QuickBooks Review: Navigating the Features and Benefits for Small Businesses

As a small business owner, you likely agree that managing finances and accounting can be an overwhelming task.

Luckily, QuickBooks offers a user-friendly solution tailored to small business needs, with extensive features to handle invoicing, expenses, payroll, reporting, and more.

In this comprehensive review, we'll explore QuickBooks' capabilities for small businesses, including its key features, ease of use, scalability, security, pricing, and overall value. You'll get actionable insights to determine if QuickBooks is the right fit for your growing company's financial ecosystem.

Introduction to QuickBooks

QuickBooks is a popular accounting and financial management software developed by Intuit. Launched in the 1990s, it revolutionized small business accounting by making it easy and intuitive to track income, expenses, inventory, payroll, and more. Over the years, QuickBooks has added features like mobile apps, payment processing, and integrations with other business tools. Today, it's the leading solution for small business financial management.

QuickBooks History and Company Background

Intuit launched the first version of QuickBooks in 1999. It featured an easy-to-use interface that allowed small business owners without accounting expertise to handle many finance and accounting tasks themselves. This innovation disrupted the industry by making small business accounting software accessible.

In 2009, Intuit acquired Mint.com, an online personal finance service, to expand its offerings to consumers and sole proprietors. Today QuickBooks products are used by over 5 million businesses worldwide.

Overview of Core QuickBooks Products

There are two main editions of QuickBooks:

QuickBooks Online: The cloud-based version that runs in a web browser. Offers anytime, anywhere access to financial data. Easy to get started and scales with business growth.
QuickBooks Desktop: Installs on a Windows or Mac computer. More advanced features and customization options for established businesses. Can be accessed without an internet connection.

QuickBooks Self-Employed provides a simplified experience tailored for freelancers, independent contractors, and solopreneurs to track business income and expenses, estimate quarterly taxes, and more.

Intended Users and Use Cases

QuickBooks products cater to small businesses across all industries. Common use cases include:

Tracking income and expenses
Managing invoices, bills, and payments
Payroll management
Inventory tracking
Financial reporting and analysis
Estimating and paying quarterly taxes (Self-Employed)

The solutions empower business owners and non-accountants to effectively handle key financial processes themselves.

Competitors and Alternative Options

Major competitors include Xero, FreshBooks, Wave, and Sage. QuickBooks tends to rate well for rich feature sets, ease of use, brand recognition, and integration ecosystem. However, the subscription cost is also higher than some competitors that offer basic small business accounting features for free or at a very low price point.

Conclusion

In summary, QuickBooks pioneered intuitive accounting software for small businesses. Today, QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop serve different needs, while QuickBooks Self-Employed meets the specialized requirements of independent contractors. For small businesses looking for a reliable, full-featured accounting solution, QuickBooks remains a top choice.

Key Features and Tools

QuickBooks offers a robust set of features and tools to help small businesses effectively manage their finances.

Invoicing and Billing

QuickBooks makes it easy to create professional invoices, set up recurring bills to automate payments, accept online payments, and track invoices. Key features include:

Customizable invoice templates
Ability to attach documents to invoices
Tools to track invoice status
Options for online payment acceptance
Automated reminders for overdue invoices

Expenses and Spending

Managing expenses is critical for small businesses. QuickBooks provides tools to streamline the process:

Capture receipts by snapping a photo with a mobile device
Create and submit expense reports for approval
Issue company credit cards and import transactions
Categorize expenses for reporting

Accounting and Reporting

QuickBooks enables business owners to have real-time visibility into the financial health of their company.

Customizable dashboards show key metrics
Detailed profit and loss statements
Balance sheet tracking
Cash flow reports
Ability to export reports to Excel

Payroll Management

For small businesses with employees, QuickBooks Payroll makes running payroll seamless. Features include:

Payroll tax calculations and filings
Direct deposit setup
Managing payroll for employees and contractors
Integrations with payment providers

With its wide range of accounting, invoicing, reporting, and payroll features, QuickBooks provides small businesses with an end-to-end financial management solution tailored to their needs. The depth of capabilities allows companies to streamline processes as they scale.

Ease of Use

Onboarding and Getting Started

QuickBooks offers an intuitive setup process for getting started. The software guides new users through key steps like connecting bank/credit card accounts, setting up the chart of accounts, and importing historical data. Contextual tooltips and definitions make the process easy to follow even for beginners.

The onboarding checklists ensure critical configuration steps are not missed, while sample files allow new users to practice with test data. For those migrating from other systems, QuickBooks imports data like customer lists and previous transactions to ease the transition.

Overall, QuickBooks aims to have small business owners up and running in a matter of hours without needing extensive accounting expertise. The user-friendly approach makes adoption seamless.

