its integration with TurboTax makes it very easy to file taxes as it pulls in all the business expenses and categorizes them for you. You can create and send basic invoices.

Cons

As far as I've been able to tell it has no way of tracking or entering Income unless a customer pays through the QuickBooks portal. Checks or other forms of payment (outside of QuickBooks) will not show up as income. Therefore, the running "Profit/Loss" number at the top of the screen is pretty inaccurate. You can only clear this up when filing taxes through Turbo Tax and entering W2s, other tax documents, and manually enter income. This feature may work just fine if you connect a bank account. We do not. So, it might pull in deposits automatically for you to mark as business or personal transactions.

Useful For Tax Purposes

Pros

I’ve been using QuickBooks Self-Employed for over five years now, and I can definitely say that it has grown and improved over time. I mainly use it to get an estimation of my quarterly taxes, but I also use it for sending invoices and tracking business-related mileage. I like that the web application includes rules for setting up automation so that I don’t have to approve every transaction that appears in my Self-Employed account. QuickBooks makes it very easy for me to export the documents I need for my accountant, and also forgetting the report of my overall income, spending and profits.

Cons

Because QuickBooks imports all my income and pending transactions, I don’t understand why it’s not set up to be used as a budgeting application, like Mint or YouNeedABudget. Except for sending out invoices and keeping track of mileage, I don’t use application on regular basis.

Great product that saves a lot of time

I'm very happy with the software and it almost suits all of my needs bar the lack of quotations.

Pros

QBSE is very easy to setup and use. It links directly to any bank accounts that you use so it's always pulling through transactions for you to check and allocate as necessary. You can customise the invoices easily and use your own branding. It quickly and easily calculates your taxes and estimates your year end liability. I use the app on my android phone as well as the desktop version and both are very good. It's great to be able to raise invoices whilst with a client.

Cons

The one thing that bothers me is that you can't raise quotations in the software without upgrading the package to a tier that's overkill for what I need.

Highly recommend for all small business owners

Great. Very happy I am using it. QB SE is a trusted and affordable resource for keeping my business and tax items in check.

Pros

I love the different features QB Self-Employed has: Auto-mileage tracking, invoicing, tax checklist, it tells you when an invoice has been viewed and payed, transaction tracking, business reports, and it syncs with TurboTax

Cons

I wish the invoicing feature was more sophisticated. For example, I wish I could send estimates instead of an "invoice" at times, but I have another program I use outside of QB that can do that for me. It's probably in a more expensive QB service but I wish it were available for Self-Employed.

Great product for those who know what they are doing.

It took me time, but I was able to use the program. I had to start over fresh 2 times before I could get my info in correctly to start working

Pros

The product allows you to be completely self sufficient, cut down costs and customize based upon your business. You can use preloaded categories or create your own.

Cons

If you are not familiar with using this type of software you may run into issues. There is help, but you can get very confused. Research is best before using the program for actually use.

Intuitive User Interface

Overall, definitely worth using when it comes free with TurboTax.

Pros

This comes free when filing with TurboTax Self Employed, so it did not cost anything to set up. It's pretty intuitive and makes it easy to categorize transactions and spending.

Cons

Invoicing is not the greatest. It's difficult to configure it and make any changes. Customizing your invoices can be a real pain.

Easy solution for self-employed but could be better

Overall, the Self-Employed version of QuickBooks has been easy to set up and use. In year's past, the same software was much cheaper than it is now. I think they more than doubled the price per month for the same versions. Their mileage tracker is very limited. Because of this limitation, I pay for MileIQ to track and categorize mileage and trips. Then, I export the data from MileIQ and import into QuickBooks.

Pros

I like that I can manage both my personal and self-employed business accounting within a single account.

Cons

The mobile app seems kind of buggy. It's very slow to register taps (3 seconds).

Misleading UX Ease of Access Claim & Terrible Customer Service

My overall experience from sign-up, account setup, attempted input of expenses, and the whole cancellation proces was a 0-star rated experience. I was beyond floored, having only had it for 2 weeks, that canceling all of these things and getting a refund has proved impossible for a company so highly rated.

Pros

I thought the user interface looked great and seemed easy enough, it claimed to have all of the add-ons/plug-ins and apps I could need for my small business. It was highly rated on most SaaS review sites so I trusted it.

Cons

First, the customer service for a company of this size with so much critical acclaim for its software is below subpar. The customer service phone line rarely works or understands what you're saying/asking for; the chat option simply leads to the service representative telling you they aren't able to help with that then sending a link to the right team followed by a disclaimer that the links are usually down or not currently working so you should save the link and continue retrying. The actual QB Self-Employed is not easy to use and not straightforward at all. Downloading a complicated spreadsheet has proved easier than navigating this. The final nail in the coffin is that in order to use QuickBooks Payments, you are required to open a QuickBooks Checking account with a debit card, whether you like it, use it or not.

