QuickBooks Online Review: Features, Pricing, & Alternatives

QuickBooks Online is a cloud-based invoicing and accounting software designed to meet the invoicing and accounting needs of businesses. It’s a subscription-based platform that offers different plans for different businesses.

The platform offers a wide range of automation capabilities, numerous integrations, high-level security, and a user-friendly interface.

In this review, we’ll look at the pros and cons, as well as the cost and features of QuickBooks to help you decide if it’s the right fit for your business.

SMB Guide’s Verdict for QuickBooks Online

SMB Guide’s overall rating for QuickBooks is 9 out of 10.

Here’s the detailed breakdown of the scoring for each factor:

Factor	Rating (out of 10)
Pricing & Plans	8
Feature Set & Customization Options	9
Automated Invoicing	9
Expense Tracking	8.5
Multi-Currency Support	9
User Interface and User Experience	8.5
Integrations and Compatibility	10
Customer Support	9
SMB Guide Rating	9

In this review of QuickBooks Online, I’ve followed SMB Guide’s detailed criteria for evaluating an accounting software.

QuickBooks Online is an advanced invoicing and accounting platform designed to meet the unique demands of small and medium-sized enterprises.

The strength of this software lies in its advanced features, such as customizable invoices, purchase order creation, inventory management, multi-company reporting, and sophisticated automation features. 

The platform’s capability to automate diverse accounting duties minimizes mistakes and conserves time, enabling you to concentrate on business growth.

QuickBooks also offers several resources and courses to help you get started and use the platform at maximum capacity.

Pricing & Plans

QuickBooks Online offers four pricing plans: the Simple Start plan, Essentials plan, Plus plan, and Advanced plan.

The platform is slightly more expensive than its competitors with the basic plan starting at $17.50 per month. Nevertheless, extensive features that justify the cost, even for small businesses

The Simple Start plan is intended for a single user. It includes all basic features to get you started, cash flow analytics, tax deductions, sales tax calculation, and some automation capabilities.

The Essentials plan supports three users. It includes all of the Simple Start capabilities, plus time tracking, bill payment, and management tools.

The Plus plan is QuickBooks’ most popular plan and accommodates five users. It includes all of the Essentials features, as well as the ability to monitor project profitability and inventories.

The Advanced plan permits up to 25 users. In addition to the Plus package’s features, it includes up to 20 transaction classes for expense monitoring, access to a dedicated account team, and the ability to automate workflows and restore corporate data.

You can avail of a 30-day free trial before committing to any plan. However, the platform asks you to enter your credit card information to even get started with the free trial.

QuickBooks frequently offers discounts, so ask about any deals during the purchasing process. The company offers lower costs if you pay annually or quarterly.

For an extra monthly cost, you can also add QuickBooks’ high-quality payroll capabilities to any of these plans.

QuickBooks additionally offers Desktop Pro Plus, Desktop Premier Plus and a desktop Enterprise package if you don’t want to use the cloud-based software. 

However, the QuickBooks desktop application lacks many of the advanced features that are available in the cloud-based version.

Simple Start

This is the basic package offered by QuickBooks to help you get started with invoicing and accounting.

Price

• $17.50 per month

Features

• Includes 1 user
• Access expert tax help
• Income and expenses
• Banking with 5.00% APY
• Bookkeeping automation
• Invoice and payments
• Tax deductions
• General reports
• Receipt capture
• Mileage tracking
• Cash flow
• Sales and sales tax
• Estimates
• Contractors
• Connect 1 sales channel
• Bill management

Who it’s for:

• Solopreneurs
• Freelancers looking for comprehensive invoicing and accounting solutions

Essentials

This plan includes all basic features and some advanced features for time tracking and management.

