QuickBooks Full Service Payroll Software

Gets the job done-- but very buggy.

QuickBooks online has its weaknesses and bugs. However, after my research I think it's the best option out there for now.

Pros

Quickbooks is easy to "plug in" and go... You can use their templates and basic accounts and set up your own accounting system in no time. I had no bookkeeping or accounting experience before using QuickBooks Online, and I was proficient after about 6 months of part-time use.

Having an accountant log-in is so helpful in today's world so many people are working from home/ traveling/ etc. It is indispensable for my organization to have an online accounting platform that I, my organization's volunteer treasurer, and our hired accountant can all access from our home computers.

As a non-profit organization that only pays a tiny amount of sales tax, that portion of the software is very functional and is one fewer thing I have to deal with.


I do not use payroll through this system, so I cannot comment on the functionality of that portion.

Cons

The bugs in the software (accounts that won't delete, messing up check numbers, etc) are the most annoying part of using QuickBooks Online for me. If you are a small team, you can just work around them and you eventually learn what they are, but it is repeatedly annoying. Their customer service is weak, but there are lots of affordable training courses that can fill in those gaps as you use the program.

I sometimes wish that Quickbooks Online were MORE customizable (i.e. allow you to delete certain generic accounts), and I sometimes wish it were LESS customizable (journal entries can be numbered ANYTHING which confuses me). Overall, I think it allows me to do most of what I need to do in bookkeeping for my non-profit.

QBO has been a game changer for my business, but I have a few complaints.

Pros

I converted from QB Desktop Pro to QBO about a year ago, and it has been a game changer for me. Some pros:

1. The design is much more aesthetically pleasing and intuitive than QB Desktop. I now feel comfortable doing my own reconciliations rather than paying a bookkeeper, as it is much more natural than the steps required before.

2. I can easily add users and therefore don't need to pass the file back and forth. Before, I'd forget that my bookkeeper is working on my file and would make changes, which caused big problems. This is no longer an issue.

3. I can login anywhere.

4. The apps are a big deal for me. For example, I have an app called "Importer Pro" which allows me to import the schedule from my scheduling software. It then automatically generates and invoice for my clients, and it could also automatically generate an invoice for my independent contractors based on the work they do. This saves me about 25 hours per week. I could not have done this with QB Desktop.

Cons

There are two main (and large) problems I've found:

1. You cannot revert your company. So if you make a big error, or a disgruntled employee with QBO access logs in and messes everything up, there is no going back. That's a big issue. Luckily, it has not been a problem for us yet.

2. If you need to edit a past invoice, it deletes the description and changes the hour to 1. This became a problem for me when I realized that the line items were not mapped to the client, and I needed to change the "product/service" to something that is mapped to the client. Previously, I was using a generic term in "product/service" for all clients, not realizing it was an issue. However, I cannot go back through my past invoices and change the product/service because it will delete the description and edit the hours, which is way too time consuming to deal with. I have thousands of line items that are not mapped to the client.

I reported both of these issues to QBO. Asked to talk to a supervisor after the first person was very unhelpful and clearly not trained well. The supervisor said he would talk to the development team and call me back within 48 hours. That was months ago and of course, no call. Disappointing.

Lesser of two evils

Pros

I am not an accounting professional but with a basic understanding of accounting principal, I have been able to use this software to organize my company for the last 10 years. I have made the switch in 2014 to the online version of it. It lets me to use the software anywhere including mobile device and I have been very happy with all the updates Intuit has been making last 3-4 years.

