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

All you need is your account information, and you can access your QuickBooks details on any device with an internet connection. While there are significant differences between QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online, both applications offer solid accounting capability for small businesses. And while QuickBooks Desktop comes out on top in this comparison, only you can decide which one is best for your business.

QuickBooks Online is faster, lighter, and uses less processing power than QuickBooks Desktop

Perhaps the biggest area where QuickBooks Desktop falls short is that its Pro and Premier versions will soon be discontinued for new users. While QuickBooks Enterprise will still be an option, this is powerful software with an expensive price tag that will be too much (in terms of features and pricing) for most small businesses. QuickBooks Desktop also has several additional features you won’t find with QBO, including sales orders and lead management. Because it is locally installed software, you also have more control over keeping your financial data secure.

1. If you want QuickBooks to file your taxes for you, then you must upgrade to QuickBooks Desktop Assisted Payroll.
2. Unlike QuickBooks Online, Desktop Pro includes built-in inventory management.
3. I was impressed with how you could do batch invoicing, something QuickBooks Online doesn’t offer.
4. In evaluating pricing, we considered the billing cycle (monthly or annual) and the number of users.

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

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. There were also fewer prompts of the tutorial variety, but I was pleasantly surprised by the number of features packed into it.

The QuickBooks mobile app is also available for free and lets you manage your account on the go. You can download a 30-day trial version of QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise only—both the Premier Plus and Pro Plus plans come with a 60-day money-back guarantee, but no free trial. Alternatively, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial with QuickBooks Online.

Getting assistance with your Desktop bookkeeping is difficult since you must save an Accountant’s Copy of your company file and send it to your ProAdvisor. QuickBooks Online wins because it offers more professional-looking and customizable invoices than QuickBooks Desktop. In fact, it recently upgraded its invoicing tool where you can now see the final look of your invoice as you complete the invoicing form. This allows you to easily customize the invoice based on how you want it to look without clicking the preview button. We have an extensive history of reviewing QuickBooks products, and we stay up-to-date with the latest features and enhancements.

QuickBooks Online integrates with over 750 third-party apps, and we highlighted the most notable integrations in our guide to the best QuickBooks Online integrations for small businesses. Both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop are capable programs with strong accounting features. In contrast, QuickBooks Desktop offers hardly any payment gateways, making it difficult for the modern merchant to accept online invoice payments easily. We recommend crunching the numbers to decide whether the online or desktop versions of QuickBooks are right for your specific business. Unfortunately, pricing is no longer disclosed and you will need to contact QuickBooks Sales for more cost of debt pricing details.

Pricing

Although QuickBooks Online earned a perfect score and Enterprise took a slight hit in this criterion, we consider this a tie. Both allow you to create essential reports, including profit and loss (P&L), cash flow statements, and balance sheets. While Enterprise missed a few points because it doesn’t provide income/loss by location reports, it offers many other advanced reporting options and features that provide additional value for many businesses. With four plans, robust features and a user-friendly interface, QuickBooks Online is the ideal choice for most small businesses.

The higher your plan tier, the more reports and users you can add, although it’s important to understand concurrent users are each sold separately. The two versions are independent of chart of accounts each other, which means the data you enter on Desktop doesn’t sync to the Online version and vice-versa. This includes the availability of integrations for payroll, time tracking, and receiving e-payments. We also evaluated whether an electronic bill pay integration was available.

While QuickBooks Online boasts many of the features you’ll find with Desktop, some of its features, such as inventory management, aren’t quite as advanced. Additionally, you won’t find the industry-specific features and reports that you’ll get if you sign up for Desktop. In contrast, QuickBooks Desktop tends to have a steeper learning curve, offers how to calculate sales tax: overview fewer integrations, and has had its previous versions discontinued by QuickBooks. QuickBooks Pro and Premiere will also discontinue sales to new users on July 31, 2024.

QuickBooks Online vs. QuickBooks Desktop: Reporting options

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 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. Depending on your business, the ability to integrate with other applications may be convenient, while for others, it can be a necessity.