Price

• $32.50 per month

Features

• Includes 3 users
• Access expert tax help
• Income and expenses
• Banking with 5.00% APY
• Bookkeeping automation
• Invoice and payments
• Tax deductions
• Enhanced reports
• Receipt capture
• Mileage tracking
• Cash flow
• Sales and sales tax
• Estimates
• Contractors
• Connect 3 sales channels
• Bill management
• Multiple currencies
• Enter time

Who it’s for: Small businesses looking for invoicing and financial management tools.

Plus

This is the most subscribed plan as it offers advanced features with inventory and profitability monitoring capabilities.

Price

• $49.50 per month

Features

• Includes 5 users
• Access expert tax help
• with QuickBooks Live Tax
• Income and expenses
• Banking with 5.00% APY
• Bookkeeping automation
• Invoice and payments
• Tax deductions
• Comprehensive reports
• Receipt capture
• Mileage tracking
• Cash flow
• Sales and sales tax
• Estimates
• Contractors
• Connect all sales channels
• Bill management
• Multiple currencies
• Enter time
• Inventory
• Project profitability
• Financial planning

Who it’s for: Small businesses, and companies looking for advanced invoicing, financial tracking, and management features

Advanced

This is the most advanced package that unlocks the maximum features offered by the platform.

Price

• $117.50 per month

Features

• Includes 25 users
• Access expert tax help
• with QuickBooks Live Tax
• Income and expenses
• Banking with 5.00% APY
• Bookkeeping automation
• Invoice and payments
• Tax deductions
• Powerful reports
• Receipt capture
• Mileage tracking
• Cash flow
• Sales and sales tax
• Estimates
• Contractors
• Connect all sales channels
• Bill management
• Multiple currencies
• Enter time
• Inventory
• Project profitability
• Financial planning
• Auto-track fixed assets
• Data sync with Excel
• Employee expenses
• Batch invoices and expenses
• Custom access controls
• Workflow automation
• Data restoration
• 24/7 support & training
• Revenue recognition

Who it’s for: Businesses looking for advanced and automated invoicing and accounting solutions.

Feature Set & Customization Options

QuickBooks offers comprehensive invoice generation and customization features to match the varying needs of different businesses. The invoicing features of this software help to customize and automate the billing process apart from sending out bills.

When you get started with your first invoice on QuickBooks, the platform offers a tour to help understand how you can make the most of invoicing features with an intuitive layout, auto-fill tooks, and more payment options.

With QuickBooks, you can make professional invoices and set up customization, payment options, design, and scheduling as your choice. 

The platform offers you a variety of themes, accent colors, fonts, and font sizes to pick from, as well as the option to upload and position your logo or brand picture. You can also choose which information to include in the header, which columns to include in the body of the invoice, adjust their labels and widths, customize text, and include a note for your clients at the bottom.

You can also set recurring payments, and allow consumers to pay through the invoice to get faster payments. If you’ve set up online payments using QuickBooks Payments or a third-party processor such as PayPal or Square, you can set up a payment button on your invoices.

QuickBooks can design invoices, manage invoice status, send payment reminders automatically, and connect directly to accounts which helps reduce the chances of error in billing.

QuickBooks invoices are tailored for mobile devices and you can easily prepare and send invoices using the QuickBooks browser software or mobile app. QuickBooks also offers an app that lets you invoice from your Gmail.

The platform also allows you to make estimates which can be instantly turned into an invoice when the customer gives their approval. The software will automatically link similar papers to keep your invoicing organized and eliminate duplicate invoices.

Automated Invoicing

QuickBooks has incorporated new capabilities that use machine learning technology that makes its automation tools superior to many other competing software. This software automates payment reminders, recurring invoices, and bill payments and links foreign currency bank accounts.

It also saves time by automatically backing up your data to the cloud.

With QuickBooks, you can establish recurring invoices and set up automatic payment reminders. The program allows you to track and invoice billable hours and automatically incorporate unbilled amounts in your recurring bills.

You can customize the frequency and start and end date of your recurring invoice and also select if you want to send emails, print it automatically, and include unbilled charges.