Cons

Everything about customer service. As a long time user, I know the infamous reputation of Intuit at every level. This is one of the SO MANY experiences I had: I had one issue that persisted since 2014. It was a simple issue, but it also caused me some great inconvenience. So I had been contacting them every now and then and the issue was not resolved until recently in 2018. It turned out to be it was as simple as clearing cache. However, every time I called, I had to explain the situation as if it's never been recorded, follow their instruction to do the troubleshooting, then they were puzzled how that happened, and then say that 'someone' will follow up. And THAT NEVER HAPPENED. I got so fed up and had to be on the phone more than 4 hours to a point that the issue was escalated to the presidents' office. I was told that there was a glitch in the system that I had to move to a new account. As they moved my data to a new account, I found out that it won't move credit card or social security info. As I was preparing for the final move, I realized that they have been charging me double. I requested to refund or extend the membership, but they did it again - made me wait for 1-2 hours, told me that I'll speak to a floor manager, then just transfer to another dpt- ALL THE TACTICS TO DISCOURAGE TO find the solution for the issue. Finally, they 'concluded' not to extend the membership with an excused made up they cannot provide in written permission. NEVER HAD SUCH BAD EXPERIENCE.

Great Features. Value for money (at the moment). Poor Customer Service

Quickbooks Online is great for businesses that have inventory, job management, budgetting or a large payroll. While these features are available with other software (such as Xero)...it is often for an additional cost. QBO includes these features in their offering. Great for retail, manufacturing and distribution-type businesses. For service-based business that focus on services, such as consultants, professionals or creatives I would recommend Xero as a better alternative.

Pros

Quickbooks Online (for Australia) has great features. It has been around for a long time and has developed a really good platform. Features, such as inventory and payroll are well developed. The reporting available with QBO is excellent - very detailed and flexible.

Cons

When things go wrong...the service is very poor. I've had overseas staff who did not know the system, or how things work in Australia. I have had customer support staff not get back to me. And I've had them flat out tell me that they can't help.
Quickbooks is trying to buy market share in Australia, so they are offering significant discounts. This makes the software really affordable...but there is no telling how long these discounts will last. The expiration of a 50% discount may be a nasty surprise for a small business when it does go away. Which it will...at some point.
Don't get caught with the Self-Employed Sole Trader version of Quickbooks online. Your Accountant can't view your data, the reporting is poor and you can't migrate your data to other software. It is a very very basic accounting package...that is not very functional and provides no future proofing.

When it doesn't stink, it's awesome

Cloud based accounting. Reliability. Various user roles is nice.

Pros

It's up time is tremendous. It's prettier than it used to be and getting a little prettier by the year. (The Benjamin Button of Software). It doesn't crash in the middle of doing stuff. Their support is very responsive. API plugins. Yeah, high marks, mostly.

Cons

3 things:
1. Emailing invoices. They don't have good alerts for when you have a bad email address for a customer and this can kill.
2. They don't have a way of automatically adding late payment penalties into the invoicing process. We had to plug in some outside software through an API to effectively deal with this.
3. Somewhat related to #2, it seems weak on automated collection efforts to me.
4. I've pointed out a bug to them twice and it is still not fixed, 3 yrs or more later. Silliest thing. Used to work beautifully, but when they got prettier, it doesn't work anymore. What? Adding on another invoice to pay to a vendor after you have come to the payment process through the "Pay Bills" process. It wants to subtract instead of add. (the most odd thing) (they hae offered work arounds that are not viable and just won't get it fixed.. or haven't)
5. The block "Ctrl Clicking" in places when it would be really handy to open multiple tabs when editing a bunch of stuff. This forces you to come back to the list, and search again and again instead of keeping the searched list in place. Maybe there is some reason for this burdensome navigation.

Gives My Small Business a Professional Edge and Makes Accounting a Breeze

This software is simply amazing! I was on vacation in California last year and my business is Kansas City, MO. I had a client reach out needing copies of her service invoices sent to her lawyer by the end of business day. I was able to jump on a computer at the place I was staying and log in to my companies Quickbooks and meet my customer's need. I guess I would have assumed it would work since it is online, but to see it work in a situation like the one I was in, made me extremely happy.

