If you go with QuickBooks Desktop Pro or Premier, a payroll add-on is available for an additional monthly fee. While these products will still be available to existing users, QuickBooks Desktop Payroll for Pro and Premier will no longer be available for new users to purchase starting on September 31, 2024. For small business owners new to the accounting scene, this service may bring much-needed peace of mind when managing your books and filing small business taxes. Speaking of extra fees, QuickBooks Desktop also charges for e-commerce app integration, invoice-based payment acceptance, and online data hosting. If you choose QuickBooks Desktop Pro Plus, you’ll also need to pay extra if you want to access customer service via live chat. Notably, only QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise includes 24/7 customer service.
QuickBooks Online vs. Desktop features
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. Because QuickBooks Online is connected to the cloud, you can work from any device with an internet connection. We at the MarketWatch Guides team have tested both versions of the QuickBooks platform. In this guide, we break down our findings, helping you decide if Online or Desktop — or another software altogether — is best for your business accounting needs.
Let us teach you QuickBooks Online with a free 1-hour personalized setup call*
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. We recommend crunching the numbers to decide whether the online or desktop versions of QuickBooks are right for your record of payment definition 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. If QuickBooks Desktop seems to be the better fit after reading this comparison, make sure to act quickly to start your subscription to avoid missing out. All QuickBooks Desktop Pro, Desktop Premiere, Mac, and Desktop Enhanced Payroll products, excluding QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise, will no longer be available to new users after September 30, 2024.
QuickBooks Online vs. QuickBooks Desktop 2023
While both software types have plenty of perks, QuickBooks Online is a more flexible, affordable, and scalable option for most small-business owners. QuickBooks Desktop Premier Plus and Enterprise plans have industry-specific reports for manufacturing and wholesale, retail, nonprofit, general contractor and professional service businesses, too. For example, nonprofits can use the desktop products to run donor contribution summary reports while manufacturing, wholesale and retail businesses have the ability to forecast product sales. Contractors and professional service businesses can use the software to compare revenue by city, customer and job type.
- QuickBooks is a suite of accounting software developed and marketed by Intuit, designed for small and medium-sized businesses to handle their financial management and automate accounting operations.
- We believe everyone should be able to make financial decisions with confidence.
- When comparing QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop, each version has its own advantages, helping specific businesses with certain financial management needs.
- There are over 200 options instead of the 650-plus to its cloud counterpart.
- If you need personalized customer support, you can upgrade to QuickBooks Online Advanced or QuickBooks Enterprise.
It includes 100+ reports, while QuickBooks Online Simple Start includes around 40. The Desktop Premier edition escalates to 150+ reports, including industry-specific reports for general contractors, manufacturers and wholesalers, nonprofits, and retailers. If you’re searching for accounting software that’s user-friendly, full of smart features, and scales with your business, Quickbooks is a great option. The banking section of this case study focuses on cash management, bank reconciliation, and bank feed connections. The software must have bank integrations to automatically feed bank or card transactions.
When comparing QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop, each version has its own advantages, helping specific businesses with certain financial management needs. QuickBooks Online is popular for businesses that want flexibility — both in terms of where and how they can access their finances as well as what plan they can choose as they grow. On the other hand, established businesses may get more out of QuickBooks Desktop with its advanced capabilities in a secure database. She started her career writing and editing content about home services before transitioning to home improvement products. She has spent the last year and a half working at a software company, managing content about CRM, project management and other business topics.
And let’s not forget offline accessibility for the times your ISP decides to ruin your Monday. Everything from the installation screen to the lagging UI gave me flashbacks to the 1998 dial-up tone on my family’s Pentium III computer. There were also fewer prompts of the tutorial variety, but I was pleasantly surprised by the number of features packed into it.
QuickBooks Desktop offers more advanced inventory management features, job costing worksheets, sales orders, and highly customizable reports. I was impressed with how you could do batch invoicing, something QuickBooks Online doesn’t offer. Businesses that have purchased one-time licenses of the locally-installed QuickBooks Desktop versions that have been sunset can still use the software’s accounting features. However, these versions don’t receive security updates, live support, or access to cloud-based services such as live bank feeds, QuickBooks Desktop Payments, or QuickBooks Desktop Payroll. QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop are two solid accounting products from Intuit.
Run payroll on any device with taxes, compliance & reporting built-in. Granted, you don’t have to be an accountant to learn QuickBooks Desktop either, but if you are new to accounting, you will need a lot of time to learn the program. QuickBooks Online supports up to 25 users, which does fall short of the 40 users supported under QuickBooks Desktop. In comparison with QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Online is cloud-based, cheaper, easier to use, supports more integrations, and is unlikely to be discontinued by QuickBooks. 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.