QuickBooks Online Review: Great Invoice Software for Small Business

QuickBooks Online Review: Great Invoice Software for Small Business

QuickBooks Online has led the way for a number of years with its accounting solutions, including invoice software for small businesses.  In the last few years, they’ve hopped on the cloud bandwagon and tweaked their software to meet the requirements of the modern business environment. The cloud-based accounting solution has incorporated several new features and reporting capabilities to make it more palatable as compared to its clunky and slow predecessor. Today, we’ll look at its features and discuss how it fares against its competition.

Overview

QuickBooks is owned by Intuit, a California-based company that’s been around since 1983. Intuit originally started with Quicken, a personal financial software. In 1994, the company expanded into accounting software and developed QuickBooks and launched QuickBooks Online in 2004.

QuickBooks Online doesn’t boast about being the #1 Accounting Software for Small Businesses. However, it is the #1 accounting software used in the United State, holding a market share around 80%.

Expense Tracking

All QuickBooks online versions come equipped with a set of expense and income tracking features to make your life as a business owner easier. QuickBooks has the capability to track all transactions in bank accounts and credit cards without requiring any additional input from the user. However, I will mention, your bank needs to offer QuickBooks integration.

In addition to keeping the track of your Cash Flow activities, it also has the ability to create backups and generate reports as per your requirements. The main shortcoming that QuickBooks has not been able to overcome comes is it’s ability to integrate fully with mobile devices. Users do not have the ability to access their entire accounting records from their phones contrary to some other accounting solutions available on the market.

Reporting

Unfortunately, this is the area where QuickBooks falls seriously short of its competition. Despite several updates, QuickBooks has failed to attain the similar level of flexibility and depth as some other solutions like Xero, Freshbooks or QuickBooks Desktop. Those who have used the Desktop version of the application would find the online version seriously inadequate. In addition to being restricted to only a certain number of reports, QuickBooks also lacks the facility to auto populate CRA-Tax returns. With tax season here, business owners may find themselves frustrated. Considering these weaknesses, Intuit could definitely look into tweak QuickBooks Online when it comes to its reporting functionality.

Invoicing

QuickBooks makes up for its lack of depth in reporting with its invoicing abilities. The software has the tools to handle all different types of invoices that could arise during the life of a small business. QuickBooks provides the ability to create cash receipts, if you are operating on cash sales bases or create invoices or track billable hours if you get paid later for the work you have done. In addition, to all this flexibility, you also get the ability to auto-create recurring invoices. The reporting part of sales and customers is also very sophisticated, allowing business owners to analyze sales performance from various angles and gain an in-depth understanding of how things are going.

Navigation and Ease of Use

QuickBooks makes some smart choice in its UI and navigation settings that make it a breeze to move through different screens. The biggest complaint that users had about QuickBooks’ desktop version was its clunky and slow navigation features. Compared to its predecessor QuickBooks Online is much faster and easier to understand.

Most accounting solutions provide Dashboards as their home screens, which contain all the essential reminders, reports, alerts and most used features such as invoicing and accounts receivable. QuickBooks takes a similar approach to its dashboard but with a colorful twist. The entire dashboard is highly customizable and easy to understand for accounting novices, while providing advanced features for the experts. These navigations features are easy to use and don’t require clicking through several menus to accomplish a single task. QuickBooks uses a colorful and tabular display that makes it easy to navigate through different screens and enables the users to get more done in a short amount of time.

Customer Support

QuickBooks has a highly sophisticated customer support mechanism that is designed to help the customers get solutions to their problems as quickly as possible. As online support goes, you may find yourself waiting a few hours before a valid solution is relayed to you through customer support email. If you need quicker support, you might consider calling their support line.

Final Thoughts

Quickbooks is a complete accounting solution with a few shortcomings that hopefully Intuit will address quickly. On the other hand, if you need to maintain a record for complex inventory or billing scenarios, then there is no other accounting solution available on the market that can match the sophistication of QuickBooks. Overall it is a decent accounting solution that can help your business in the long run.

Pricing

When it comes to value for the money, QuickBooks has introduced a very clever way to enable the customers to choose only what is essential to them without paying for the features that they would rarely use. QuickBooks offers three different solutions in the form of Simple Start, Essentials, and Plus. The users can choose any solution based on their budget and requirements. The tiered feature combined with more than decent customer service creates an acceptable experience.