Pros

Quickbooks Online was a game changer for my business. It has paid for itself 100 times over simply because I can more accurately see where my company is spending money. It also allows me to track where a job came from so I can see, in a matter of seconds, where all my jobs came from and how much I earned. This has helped me stop spending money on marketing or advertising is areas that weren't profitable. The second best thing is that it makes getting customer's copies of their invoices a breeze and looks very professional. We are a small business and referrals are very important and clients feel more secure with a company that has such a professional accoutning system. My third favorite thing is QuickBooks On the Go payment options. It has the lowest processing fee I could find, it is extremely simply to set up and use, and it makes accounting easier because Quickbooks automatically seperates the fee from the profit correctly.

Cons

The only cons are based off of user error and personal lack of Quickbooks software and accounting. However, I have an amazing accountant who handles our Quickbooks. He is patient and also helps me learn how to use the basic functions.

Company cares about their clients

Quickbooks Online is easy to use and smartly built. The company cares about its clients and makes resources available online to solve user problems. There's a large community of advisors and experts on the product that support it.

Pros

(1) Easily configurable
(2) Multi-user accessible anywhere, anytime.
(2) Smart connectivity eases data entry and reconciliations allowed on any account.
(3) Can be implemented at a moment's notice preferably by knowledgeable users so that the business owners expectations are met.
(4) Great reporting features that can be customized and saved by user
(5) Features invoice presentation and payment online which facilitate greatly that part of the operation.
(6) Gauges build into the product help monitor the health of the business.
(7) Accessible directly online by the professional accountant helps the professional time advice the business owners and correct issues.
(8) APPS allow the addition of a variety of features to solve specific business problems.
(9) Full system audit trails to monitor the integrity of the system
(10) System is regularly backed up.
(11) Digital documents can be saved within the system's transactions.

Cons

(1) Need good internet access to use the product.
(2) Need more granular user permission for security access
(3) Some features should be enhanced directly into the product rather than with the use APPS for example bill payments.

Quickbooks makes DIY bookkeeping easy.

Easy bookkeeping with all the different report types that we need. We can track divisions as well as overall company income/ expenses.

Pros

Its very easy to use and pretty intuitive. If you need help a Google search usually helps you find the answer you're looking for. As far as functionality goes, its so easy to use to invoice and track payments. We have subscription based payments as well as payments for services rendered. We also have divisions. Quickbooks Online allows you to track everything together or, in divisions so if we want to see how a division is performing we can. There are multiple ways to track numbers so all of the different reports that are available is just great. I like the online QB because both me and my bookkeeper can log on at any time. The big Pro to QB Online is its integration with so many different softwares and platforms and they even have a WordPress Plugin I believe. We recently started using an online proposal software and it integrates with QB Online so our Bookkeeper no longer has to manually enter in new client info, the proposal software adds all the information for us!

Cons

I wish there was a live chat or some kind of customer service to interact with. I'm not a fan of typical Help pages because I can never seem to find exactly what I'm looking for, so I always like software that is backed by live people who are there when you need them.

QuickBooks - the Accounting Software When You Really Want to

Pros

I have been using QuickBooks since 1992 as the CFO for a company with 50 employees. Currently, I am the treasurer for a non-profit and I am again using QuickBooks. I trained our bookkeepers, our financial managers, and worked without accountants to make sure that the software served our needs.QuickBooks is an easy program to use because it is logical, almost intuitive, and it can be adapted to the specific needs of the business. We are audited every year, and QuickBooks provide us with all the information we need and the ability for our Auditor to review it, correct, and verify it through the audit.

Cons

The format of the reports. While it is very easy to create multiple reports and customize them, the standard reports are sometimes cumbersome.
Also, now that I am using QuickBooks for a nonprofit, I would really like to make it a requirement for the user to select a Type of Customer when setting up a customer. Our nonprofit organization has clients, donors, foundations, and corporate donors; all these types have previously been set up. However, when the person entering the data is keying in the individual entries, there is no requirement that they select the type of customer. This means that I have to review all transactions before creating the Accountant's Copy for the Auditor, at the end of the year, in order to generate the reports we need.

