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. While both QuickBooks Online and Desktop are supported by a large network of independent ProAdvisors, it’s much easier to share your books with your ProAdvisor using QuickBooks Online. Getting assistance with your Desktop bookkeeping is difficult since you must save an Accountant’s Copy advantages of electronic filing of your company file and send it to your ProAdvisor. Another key difference between QuickBooks Online and Desktop is that the former allows you to track your activity, such as income and expenses, by class and location. This is useful for businesses with multiple departments or divisions and those that provide various types of services. Meanwhile, QuickBooks Desktop allows you to set up classes, but you can’t track your income and expenses by location.

You’re not limited to a single machine or even device and can easily log in to QBO from any PC, Mac, tablet, or smartphone. Because QBDT is a local install on your computer, you can access your file at any time. If the internet goes out, you’re still able to view, edit, and otherwise work on your books. There’s never any requirement that you have internet connectivity after the initial download and install. If you need help with the initial setup of your QBO file, you can hire a professional bookkeeper through the ProAdvisor directory.

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. Head to our detailed QuickBooks Payroll review to see if it fits the bill. The QuickBooks Desktop mobile app is very limited as it only allows you to capture expense receipts and track business mileage. If you want to perform bookkeeping from anywhere, we strongly recommend QuickBooks Online’s mobile app.

A frustrating experience that only applies to QBDT is that the bank rules are not updated when the chart of accounts is updated. This means that if you rename an account or reorganize the chart of account list you will get an error when QBDT tries to run this bank rule. This is compounded by the fact that the rules list is not really well organized and could have hundreds if not thousands of rules. Non-Plus editions of QuickBooks Desktop put the responsibility of backing up files entirely on you. This can be accomplished in much the same way you’d back up other files. 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 apps like Dropbox or Drive).

1. Both options, however, are working to reduce long hold times on the phone by now offering a callback feature.
2. However, QuickBooks Desktop relies on users to implement security measures and perform regular data backups.
3. If your home or office has a slow or unpredictable internet connection, QuickBooks Desktop can ensure you can reach most of your data even if the internet goes down overnight.
4. As you hire more employees or bring on more customers, you can scale up your software to match.

Consider factors like mobility, collaboration, and customization to determine which version aligns better with your business. Interestingly, the benefits of QuickBooks Desktop can be further amplified if the software is hosted on the cloud by a credible service provider. This approach essentially marries the robust functionality of QuickBooks Desktop with the accessibility of QuickBooks Online, providing businesses with a powerful, flexible solution.

All QuickBooks Enterprise plans are available only via monthly or annual subscriptions, depending on your plan. However, please note that access to add-on services will be discontinued for all QuickBooks Desktop software after May 31, 2023. There are two main versions of QuickBooks — QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online — and there are many differences between them. In particular, the QuickBooks Desktop platform, which is either installed locally or hosted remotely, offers different functions than the QuickBooks Online cloud computing version, which is fully remote. Both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop are designed to handle small business’s bandwidth and needs. Strictly based on ease of use and basic functionality, QuickBooks Online is an easier-to-adopt option that can handle small business accounting needs well.

For an additional monthly fee, QuickBooks Online offers a virtual bookkeeping solution, which can be used to get help with setting up and managing your accounts. Your engagement helped us build accounting, payroll, and payments products that meet your needs. We’ll continue to make improvements to QuickBooks Online with your feedback. Because QBO is based entirely in the cloud, granting access to additional users doesn’t impact the purchase price as long as you’re under the predefined user limit. QuickBooks Self-Employed, or QBSE, is the version of QBO marketed toward freelancers and other self-employed business owners. Unlike its counterparts, this edition of the software can never be upgraded to the small business editions of the software.

QuickBooks Desktop has limited integration options compared to QuickBooks Online

We’ve made the migration experience much better and added new features to meet the needs of more desktop customers. For both cases, I strongly encourage you to find or buy a migration checklist. There are many cases where it’s to your benefit to learn how to approach and resolve a task. QuickBooks migration is (hopefully) something you do once, and there is no benefit for you to spin your wheels for days trying to make this work. In contrast, QuickBooks Online files are automatically backed up on a nightly basis to ensure that there is no loss of data. However, a major pitfall is that previous QBO files cannot be restored like with QBDT files.

Is QuickBooks Online Or QuickBooks Desktop Better For My Business?

That’s why QuickBooks maintains a list of apps for QuickBooks Desktop that you can use to determine which desktop apps you can pair with your Desktop software. Because QuickBooks Online is cloud-based, it is a great option for those who need QuickBooks access while not in the office. All you need is your account information, and you can access your QuickBooks details on any device with an internet connection. We went to user review websites to read first-hand reviews from actual software users.

QuickBooks Online boasts a user-friendly, intuitive interface, making it easy even for accounting novices to navigate. In contrast, QuickBooks Desktop, while offering more advanced functionalities, may pose a steeper learning curve due to its traditional interface. On the other hand, QuickBooks Desktop is known for its robust and comprehensive features.

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QuickBooks Desktop requires a one-time upfront payment, making it more cost-effective in the long run for users who don’t require regular upgrades. There’s also an option for an annual subscription which includes updates and upgrades. QuickBooks Online operates on a subscription-based model with various pricing tiers, each offering a different level of features. The charges are https://intuit-payroll.org/ on a monthly basis, which some users prefer for its flexibility. The dashboard is super intuitive with large, easy-to-understand charts, and the mobile app is similarly easy to use. 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.

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 specific business. QuickBooks Pro is geared toward small to medium businesses and starts at $41/month for a single user.

For more than two decades, QuickBooks has been the de facto accounting software for small businesses across a vast number of industries. From restaurants to retailers and plumbers to painters, professionals in nearly every line of business have benefited from QuickBooks. And while for many years QuickBooks was limited to desktop computing environments, there now exists an alternate version of the software that’s accessible from any internet-connected device. Whether your home-service business is just getting off the ground or if you’ve been operating for years, a proper accounting system is essential to ensuring the fitness of your finances.

Both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop offer a large number of features. While they share many of the same features, QuickBooks Desktop’s features are often more developed, except when it comes to invoicing. Both QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online utilize a subscription pricing model. Live Bookkeepers aren’t responsible for errors resulting from incorrect information that you provide, or if you re-open the books by overriding closure after a Live Bookkeeper completes the month-end closure.

First, QBO is secured by 256-bit encryption, which is bank level, military-grade data encryption, also the most advanced on the consumer market. Second, your data isn’t just stored on one server at one time, it’s stored all over the world on multiple servers and is only parsed together when you confirm the login through email or text message. So how do QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online compare, and which version is better suited for home-service companies like yours? This comprehensive comparison of the features — and limitations — of QBD versus QBO will help you understand what each of these options can bring to your business.