On the other hand, Quickbooks is a favorite small business accounting software for companies that need to be able to outsource their bookkeeping to a hired accountant. QuickBooks Online offers integration with hundreds of apps, making it great for small business owners. These integrations including PayPal, TSheets, Bill Pay for QuickBooks Online, and Stripe, with apps available for inventory, payroll, CRM, and time tracking. QuickBooks and Xero are tied in this category because each platform offers features that the other one doesn’t.
You can do a lot with QuickBooks Online, but all the options may feel like information overload starting out. All plans include 24/7 live chat support; phone support is available 5 a.m. Can support larger small businesses with dozens of employees; highest-tier plan includes 25 users. QuickBooks has an online portal that users with common problems can check to resolve any issues without involving customer support. It includes articles and videos, grouped by the type of QuickBooks product, and further broken down into categories such as ‘Account Management,’ ‘Taxes,’ and ‘Sales and Customers,’ among others.
What is QuickBooks Online?
FreshBooks can be a good option for freelancers and contractors looking for an affordable, simple accounting software. There’s time tracking in all plans and phone support is available from 8 a.m. The first two plan tiers put a limit on billable clients, but not on invoices. With a free plan and paid plans starting at $20 per month, Zoho Books has plans for most budgets. Higher-tier plans include unique features, like workflow rules, on top of tools that help you measure project profitability.
- All QuickBooks plans can let businesses track sales tax and manage 1099 contractors, with the exception of the Self-Employed plan, which instead helps freelancers estimate their quarterly taxes.
- If you can’t justify the $90-per-month QuickBooks Online Plus plan, you won’t get inventory management, because QuickBooks Online’s lower-tier plans don’t come with it.
- To help make the choices easier for you, we narrowed down the list to two of the best options – QuickBooks vs Xero – and analyzed them based on their pros and cons.
- A popular online accounting app designed to meet the needs of small and medium businesses in any industry.
QBO also offers add-ons like payroll and QuickBooks Payments for payment processing. Our only QuickBooks bill-paying disappointment was that you can’t access the feature via the Simple Start package. If the most affordable QuickBooks solution is your priority, you forgo the ability to pay bills through your software.
First-time QuickBooks customers can choose to explore QuickBooks without committing to a plan by signing up for a 30-day free trial. You can also skip the free trial in favor of locking in 50% off for your first three months — but you can’t choose both. Just keep in mind that unlike the inventory feature in QuickBooks Online’s higher-tier plans, Xero doesn’t let users set up reorder points that flag when stock is running low. This doesn’t mean QuickBooks Online is the right choice for all businesses, though. Xero’s unlimited-users feature makes it a winner among larger businesses and well-established small businesses that require more than five users.
Additionally, you can create explicit rules to help QuickBooks correctly classify transactions automatically. QBO offers four plans (EasyStart, Essentials, Plus, and Advanced) to accommodate different-sized businesses. Starting at $11/month, its EasyStart plan provides basic accounting features suitable for most simple startups. However, Xero provides the unique ability to reimburse employee expenses, including mileage reimbursement.
What is the difference between Xero and QuickBooks?
If you have a microbusiness and only need to manage and track a few bills and invoices, then you might do well with Xero’s Early plan. However, if you work with multiple vendors and customers and need more enhanced features, you should consider QuickBooks total purchase price Online’s Plus tier. As with QuickBooks, you can use Xero to automatically import and categorize expenses. Other mutual features include receipt photo upload, mobile app mileage tracking, expense reporting and adding billable expenses to client invoices.
Has robust reporting tools and report customization options, basic inventory tracking in all plans and a capable mobile app; Early plan limits the number of invoices and bills. The desktop version is installed on a computer, while the online version is accessed through a web browser. QuickBooks Online includes all the components of the desktop version, plus additional features such as more app integrations, a fully functional mobile app and more attractive pricing. The Online plans start at $30 per month, whereas the Desktop plans must be paid annually and start at $492 per year. QuickBooks is a popular accounting software used by small businesses, solopreneurs and freelancers.
Ease of use gets the highest weight in this case study because we want to give more credit to easy accounting software. For this section, we considered customer service, support network, and a subjective expert opinion score. Users must have easy access to customer service channels in case of problems, questions, or assistance. Unfortunately, many don’t have positive experiences with QuickBooks’ customer support. One complained that they are often transferred to different departments when they contact QuickBooks.
The software must have enough reports that can be generated with a few clicks. Moreover, we’d also like to see customization options to enable users to generate reports based on what they want to see. Even after initial setup, the software must also let users modify information like company name, address, entity type, fiscal year-end, and other company information. Both have great A/P features, but QuickBooks Online is slightly better due to its ability to generate recurring payments.
Xero vs. QuickBooks Online
We also like that Xero has an optional Gusto payroll integration for each platform at no extra cost. If snapping photos of receipts to claim expenses on the go is a key mobile feature you’d like to have, regardless of plan level, QuickBooks Online might be a better fit. If you’re in the market for accounting software, you might be feeling overwhelmed by all the options out there.
We believe the quality of customer service you’ll receive varies a lot based on the agent. Additionally, some users complained that QuickBooks Online is a bit expensive. While it is moderately priced, it can be cost-effective considering the value it can provide to your business. By allowing you to capture bills and receipts via Hubdoc, scan files using email or mobile apps, and store documents online, Xero also provides real-time views of cash flow reports. Xero is an excellent solution for daily accounting activities like tracking and paying bills. The platform makes it extraordinarily easy to review and pay outstanding bills.
Pricing Model
Intuit, a U.S.-based company that also makes TurboTax, owns QuickBooks. QuickBooks Online has a range of product tiers to choose from to meet your business’s bookkeeping needs. The QuickBooks Online base plan starts at $30 per month, and the plan with the most features is $200 per month. Intuit offers prospective users a free 30-day trial and generous discounts on their monthly subscriptions. Go to their website for a full breakdown of Quickbooks pricing and deals. QuickBooks offers integrations with 400 plus apps and software tools to increase the functionality of your software plan.
Once the invoice is completed, you can send it via email with online bill payment options included in the email. Once payment is received, Xero will automatically apply the payment if paid online, or you can process the payment during your regular bank reconciliation process. As a QuickBooks ProAdvisor, Mark has extensive knowledge of QuickBooks products, allowing him to create valuable content that educates businesses on maximizing the benefits of the software. QuickBooks Live doesn’t offer tax filing or payroll services, unlike Bookkeeper360. Prices for QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping scale with the monthly expenses of your business, which means higher costs for businesses with higher expenses. We break down the prices in our QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping review’s pricing section.
Both services are available on all the most common devices and browsers. Here’s our comparison of the core features provided by Xero and QuickBooks.
In this article, we’ll mostly refer to QuickBooks Online, which is what we think you’ll likely opt for instead of Intuit’s desktop version of QuickBooks. As the leading business accounting software platform, QuickBooks is unsurprisingly https://accountingcoaching.online/ a standout when it comes to integrations. The platform offers high-quality built-in integrations with many leading business software vendors. For example, QuickBooks integrates with Square, Gusto, PayPal, eBay, Shopify and Etsy.
Let’s compare the features and benefits of QuickBooks and Xero to see how they shape up. If you’re in the process of choosing cloud-based accounting software in South Africa, you may be wondering whether QuickBooks or Xero is a better option for your business. The software is also very budget-friendly – you don’t have to get the most expensive plan to get all the robust features. In fact, it even offers an unlimited number of users for every one of the plans. Explore our list of accounting software solutions or request a free consultation with one of our software experts.