It’s more expensive, but it comes with far more features than the rather bare-bones QuickBooks Self-Employed. With QuickBooks Online, you’ll be able to pay bills, send invoices, manage contractors and even more. QuickBooks Self-Employed is better for maximizing your tax benefits as a sole proprietor—but it doesn’t offer much else. 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. If you’re a freelancer, stick with its Self-Employed plan, which is $15 per month 9after the three-month discount at $7.50).

Meanwhile, Essentials gives you access to more than 40 reports, including those you can generate in Simple Start. You can drill down to a list of your outstanding invoices instead of only the total outstanding. It’s a great fit if you’ll be doing the bookkeeping 33 timeless sales tips to convert even the most frugal leads yourself and don’t need inventory accounting. Compared with QuickBooks, Xero’s plans and pricing structure are simpler and less expensive. Like QuickBooks, Xero offers a free 30-day trial or discounted pricing for the first few months of use.

All your data is stored in QuickBooks’ cloud and you’ll be able to access it anywhere on any device. QuickBooks Desktop, on the other hand, is locally installed with a license pricing model. The QuickBooks Payroll software tracks employees by name, pay rate, pay method, and current status. Core can also be packaged with either the Simple Start accounting plan for $75 plus $5 per employee, per month, or the Essentials plans for $100 plus $5 per employee, per month.

How QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Self-Employed Stack Up

In fact, the cost of a homeowners policy has risen 21% on average compared with the prior year. And in some states, homeowners insurance costs have jumped as much as 68% since 2021. Car insurance costs aren’t much better, with the average premium price increasing 17% in the first six months of 2023. Higher repair costs and an increased number of claims are the biggest factors leading to rising rates. When it comes to managing your business, payroll is an integral and time-consuming task.

Monitor product levels, cost of goods, and receive notifications when inventory is low so you never run out. Hopefully, knowing the exact costs of QuickBooks Online will ease your mind and help you create a more realistic business budget. If you want to learn more about QuickBooks, read our complete QuickBooks Online review or get started with a free trial. Intuit typically offers deals where new users can get a discount on QuickBooks Payroll by bundling it with a QuickBooks Online subscription.

QuickBooks Online Pricing And Plans (2024 Guide)

It’s a subscription-based service that is good for various industries and beneficial to those who regularly work with a bookkeeper or accountant because you can give them access to your files. Read our comprehensive QuickBooks Online review to decide if this popular accounting software is the best choice for your needs and budget. As an accounting program, QuickBooks Online helps you track your finances while giving you clear insights that can guide your most crucial business decisions. To that end, each QuickBooks Online plan includes cash flow forecasting. From the dashboard, a cash flow formatting snapshot shows you both where your business stands now and where it likely will stand financially several months to a year down the road. Through the QuickBooks app, you can snap receipts and upload expenses, which are then automatically sorted into tax categories for easier end-of-year tax deductions.

• However, you will have to choose between the free trial and the current promotion.
• If you invoke the guarantee, QuickBooks will conduct an evaluation of the Live Bookkeeper’s work.
• If you’re moving to QuickBooks from another accounting software, you can import your existing files to your new account.
• When customers no longer have an active, paid subscription, they will not be eligible to receive benefits.

With Plus, you can make POs, track them, and send them to vendors. POs are essential because they help you specify what products and services you need from your vendor or supplier and by when you need them. When creating POs in Plus, you can input specific items you want to purchase. When your POs are fulfilled, you can convert them to a bill easily.

You’ll be able to track bills, set up recurring billing, track expenses, record payments in multiple currencies, and scan bills to keep abreast of all the money your company is owed. Simple Starts includes all the features from the Self-employed Plan but adds a range of helpful additions covering everything from basic bookkeeping to budgeting. With Plus, you have the ability to add more users, track transactions by class and location, manage inventory, track jobs with Project Profitability, budgeting, and even more reports. QuickBooks Online Plus has the features included in Simple Start and Essentials, plus more functionality for small businesses with more complex needs. Today’s leading accounting platforms offer standard security features like data encryption, secure credential tokenization and more.

Best Accounting Software for Small Businesses

With QuickBooks Online, you’ll get everything you need to manage your business’s books. Income and expense tracking, invoicing and payments and automated tax deductions are all included in the base plan. Access your account via the cloud for up to 25 users with the Online version, and pay an additional fee per user, up to 40 users, for cloud access with Desktop.

This plan also gives you a dedicated account team to help with training, troubleshooting and setup. QuickBooks Online has four pricing tiers and offers 50% off for the first three months when you purchase. The first tier is the Simple Start Plan at $9 per month for the first three months, then is $30 per month. This plan gives you all the basics needed to run your business accounting, including income and expense monitoring, invoice and payment capability, tax deductions, receipt capture and mileage tracking. In stark contrast to QuickBooks Online, each Xero accounting plan includes basic inventory management and an unlimited number of users.

Best accounting software for small businesses, now with Live Bookkeepers!1

Features include mileage tracking, basic reporting, income and expense tracking, capture and organize receipts and estimation of quarterly taxes. The two versions are independent of each other, which means the data you enter on Desktop doesn’t sync to the Online version and vice-versa. QuickBooks Online is a leader in the accounting industry with it being the bookkeeping software of choice for many accountants, certified public accountants (CPAs) and bookkeepers. When comparing it to other bookkeeping providers, such as FreshBooks and Xero, we note that all three have a 30-day free trial to test the system out. This is important to note since you’ll want to make sure that it is capable of doing what you need in a manner that you understand and can digest. QuickBooks Online syncs with more than 750 different third-party business apps, ranging from point-of-sale apps to payment acceptance tools and beyond.

What Live Bookkeeping brings to your business

It can help you track sales tax on every invoice, which is especially helpful if you sell in different locations. While you can only connect one online store in the base plan, the Plus plan lets you have unlimited storefronts. The revenue from each store is separate so you know where you’re profitable and where you’re not. One of the selling points of QuickBooks Self-Employed is its ability to calculate your quarterly estimated taxes for you. However, if you want to pay these taxes directly through QuickBooks, you’ll need to upgrade to a special tax prep plan. Once you’ve decided QuickBooks is the accounting solution for your business, you have a few more decisions to make—namely, should you use QuickBooks Online or Self-Employed?

QuickBooks Payroll

Yes, QuickBooks Online offers good value for its price across all plans. Granted, the right plan for you will vary depending on your needs, and there are alternative accounting software options on the market that may also be a good fit. Still, QuickBooks Online offers an unbeatable range of features, packaged in a solid interface with good support. The QuickBooks Plus plan costs $90 per month, supports five users, and includes several advanced features compared to the Essentials plan. If the three-month deal is applied, this price is dropped to $45 per month.