QuickBooks Online Pricing: Upfront & Hidden Costs Explained

This takes into account customer management, revenue recognition, invoice management, and collections. Most small businesses will find Plus the perfect fit, but there are many reasons you may want to upgrade to Advanced, especially now that several new features have been added. It now offers fixed asset accounting, estimated vs actual cost reporting, and multi-company report consolidation. These can be useful for companies with more complex business structures and accounting workflows. Meanwhile, Essentials gives you access to more than 40 reports, including those you can generate in Simple Start.

QuickBooks Online vs QuickBooks Desktop

What’s more is that QuickBooks Enterprise offers industry-specific features unique to your business sector. We spend hours researching and evaluating each accounting software system we review at Merchant Maverick, placing special emphasis on key characteristics to generate our ratings. QuickBooks Online comes with a wide breadth of features and has the complex accounting capabilities that small business owners need. If you want better customer support or potentially lower pricing, Xero or FreshBooks may be a better fit. Take a look at our comparisons to see how each program stacks up against the others.

Fit Small Business Case Study

It’s one of the most popular accounting software options in the world, and our researchers ranked it the highest overall, meaning that it’s the top pick for the average business, small or large. With it, users can track their billable hours, categorizing them under the correct client and employee, while automatically adding them to invoices. These hours can be added by the manager manually, though the employee in question can also be given permission to add their hours themselves. You can create an unlimited number of invoices and estimates, track your expenses and manage up to 1,099 contractors. You can bring live bank feeds into your account and access a range of third-party integrations. This plan is best for small businesses, whether an LLC run by just one individual or a simple partnership.

Check out our evaluation of the best QuickBooks alternatives for additional recommendations, which include free and paid options. The software must have enough reports that can be generated with a few clicks. Moreover, we’d also like to see customization options to enable users to generate reports based on what they want to see. Even after initial setup, the software must also let users modify information like company name, address, entity type, fiscal year-end, and other company information. Our QuickBooks Online comparison is based on our internal case study, explained below. As mentioned earlier, QuickBooks Solopreneur is excluded from our evaluation since it’s not a double-entry accounting software.

QuickBooks Plans and Pricing

1. For instance, with QuickBooks Online, your security is handled by QuickBooks.
2. A/P features include creating vendors and bills, recording purchase orders and converting them to bills, creating service items, and recording full or partial bill payments.
3. You can bring live bank feeds into your account and access a range of third-party integrations.
4. Opening a QuickBooks Checking account is free, with no monthly fees or account minimums.

Each staff reviewer at Merchant Maverick is a subject matter expert with experience researching, testing, and evaluating small business software and services. The rating of this company or service is based on the author’s expert opinion and analysis of the product, and assessed and seconded by another subject matter expert on staff before publication. Merchant Maverick’s ratings are not influenced by affiliate partnerships. Between the QuickBooks Online monthly fee and add-on costs, the monthly pricing of QuickBooks Online can add up quickly. Common payment processing options include PayPal, Stripe, Square, and Authorize.Net.

QuickBooks Online VS QuickBooks Desktop: 2024 Comparison

For just $50, QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping will set you up with an expert for one session. You’ll be able to track bills, set up recurring billing, track expenses, t account examples record payments in multiple currencies, and scan bills to keep abreast of all the money your company is owed. This plan is designed for freelancers who file a Schedule C IRS form to report their income as sole proprietor. Sign up to receive more well-researched small business articles and topics in your inbox, personalized for you.

Still, QuickBooks Online offers an unbeatable range of features, packaged in a solid interface with good support. Service or project-based businesses should choose accounting software that can track project costs, revenues, and profits. The software must have tools to track time, record billable hours or expenses, send invoices for progress billings, or monitor project progress and performance. Advanced is slightly better than Plus and the other QuickBooks Online plans in A/P and A/R because of its batch invoicing and expense management features. Batch invoicing allows you to create multiple invoices at once rather than creating them one at a time.

With its intuitive interface and mobile app, managing your business’ finances on the go is straightforward and easy. The software offers an impressive number of integrations and also has a few unique features you won’t find elsewhere, such as QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping service and QuickBooks Capital built-in lending. With an overall rating of 4.3/5, QuickBooks Online makes our list of the best accounting software for small businesses.

A/P features include creating vendors and bills, recording purchase orders and converting them to bills, creating service items, and recording full or partial bill payments. In evaluating pricing, we considered the billing cycle (monthly or annual) and number of users. The Projects tool helps you manage different jobs and projects for your clients and track costs related to labor and materials.