Ease of Core Tasks

Core small business finance workflows are straightforward with QuickBooks. The interface centralizes key info like balances, open invoices, and payables in one dashboard view. Common tasks like recording expenses, billing clients, paying vendors, and tracking mileage have simple forms and fields designed for non-accountants.

Features like autofill, search, and memorized transactions further simplify data entry. Process automation for recurring bills, invoices, and bank feeds also reduces manual work for routine tasks. While more complex practices still require accounting skill, routine daily operations are significantly easier with QuickBooks optimizing usability.

QuickBooks provides a clean, uncluttered interface focused on simplifying main accounting tasks. The left vertical menu organizes all features intuitively by accounting activity. Icons and descriptions clearly label what each option does, with key info summarized on the main dashboard.

This focused approach cuts down on feature overload. As users gain confidence, they can incrementally explore additional capabilities easily without getting overwhelmed. The UI strikes a balance between simplicity for novices and deeper functionality for more experienced users.

Education and Help Resources

Intuit offers extensive learning resources to supplement QuickBooks' ease of use. The software has built-in tutorial videos, webinars, and setup guides embedded directly within the interface. This helps users get assistance contextually within their actual workflows.

The QuickBooks Community forums also enable users to ask questions and learn from peers. For immediate support, 24/7 expert phone assistance is available as part of all QuickBooks subscriptions. This full spectrum from self-service to on-demand problem resolution ensures users have multiple channels for troubleshooting and mastering QuickBooks.

Apps and Third Party Integrations

Integrating third-party apps with QuickBooks can significantly enhance its capabilities and streamline financial workflows for small businesses. Here is an overview of some of the most popular integrated apps and key benefits they offer:

Ecommerce and POS Integrations

Integrating QuickBooks with ecommerce platforms or POS systems allows automatically syncing sales data rather than manual entry.

Shopify - Syncs order, inventory and customer data between Shopify store and QuickBooks in real time.
Square - Imports payment, sales and inventory data from Square seamlessly into QuickBooks.
WooCommerce - Connects store data with QuickBooks for consolidated financial reporting.

Benefits include time savings, reduced data errors, and single source of truth for store and accounting data.

Marketing and Sales Integrations

Connecting marketing and sales tools to QuickBooks improves visibility into customer acquisition costs, campaign ROI and sales performance.

HubSpot CRM - Syncs contacts and deals data with QuickBooks in real time, enabling consolidated reporting.
Mailchimp - Links campaign and contact data between Mailchimp and QuickBooks to track marketing costs per customer.
Salesforce - Exchanges customer, lead and account data between the CRM and QuickBooks.

Benefits include better data flows between systems and more informed business decisions.

HR and Payroll Integrations

HR and payroll platforms that integrate with QuickBooks optimize the data flow for payroll and people management.

Gusto - Direct integration allows syncing payroll data between Gusto and QuickBooks automatically.
BambooHR - Employee records in BambooHR update relevant user details in QuickBooks in real time.
Namely - Connects HR data like salaries, PTO and benefits with QuickBooks financials.

Benefits include reduced manual errors in payroll and HR, more accurate reporting, and optimized workflows.

Scalability for Growth

QuickBooks offers capabilities to scale from early stage solopreneurs up to larger businesses with more sophisticated needs. However, it's important to understand the limitations and plan transitions to avoid outgrowing the software.

Multi-user Access and Collaboration

QuickBooks Online supports multi-user access, enabling accounting teams to collaborate efficiently. Users can be assigned specific roles like Accountant, Bookkeeper, Sales Rep etc. with permissions to access only relevant areas. However, the number of users supported depends on the subscription plan.

While QuickBooks Desktop supports multi-user access on a LAN, the online versions enable secure cloud access from anywhere, on any device. This facilitates real-time collaboration with external accountants as well.

Upgrading Plans Gracefully

As your business grows, seamlessly upgrade from Simple Start to Plus to Advanced plans based on feature needs - without starting over. QuickBooks intelligently migrates your data, maintaining transaction history across plans.

Plus unlocks features like inventory tracking, project costing, budgeting etc. while Advanced provides advanced reporting and industry-specific features. Review the feature comparison before upgrading plans.

Internationalization Capabilities

QuickBooks Online supports multiple currencies and is available for over 100 countries, facilitating international trade. Localized versions simplify VAT compliance, invoicing, reporting etc. as per country-specific regulations.

QuickBooks Desktop also provides basic multi-currency support. However, localized country versions are only available for US, Canada, UK and India.

