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.

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.

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.

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.