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. It is worth noting that QuickBooks Desktop Pro and Premier versions will soon discontinue sales to new users. Beginning July 31, 2024, only QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise will be available.
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It’s an acceptable system but isn’t nearly as convenient as sharing your books through QuickBooks Online. While QuickBooks Online and Desktop have their strengths and weaknesses, they ultimately balance out—which makes them tied in terms of overall features. Below we provide a detailed comparison across each feature, where we also determine a winner for each category. By providing feedback on how we can improve, you can earn gift cards and get early access to new features. All feedback, positive or negative, helps us to improve the way we help small businesses. Both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Pro and Premier have notoriously poor customer support (QuickBooks Enterprise support has better priority support).
Industry-specific Features: QuickBooks Desktop Wins
If you need more users than that, you can contact QuickBooks Online’s customer support to see if you can create a custom plan with custom user access. Otherwise, you’ll need QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise, which supports up to 40 users. 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. We also don’t recommend QuickBooks Desktop to Mac users, since there’s just one desktop-based plan for Mac users.
Subscription clients in QuickBooks Desktop 2023 (R1) or older versions will need to update to the latest weighted average cost of capital 2023 (R3) version before their subscription expires. While there are significant differences between QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online, both applications offer solid accounting capability for small businesses. And while QuickBooks Desktop comes out on top in this comparison, only you can decide which one is best for your business.
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While we’re on the topic of invoicing, QuickBooks Online has the superior product, offering six invoice templates and multilingual invoicing in six languages. 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. Both versions offer automatic syncing with your bank so you can categorize transactions. Add payroll to QuickBooks Online starting at $45 per month, or to Desktop starting at $50, plus $2 per employee, per month. QuickBooks Desktop is an annual subscription, starting at $549.99 per year, which may be cost-prohibitive for small businesses or cash-strapped startups.
- Alternatively, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial with QuickBooks Online.
- For $1,922 per year, get the Enterprise plan with advanced pricing, reporting and inventory.
- By providing feedback on how we can improve, you can earn gift cards and get early access to new features.
- With QuickBooks Desktop, users receive some of the most developed accounting tools on the market.
- While both software types have plenty of perks, QuickBooks Online is a more flexible, affordable, and scalable option for most small-business owners.
One of the best resources is the QuickBooks Online community, where you can connect with other users to share tips, answer questions, and find answers to problems that may arise. Product support can be accessed directly from within the application, where you can ask a question or connect to support personnel. While the features are similar, QuickBooks Desktop offers more functionality, such as the ability to run checks to pay bills and more in-depth customer and vendor management capability. QuickBooks Online is cheaper than QuickBooks Desktop if you need multiple users. For instance, QuickBooks Online Plus only costs $99 per month ($1,080 per year) for up to five users as opposed to Desktop Enterprise, which costs $1,481 per year for only one user.
We don’t guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and straight line method of bond discount services. QuickBooks might encourage its users to switch from QuickBooks Desktop to Online, but it hasn’t issued any statements about discontinuing Desktop entirely. But based on the tech industry’s growing emphasis on cloud storage over local storage, it’s hard to imagine that downloadable programs like QuickBooks Desktop will still be relevant a decade down the road.
On the other hand, QuickBooks Enterprise involves a more complex setup due to its extensive feature set designed for larger businesses. You need to properly install and set up the software, which often requires IT support for proper configuration. Meanwhile, QuickBooks Desktop has two payroll options with prices that start at $50 per month plus $6 per employee. If you can file taxes confidently on your own, Enhanced Payroll might be suitable. If you want QuickBooks to file your taxes for you, then you must upgrade to QuickBooks Desktop Assisted Payroll.
For example, we commend QuickBooks Enterprise’s multicompany reporting feature. This tool allows you to create consolidated financial reports across multiple company files—making it ideal for businesses that operate multiple entities and subsidiaries. If you have employees, you can add QuickBooks Payroll to your QuickBooks Online account for as little as $45 per month plus $5 per employee. QuickBooks Payroll allows you to pay your employees by checks or direct deposits, e-file and e-pay taxes, print and e-file W-2 Forms at year-end, and more. QuickBooks Online wins for pricing because it’s essentially more affordable than QuickBooks Enterprise. For instance, if you have five members, you can purchase the Plus plan for only $90 monthly, whereas with Enterprise, you need to pay $427 monthly for five users.
The sales receipt can be created by clicking the +New button in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, followed by choosing the sales receipt under the header called Customers. The sales receipt can be created from the Home Page or from the Customers menu on the top of the screen. Non-Plus editions of QuickBooks Desktop put the responsibility of backing up files entirely on you. This is by saving them to other locations on your PC, other sorts of media (such as flash drives), or uploading them to the cloud (using post closing trial balance apps like Dropbox or Drive).