Excellent Web Application that's Here to Stay

We have been using Quickbooks Online since its early release and it has been a pivotal piece of software for our company. QuickBooks Online can be accessed from anywhere. There is no need to have to go to the office to get work done. It can be done 24/7 from anywhere. I work for numerous locations and I am able to update billing and client information without having to go to our office location to get work done. Likewise, I don't have to have a remote server running Quickbooks. While they are improving on the product, there are aspects that are not intuitive. Right clicking and opening in a new tab does not actually duplicate in a new tab. You have to take several more clicks to do so. At first, when using multiple companies, it is difficult to remember what to click to get into the actual company. It seems several tasks take too many clicks then what should be necessary. I feel like there is a lot of competition with them and Xero and these simple interface upgrades would give them more of an edge.

Pros

It's accessibility from multiple locations and different platforms.

Cons

I feel like the online banking and matching with transactions never seems to work. We have also had issues with filing of our payroll taxes. The forms are automatically submitted but from time to time the numbers are incorrect and we end up overpaying or underpaying.

Top notch customer service and good option for people without much accounting experience!

QBO helped our medical practice immensely during our first year of business. I feel like QBO enabled our business operations to run smoothly and efficiently. Working with QBO also taught me a lot about accounting in general and gave me confidence as a practice manager. I strongly recommend QBO for individuals who are new to accounting. I have always felt like a valued customer and I am glad that we chose to use QBO for our accounting needs.

Pros

We opened our medical practice about one year ago and started out with QBO from the very beginning. As a practice manager with limited accounting experience, I was really intimidated at first. I give credit to QBO for turning this around, however. The QBO interface is very clean, easy-to-use and intuitive. On top of that, there are several well made educational webinars & instructional videos/articles that simplified my understanding QBO & accounting in general. To go even further, the customer service is amazing. I have called them with questions on a number of occasions and the QBO reps have been some of the most professional, knowledgeable, patient, articulate, and courteous phone agents I have encountered. Even with challenging situations, I have always felt well taken care of by QBO.

Cons

We have run into a couple of minor glitches, but nothing major. For about a month, we kept receiving automatic error emails that told us something was wrong with our account billing when there wasn't. It stopped after a while, but we did have to call multiple times and try different fixes with the reps. The only other problem is that a couple of months ago our transactions stopped automatically streaming into QBO. We weren't able to fix our bank connection through QBO and it became a hassle getting our bank involved. I do want to note, however, that our bank was difficult and unpleasant to work with, but that QBO was really great and I felt that the QBO representatives truly took the time and effort to go above and beyond to help resolve the bank account reconnection issue.

The perfect fit

The go-to book-keeping software. It's just right...

Pros

I love that there are many packages available so that I can get just what I need to fit MY business. There is software out there that is a "one-size-fits-all" and you end up paying for services you don't need or not getting the services you DO need. That's not the case with Quickbooks. I am a contractor and I got Quickbooks Online Plus and I can track projects, 1099's, payroll, and all of the simple book-keeping. The projects feature is amazing as I can categorize transactions per job and know my profitability on a particular job with a few clicks. The reporting is great. I give my accountant the login information and at the end of the year, he logs in and does my taxes for me. The mobile app is perfect for bookwork on the go. Snap a picture of the receipt, tag it to a project and account and it's all taken care of. It links to all my bank accounts and cards so I have everything all in one place. I can access it from anywhere and don't need to download anything as I can use the web app in any browser. It's the perfect fit.

Cons

Cons? Well, I guess it could be free... but it saves me more than the subscription rate in time, reporting, and paperwork, so for me, it technically is free...

QB Online goes Everywhere with you and is User Friendly

Pros

QB Online has given our company the capability to work remotely and still be able to access all we need through this software. Often times, we have found ourselves needing for draw up bid proposals, check past invoices, and submit payroll while away from the office desktop. QuickBooks Online allows this flexibly to access this information from anywhere with wifi. It also allows several employees to access the information at the same time from varying locations. We have been using this software for nearly 8 years and we have not intentions on using anything else. All accounting duties are done through QB, reconciliations, payroll, payroll taxes, balance sheets, monthly reports, etc. Beyond that we use it for providing bid proposals to our clients. We can easily access past proposals and create invoices directly from them. It has offered us a perfect solution for our accounting and pre-construction daily tasks. QB Online also has the capabilities to sync with TSheets, an employee tracking software that has made the usage of QB online even more user friendly when importing timecards and customer reports.