The software has the ability to understand your spending habits to personalize your experience. It can help you better organize your expenses and maintain accuracy by asking you to provide additional information when it is unsure how to classify a cost.

Expense Tracking

Expense Tracking is a valuable feature that allows organizations to track their money and make a structured strategy for recording and categorizing business spending and bank statements. 

It gives a clear picture of business spending, decreases errors, and eliminates the need for manual entry.

QuickBooks allows you to create and share a professional summary of your business finances and data with ease.

The expense tracking tool in QuickBooks can automatically import and categorize transactions by connecting straight to your bank account, credit card transactions, PayPal, or Square. This real-time tracking makes filing taxes easier and helps maintain accurate financial records.

Accounting teams can use email updates to keep accountants informed and customize reports to include crucial data. The revenue stream dashboard offers users important business insights. They can see sales trends and create bespoke reports as well.

QuickBooks’ inventory tracking can manage many items and track their data, such as cost, sales revenue, and stock levels, giving you a comprehensive picture of the state of your company’s inventory.

With inventory tracking, you can track your products as they are sold and dispatched, as well as manage other parts of your inventory, such as issuing buy orders for fresh stock.

QuickBooks calculates the cost of products sold, sends out alerts when stock levels are low, and automatically changes inventory management levels with each buy and sale to produce more precise profit analyses.

Multi-Currency Support

QuickBooks supports all major currencies, allowing users to do business with overseas suppliers, customers, and employees. You will need to manually enable multi-currency functionality from the Settings menu.

However, multi-currency cannot be turned off once it is enabled since the currency conversion information must be accounted for in the system going forward. That’s why you should only enable it if you have any bank accounts, clients, or vendors that deal in other currencies.

The international version of QuickBooks also allows users to change the language as per their needs. The platform supports 11 languages including English, Chinese, French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Thai, Portuguese, German, Japanese, and Korean.

User Interface and User Experience

QuickBooks offers a user-friendly platform with an easy-to-navigate layout. When you first make an account on the platform, it asks you questions to personalize your experience.

When you open any page for the first time, it offers you a tour or a video tutorial to understand all the features offered by the platform and use it effectively.

With QuickBooks, it is incredibly easy to personalize invoices and forms. You can choose from a range of themes, accent colors, fonts, and font sizes in QuickBooks. 

The Menu on the left side organizes all functions for simple access, so you don’t get lost looking for a certain feature. It provides quick access to dashboards, tasks, transactions, accounting, sales, spending, customers and leads, reports, payroll, time, projects, financial planning, and much more.

The dashboard displays multiple graphs that provide summaries of your revenue, expenses, sales over time, and profit and loss information. Each data set can be explored in further detail by clicking on the photos and each graph’s date range is customizable.

Integrations and Compatibility

QuickBooks offers over 750 integrations with other applications. You can automatically sync data between systems rather than manually exporting and importing it between QuickBooks and other company applications.

The software is compatible with leading POS systems, major online stores, CRM software, project management solutions, payroll systems, and more. 

Some of the integrations offered by QuickBooks include:

• Data integrations with Square, PayPal, Etsy, Amazon Business
• Sales integrations with Amazon, eBay, and Shopify
• Accounting integrations with QuickBooks Time, SOS Inventory

QuickBooks also offers mobile apps for Android and iOS. The mobile app for QuickBooks Online lets you manage different accounting activities from anywhere and offers an overview of your business activity.

You can access dashboard data, generate and distribute invoices, receive payments, attach receipts to costs, reconcile transactions, examine customer data, and send messages to customers directly from the app.

Customer Support

QuickBooks offers multiple support resources to its users. You can contact them for assistance via phone or live chat for direct support. The platform also allows you to connect with trained QuickBooks ProAdvisors in your area who can provide one-on-one help with the program for your business if you need in-person support. 

Apart from this, you can check the company’s knowledge base, or post questions in the community forum, sign up for training sessions, and view webinars and tutorial videos.

