QuickBooks Online vs Desktop: Which Is Right for Your Business?

For example, we commend QuickBooks Enterprise’s multicompany reporting feature. This tool allows you to create consolidated financial reports across multiple company files—making it ideal for businesses that operate multiple entities and subsidiaries. If you have employees, you can add QuickBooks Payroll to your QuickBooks Online account for as little as $45 per month plus $5 per employee. 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.

Unless you’re an accountant, the learning curve will likely be a little higher for you than it would with QuickBooks Online. Different software packages include licenses for 1 to 10 users, up to 20 users, up to 30 users, and up to 40 users. QuickBooks Online’s month-to-month subscription service starts at $30 a month (totaling $360 a year).

One is sleek and modern, and the other seems to have been designed for a cubicle. Because QuickBooks Online is connected to the cloud, you can work from any device with an internet connection. You must purchase additional licenses if you want to access it on multiple computers.

Industry-specific reports

This means the data operates as fast as your computer, all without needing to worry about a connection issue. You must pay an additional fee for every user who wants to access the account simultaneously, whereas Online lets multiple users access the account at the same time. The most notable difference, aside from price, between QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop is the Online version is cloud-based.

1. This tool allows you to create consolidated financial reports across multiple company files—making it ideal for businesses that operate multiple entities and subsidiaries.
2. Speaking of extra fees, QuickBooks Desktop also charges for e-commerce app integration, invoice-based payment acceptance, and online data hosting.
3. Doing so grants you access to the Priority Circle loyalty program, including a dedicated account team, free on-demand training, and premium care from QuickBooks experts.
4. Notably, only QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise includes 24/7 customer service.
5. QuickBooks Online offers more features on the go and is a better overall value than QuickBooks Desktop.

QuickBooks Online vs. QuickBooks Desktop: Support

The assisted migration offer is eligible to Desktop customers that are migrating their data and setting up QuickBooks Online. Personalized setup is limited to a 1-hour session with a customer success product expert. Intuit reserves the right to limit the number of sessions and the length and scope of each session.

QuickBooks Desktop provides better security and control over data than QuickBooks Online

For instance, QuickBooks Online Plus only costs $99 per month ($1,080 per year) for up to five users as opposed to Desktop Enterprise, which costs $1,481 per year for only one user. The A/P section focuses on vendor management, bill management, bill payments, and other payable-related transactions. A/P features include creating vendors and bills, recording enterprise purchase orders and converting them to bills, creating service items, and recording full or partial bill payments. 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. QuickBooks Desktop wins this head-to-head competition, with better reporting, industry-specific features, a better price structure, and more comprehensive features.

QuickBooks Desktop offers good integration options, integrating with more than 200 third party applications, making it one of the better integrated desktop application options. However, it doesn’t compare with the more yield variance definition than 500 options offered by QuickBooks Online. QuickBooks Online offers integration with more than 500 third party apps in categories such as Payments, CRM, Project Management, Payments, Payroll, Invoicing, Inventory, and Time Tracking. You can easily connect to any third-party app from within the application, saving you a ton of time in the process.

QuickBooks Desktop plans and pricing

QuickBooks Desktop’s user interface is very different from QuickBooks Online, offering navigation using a flowchart style menu. It has less of a learning curve than QuickBooks Desktop and comes with a much more what is depreciation in accounting simplified dashboard that’s easy to navigate. And let’s not forget offline accessibility for the times your ISP decides to ruin your Monday. Everything from the installation screen to the lagging UI gave me flashbacks to the 1998 dial-up tone on my family’s Pentium III computer.

Each Desktop plan comes with one user; additional licenses cost extra. 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. The downside to locally stored data, though, is that you can only access it from where it’s stored. You can pay extra (or upgrade to a pricier plan) to get data hosting through QuickBooks, which will let you access some financial information—though not all of it—on a different device.