Cons

Overall, the software is great, however, we would like to see more variety in the bid proposal formatting.

Definite learning curve with this software

I have been using QBO via a web browser, iPhone app, iPad app and Mac based app for about 3 years. There are some cool things available such as reports, the ability to collect payments online, and convenience of mobile apps. However, if you are not familiar with double entry accounting or standard accounting practices, nightmares may ensue. After 3 years, I can manage my small business *most* of the time without having tantrums when things don't match up. I've read a lot online and even ordered books about how to properly use the software and I still have trouble sometimes. I don't think this is the ideal solution for people who want a simple way to track money in and money out. It's probably too complicated for many small business people, including me. The reason I continue to use it is because it's one of the cheaper options and I'm used to it. I've considered switching to waveapps several times and do use that one for some of my business transactions. My advice is that if you're going to use QBO, take time to learn how to set it up and use it correctly. If you don't you may end up spending many hours trying to fix months of incorrect entries. It's kinda complicated!

Pros

Cheap, accessible, pretty good phone support. Intuit also offers credit card processing which ties in pretty easily with QBO software.

Cons

Complicated accounting system which is not intuitive. Easy to make a huge mess of many, many transactions before you realize it.

I use QuickBooks Online for accounting for my small business

Saving time and money by not using spreadsheets or relying on an accountant to do everything for me. I studied accounting quite a bit in college, so I know the basics of ledgers, financial statements, etc, so I really do feel confident filing a lot of my reports on my own and using my skills i've learned to save me money.

Pros

I like how I can use it as the one place to go to find accounting info about my business. My cards are all linked, so I can just visit QBO to see transactions. I use it to run payroll and keep track of employee details for HR purposes. I like how I can use it to file my taxes 80% on my own, with only some assistance from a professional accountant. I can use QBO to run reports to get insights on my finances for budgeting and strategy. Expenses can be kept track of very easily.

Cons

QBO does occasionally have some bugs. I had a bug with connecting to my bank, and it resulted in me losing a lot of work. The search function in QBO at times can seem like a joke, and it does not live up to other insightful search functions in other software programs. Often times searching for something that I know is in QBO somewhere, pulls 0 results.
Reconciling accounts can be a big pain, and it can be easy to let things get messy especially as it relates to payroll. You really need to make sure you're on top of payroll and understand every aspect of how paychecks are calculated.
Moving transactions from one Chart of Accounts to another one is not as simple as it may seem. If, for example, I wanted to break down my "supplies" account into two more detailed accounts, it is not a simple process to mass select transactions and move to a new account.

QuickBooks Online for small businesses

Pros

This product from Intuit, easy to use, full functioning as an accounting software for small businesses.
you can easy get started within up to 4 minutes, dig in all administration roles, getting familiar with it, and create your own company. follow up your banks accounts through the available integration between this software and your bank. additional to that you can check in any moment the Chang-Log to every one who just post, add, edit any transaction on the system.
a great feature through it, the massive available integration with other softwares especially the POS systems like Vend, Revel. it does really save time and money.
I do really enjoyed using this software as a small business.

Cons

as I clarified above this system great for small businesses, for whom bigger than these ones. unfortunately you have to find another solution.
the essential point for refusing such one, the Manufacturing service in the accounting systems; it's really important for us the system who we're working on provide the ability to mix multi row materials into one final product. another point, for the users authorities, we can't use it when we have more than one shop and we want to assign a user to a specific store, in doing so we have to establish separate company account for each one to be able to assign the users to their outlets.