Okay Basic Software For Small Businesses or Self-Employed However, There Are Better and Free Alternatives

Overall, not worth the cost to me. Especially with those who are self-employed or have small businesses.

Pros

This does what it is supposed to do and only that which is track money. It also can track mileage automatically and gives you an overview of the distance you have traveled each day.

Cons

It is basic, it lacks functionality that should be considered 'basic' such as being able to categorize expenses and income. You can also not utilize many needed integrations for other software which basically forces double entry. It is expensive considering there are other free alternatives that have way more features and integrations

Great app with a few glitches

This is a great tool for people starting their small business. A few more features would make it the perfect choice.

Pros

-Links to bank accounts and credit cards and categorizes transactions automatically. -Milage tracking is a great feature. -Send invoices to clients.

Cons

- When the milage tracking is turned on, it kills my phones battery and drains it in less than 10 hours. I turned it off and the result is shocking. - Invoice processing takes up to 3-4 day, and then I have to wait for the bank processing for another 2 days.

QuickBooks for the Win!

I highly recommend QuickBooks Self-Employed!

Pros

I absolutely LOVE QuickBooks self-employed. It is convenient, easy to use and even tracks mileage! That’s huge as most of my business is conducted on the road. I also love how I can invoice and accept payment right from the mobile app.

Cons

One of the reasons I selected QuickBooks was its integration with TurboTax. However, I was disappointed to realize that it only adjusted for Federal Taxes, not State. I would love to see State taxes added in future versions.

Great software for self employed

Pros

installed app in the iPhone, and link to the bank and credit card accounts, it automatically track your travel distance for business or personal, and expense for tax purpose.

Cons

need to spend time to identify the travel and expense either for business or personal usage manually, hopefully these's a way to do it automatically.

QuickBooks Self-Employed is a star!

I love they have so many options and ways of showing users to add transactions.

Pros

Extremely easy to use. As all of intuit's products, Self-Employed guides you through the uses. Self-Employed is so accurate and easy to use.

Cons

I don't have a con about this one. It's saved me so much on my taxes. I'm blown away on how intuitiveness.

Simplifies my Accounting

I highly recommend QBSE to self-employed individuals who are looking for an affordable, intuitive, user-friendly way to do their accounting. I've been using it for 5+ years and it hasn't let me down yet.

Pros

Quickbooks Self-Employed is very easy to use. It has simplified my accounting significantly. I can track receipts, import transactions from my bank account, pay my federal quarterly taxes, create invoices, export all of my info to Turbo Tax, and do so many other key business functions from within the software.

Cons

While I love QBSE, I do wish there was an easy way to calculate and pay quarterly state estimated taxes. That would make the experience even better.

Good Value

If you simply want to be able to keep up with the your expenses and mileage this is a good place to have it all together at an affordable price

Pros

Very easy and convenient for categorizing business versus personal and attaching receipts. I liked that you could put rules in that would help with time management.

Cons

Had tracking issues on several occasions where it was stop tracking. And it tracked rather short trips that weren't really trips.

Nice accounting software

Quickbooks is very good accounting software with all accounting solutions and also cost effective.

Pros

Quickbooks is a very good accounting software for SMES sectors business industry for their daily use of keeping financial records and reporting purpose. The best thing is to keep record of sales, inventory, baking and daitors creditors also reporting option is good and cucustomized

Cons

As for as I concern there is issues in this software

Needs a lot of improvement and better customer service

Pros

It helps me do billing, accounting, and sending invoices to clients.

Cons

The website times out before you can save an invoice. This happened many times and I lost hours of work. There is no way to change it! My invoices have many items and it takes me time to go through my notes and my calendar to compile it. If the designers of the software did billing, they would actually know that. Please add a feature to not get timed out. Also their customer service is not available on weekends. Like many self employed I do my billing on weekends and I cannot get any help. However their homepage has customer service available for new customers 24/7. It seems new business is more important that paying customers.

Quick books self employed saves me so much time.

Pros

I love the simple workflow for most things invoices, quotes, expenses, time, etc. I hate accounting, and book keeping so to be able to add these rapid fire with little effort makes me very happy. It also is very handy come tax time b/c I can easily grab all the information and hand it off to turbo tax or an accountant for them to deal with. I also really like the dashboard so I can quickly view the status of my freelance accounts.

Cons

Somethings feel almost buried. I wish there was some customization for more commonly used tasks. I'm more inclined to generate a bunch of quotes versus invoices so I wish I had a way to remove some drill down for more commonly used tasks.

Excellent program

Pros

Easy to use, all information in one place and the price is great. Also I do not have to have a separate mileage tracker which is great.

Cons

My bank no longer connects so I have to do a separate download which takes some time. This causes some issues when not done correctly as there can be duplicates.