QuickBooks updates its blog with information about new features and software updates, as well as articles relevant to small business owners every month.

The platform has a presence on major networking and social media channels including X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube where they share the latest trends, tips, and tricks.

QuickBooks Online — Unique Features

Wondering what makes QuickBooks stand out? Here are the special features I personally loved.

Tasks

QuickBooks allows you to create tasks that you can share with your team.

This helps your team understand what work needs to be done and when. Your team can oversee everything in one location by having all tasks displayed in the Task menu.

Tasks can be created and assigned automatically by some features, such as invoice approval workflows. You can also create custom tasks for anything.

Financial Planning

QuickBooks offers financial planning with forecasts and budgets.

Forecasting with Quickbooks can help you create both short- and long-term goals for your company. Forecasting is based on historical data and industry trends.

The platform looks for trends in your past data and uses that information to make estimates. With QuickBooks, you get easy access to all of your financial data, making it quick and simple to make projections and use them to establish budgets.

You can create the income, expenditure, or balance sheet budgets for your business using your financial data stored in QuickBooks. This can then be used to compare your actual income and expenses to your set budget.

What the Experts Say About QuickBooks

QuickBooks has a 4 rating on G2 with 3,303 reviews and a 4.3 rating on Capterra with 7,226 reviews. It is highly appreciated for its ease of use and advanced features.

Wow, my experience with QuickBooks has been just amazing, I am able to manage to manage my financial and accounting processes as well as provide invoices and reports in an intuitive way. High recommendations to non-users and people who want to elevated when it comes to financial management.

Mark, Director – Verified Capterra review

The system is simple to learn and utilize. Helps me prepare for tax season all year long so that I don’t have to worry about anything. An emphasis is placed on UI and user experience. It’s clear to see that they’ve done so. Because we don’t utilize all of the tools, there might be a lot of clutter in our workspaces.

Krishna, Human Resources – Verified Capterra review

QuickBooks Online Alternatives

QuickBooks Online offers a comprehensive suite of invoice-generating solutions at competitive prices. However, it may not be the ideal choice for all organizations because every company has its own set of requirements.

If you have more specific requirements, check out the best QuickBooks alternatives.

Here are three excellent alternatives to QuickBooks.

FreshBooks

FreshBooks is a web-based accounting software as a service platform that works on any desktop or mobile device. This application automates common accounting tasks like invoice production, payment acceptance, cost tracking, billable time monitoring, and financial reporting.

While QuickBooks has a wide range of advanced capabilities that can be overwhelming for solopreneurs, FreshBooks offers a more streamlined, user-friendly experience.

Try FreshBooks for free today!

Wave Accounting

Wave Accounting is a cloud-based accounting software that includes standard features such as invoicing, expense tracking, and payroll.

While QuickBooks offers several plan tiers with growing capabilities, Wave’s low cost and simplicity make it ideal for independent freelancers and small firms with limited resources and basic bookkeeping requirements.

Create your free account of Wave today!

Zoho Invoice

Zoho Invoice is an invoicing software that enables professionals to manage their accounts in an organized and efficient manner. It allows users to generate and send invoices and estimates, as well as collect money, track time, and record expenses.

This tool is completely free and an excellent alternative, especially if you’re part of the larger Zoho community.

Try Zoho Invoice for free today!

Other options: Best QuickBooks Online alternatives

Getting Started with QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Online is a great invoicing and accounting software for businesses in a wide range of industries. With its user-friendly interface, extensive functionality, and commitment to innovation, the platform offers various features for invoicing, accounting, expense tracking, payroll management, reporting, and more.

The platform’s automation features streamline repetitive operations, resulting in increased productivity and accuracy. With over 750 integrations, the integration features make it simple to connect to other apps, boosting its versatility.

To top it all off, you can easily handle your finances from any location using the mobile app.

Start your 30-day free trial of QuickBooks Online today!

FAQs

Related reading:

• QuickBooks vs. FreshBooks