Powerful for Cloud-Accounting

QBO has made some major advances in recent years/months due to the pressure of other cloud-based accounting suites trying to steal Intuit's market share, and these advances have benefited us as end-users. Though the interface and forms-based entry is a little different than the desktop software, the functionality in QBO is realistically quite similar to the Desktop version. I have not found many limitations to QBO that require any kind of work-arounds, but at the same time, I have had some trouble with software bugs and down-time. I don't think I've experienced as much as others I have heard from, but I have run across a few issues. In comparison to the desktop software, the bugs I've encountered in QBO are almost inconsequential. When you have a bug in the desktop software, it is usually a corrupt file or the loss of information, which I have never encountered with QBO. There are a couple bells/whistles that are missing from this, like the ability to print signatures on checks, but I usually recommend against that for safety reasons anyway. On the bright side, I have seen QBO respond to feedback and implement the changes they have heard from customers, so I know that they are continually improving. At this point, I think QBO still stands out above other cloud-accounting software for its power and ability to handle many industries.

Pros

Power & Functionality in the cloud world.

Cons

Pricing can be expensive over the life of a subscription.

Just what small businesses need!!!

I just love how easy everything is to do with this software and how considerate the creator of this tool is. I get work done much faster using this in comparison to my old method.

Pros

1.I love the fact that if you cancelled your account intentionally or by mistake all your data is kept safe for up to 12 months from the day of cancellation, however resubscribing within those 12 months reactivates your account.
2.The dashboard reminds you daily of your income and you previous month expenditures using a donut chart . The home dashboard screen also shows you how much money was earned over the last 30 days. I personally think this is an awesome feature especially if you are trying to reach higher sales targets in the upcoming months and lower your expenditures.
3.Creating new customers are effortless.
4.Adding new products and services and even removing them is just as easy as creating a new customer.
5.Easy to navigate through.
6.The fee Per month is affordable so that's another plus
7. Customer service are reliable and fast.

Cons

1. There are times when I would be working on some big estimates that took alot of time to put together and i would be logged out of my account while still working on it without auto saving my work then i had to start all over this can be frustrating.

The Advanced Accounting Tool; QuickBooks Online. So Effecient

I personally like the functions of QuickBooks Online and the advanced accounting nature for solving all the financial reporting issues. The automation of all the accounting operations makes this product unique and the best. I see it as the improved version of QuickBooks, and I think the vendor is doing great. It is not a complicated item to use. I see it as the best accounting tool.

Pros

As a professional accountant and auditor, accessing the books of accounts online is one of the best attribute for QuickBooks Online. I can get all the financial items of our organization at any place, anytime. This is wonderful. Besides, it has additional features such as budgeting and asset management, some items that other basic accounting tools such as excel spreadsheet lacks. It is an easy to use platform, and the proces of implementation doesn't take long.

Cons

The only think I dislike about QuickBooks Online is its subscription fee. I see it as much exaggerated, where small scale firms may not afford it. Again, when there is some updates, the system slugs and slow down where one cannot conduct their roles. The team should think of having updates that are planned, and the users get informed.

Advanced Accounting Product that is easy to Implement and Use. Try it!!

The accounting problems that our firm faced there before got solved by QuickBooks Online. More so, the process of preparing the books of accounting has been made easier, accurate, and this limits the emerging accounting errors. The stakeholders normally obtain correct financial results as per the organization's progress.

Pros

I like the fact that the Vendor of QuickBooks noted that all things are turning digital, and this means, he had to improve his item to fit the needs of the users. On of the pros for QuickBooks Online is that it is an online based item. One can have its access anytime, anyplace. Two, QuickBooks Online has all the accounting procedure, and this makes the process of preparing the books of accounting easy, accurate, and reliable. Tracking of any mistakes made is also easy and perfect.

Cons

The subscription fee is one of the issue that I noted with QuickBooks Online. Most of the users say that the amount needs some harmonization to reach all the people, despite their financial muscles. Two, when there are updates, the product is extremely slow, and this affects the normal routine of the user. The vendor should set the specific time for update.