Outgrowing QuickBooks

While QuickBooks scales from early stage to mid-sized businesses, companies with very complex needs may outgrow it. Typical indicators include:

Requiring capabilities like manufacturing, workflow automation or advanced analytics/reporting
Extremely high volume of transactions (over 500k/year) slowing performance
Need for superior access control, audit tracking at field level

In such cases, migrating to advanced ERPs like NetSuite, Sage, SAP etc. becomes necessary, albeit with higher complexity. Consulting an accounting advisor is highly recommended before switchover.

Security

QuickBooks prioritizes security to protect customers' sensitive financial data. It has implemented robust controls around data access, transmission encryption, backups, and third party audits.

Data Access Controls

QuickBooks allows administrators to set granular user permissions to restrict access to sensitive financial data. Comprehensive access logs track all user activity for auditing. Remote disable features can instantly block access in case of suspicious activity.

Transmission Encryption

All data transmission in QuickBooks occurs over SSL/TLS encryption. This prevents man-in-the-middle attacks during data transit. QuickBooks apps utilize additional protective measures like certificate pinning as an added security layer.

Backups and Redundancy

QuickBooks automatically performs daily backups of all customer data to prevent accidental data loss. Backups are stored in redundant infrastructure across multiple data centers to ensure availability.

Third Party Audits

Independent auditors routinely assess QuickBooks' security posture. They validate that appropriate controls are in place around data access, infrastructure security, and operational processes. Audit reports are available upon request.

Pricing and Plans

QuickBooks offers monthly subscription plans as well as a one-time perpetual license purchase option. This provides flexibility for businesses to choose the pricing model that best fits their needs and budget.

Pricing Model

QuickBooks has two main pricing options:

Subscription plans: These provide access to QuickBooks Online for a monthly fee. Plans start at $25/month and offer increasing features and user limits at higher price points.
Perpetual license: This is a one-time purchase that provides ongoing access to the QuickBooks Desktop software. The price ranges from $200-$700 depending on the version purchased.

The subscription model is best for businesses that want to access QuickBooks anywhere via the cloud. The perpetual license makes more sense for small companies focused on desktop access.

Plan Options and Comparisons

QuickBooks Online has four main subscription plan levels:

Simple Start: $25/month for 1 user, best for freelancers and very small businesses just getting started. Offers basic invoicing, expense tracking, reporting.
Essentials: $40/month for 3 users, adds account management, bill payment, and other essential financial capabilities. Good for small companies with some scale.
Plus: $70/month for 5 users, provides advanced reporting, inventory tracking, 1099 contractor payments, and more. Ideal for growing product-based small businesses.
Advanced: $150/month for up to 25 users, full-featured with advanced reporting and industry-specific tools for retail, manufacturing, professional services, and nonprofits.

The higher the tier, the more complex business processes it can handle in areas like inventory, timesheets, and advanced reporting.

Discounts and Promotions

QuickBooks often offers seasonal discounts around the year-end holidays and at the start of a new year. Discounts range from 20-50% off for the first 3-6 months of a new subscription.

It pays to shop around as third-party retailers like Amazon sometimes offer better deals on multi-year subscriptions. Students and military members can also receive discounted rates.

Value for Money

For most very small businesses, the Essentials plan provides an ideal balance of features and affordability. QuickBooks capabilities scale well as companies grow, with the Advanced plan supporting complex needs for larger businesses. This makes QuickBooks a cost-effective solution over both the short and long-term for many users.

Conclusion and Final Recommendations

Best-Suited Businesses and Use Cases

QuickBooks is best suited for small businesses in industries like retail, professional services, construction, manufacturing, and more. Specifically, QuickBooks works well for businesses with less than 100 employees that need features like invoicing, expense tracking, reporting, and light inventory management.

It's a particularly good fit for service-based businesses like marketing agencies, law firms, consultants, designers and more that bill by time/project and need to track billable hours. QuickBooks also suits product-based businesses with light inventory and manufacturing needs.

Watch-outs and Potential Downsides

Some limitations to note:

Integration and API access - QuickBooks' integration and API capabilities lag behind some competitors. This could limit connecting other business apps.
Scalability - At a certain point (~100 employees), QuickBooks may not scale as well for much larger businesses. The feature set starts to become limiting.
Support for complex business processes - QuickBooks also isn't built to handle very complex inventory management, manufacturing, or distribution needs. Other solutions like Netsuite may be better suited.

Final Verdict

Yes, I would recommend QuickBooks Online to most small business owners, especially those in service-based industries like consulting, marketing, design, law, real estate, construction and more. It provides an excellent balance of ease-of-use and features for most small businesses at a reasonable price. The rich reporting, invoicing, expense management, and inventory features make it a great all-in-one platform for most needs under 100 employees.