QuickBooks is a highly popular business accounting software.
It offers solutions to managing accounting needs, financial reports, and tax documents, among others.
Learn more about QuickBooks and find out just what exactly makes it a top option for accounting software.
What Is QuickBooks?
QuickBooks has approximately 290,000 companies under its care plus a 62.2% share in the market.
QuickBooks offers six different service plans, which well tackle more later.
Each plan contains different features that cover basic business accounting tasks, and also non-accounting tasks.
What Can You Do with QuickBooks?
QuickBooks functions like a one-stop shop for all of your business accounting needs.
Most business owners use it to manage their invoices, bills, and expenses.
Its also useful for managing business data and preparing for quarterly business taxes.
Its also easy enough to use for any normal business owner or a trained bookkeeper.
An invoice is essentially a bill containing details about the service or product delivered and the corresponding cost.
you’re free to also customize the templates to reflect your brand.
QuickBooks will automatically track the status of your invoices to let you know who has paid and who hasnt.
The software is also able to produce an accounts receivable (A/R) aging report.
Its also possible to have the software send automatic reminders to customers who are past due.
But this would require you to link your bank and credit accounts to the software.
Once connected, it will automatically download and categorize your expenses and bills.
If you want to keep track of check and cash transactions, that much is possible too.
QuickBooks can also help you keep track of your upcoming bills and payments.
you’re able to also create an accounts payable (A/P) report for your own upcoming payments.
The report will show you an itemized list of your current and past due bills.
Generate Financial Statements
Every business needs reporting on its own performance and financial health.
This reporting takes on a lot of forms, but is usually summarized in a chart of accounts.
These charts of accounts focus on the key indicators of a companys financial performance.
Key indicators include income, cash flow, assets and liabilities, and so on.
Most companies are required to submit these reports to their investors as part of a regular reporting process.
In addition, these documents are also essential to preparing tax documents annually.
The completed report will also become part of the searchable database.
Track Employee Hours and Payroll
QuickBooks Payroll is a special offering that will allow you to manage your payroll.
This feature isnt free, though, which means that you will be charged extra each month for it.
There are three options available to users: core, premium, and elite.
All options come with full payroll service and automated payroll.
They also include healthcare benefits, expert product support, and next-day direct deposits.
You will reach a section where you should probably add each and every one of your employees.
The system will also help you calculate total overtime fees for each employee.
QuickBooks Payroll is also capable of conducting calculations for federal and state taxes.
If you didnt know, employers in the US are required to withhold federal income taxes from employees.
Payroll automatically fills out these tax forms, so you wont have to fill them out manually.
However, some business owners struggle with accounting for COGS manually over time.
This is where QuickBooks comes in, helping you monitor the total value and movement of your inventory.
It will automatically mark items under the category cost of goods sold (COGS) whenever you sell inventory.
Once you receive the physical items, you will need to log the transaction as an expense.
QuickBooks is also capable of generating reports about your inventory.
The most commonly used report is the Valuation Summary Report.
Keeping track of expenses is especially important since they often translate into tax deductions.
QuickBooks also offers integration with reliable tax software like TurboTax.
It should help you fill out your forms straight from QuickBooks.
QuickBooks Payments function just like any other merchant service, and your customers can choose their preferred payment method.
But what makes Payment special is that it is completely integrated within QuickBooks.
This means that the software will automatically log any payment that comes through into the appropriate ledgers.
Scan Receipts
Receipts play an important role in business accounting, but they get lost too easily.
Luckily, QuickBooks has a mobile version that will let you take pictures of your receipts for accounting purposes.
That way, you will have some proof of the transaction even if you lose the receipt.
This feature is particularly useful for retail and manufacturing companies with a lot of inventory.
Track Mileage
Its common practice for business people, especially solo entrepreneurs to use their vehicles for business purposes.
QuickBooks mobile can integrate with your phones GPS to track your mileage.
You simply need to connect your QuickBooks mobile to your GPS.
After that, you will have two options.
you’re able to either manually input your mileage into the app by reading your GPS data.
QuickBooks Service Plans
There are a total of six service plans under QuickBooks.
Each service plan varies in terms of feature combinations, cost, and the number of user accounts.
There are also layers within each plan for a fully customized experience.
Lets look at the core service plans below.
Its also one of the most popular options on the list, with over 2.2 million users worldwide.
The software covers all accounting bases with features for invoicing, expense tracking, and accounts payable.
It also has contact management, project management, inventory, budgeting, class tracking, and more.
The software accepts up to 25 user accounts.
QuickBooks Online has four pricing tiers:
QuickBooks Online also features a lending app called QuickBooks Capital.
Capital is software that helps enter lending institutions for credit, should you need it.
QuickBooks Self-Employed
QuickBooks Self-Employedis another version made for the self-employed.
The software was specially designed to help self-employed individuals and freelancers accomplish their quarterly tax filings.
In that sense, its really less of accounting software and more of tax software.
There are three tiers under QuickBooks Self-Employed:
QuickBooks Self-Employed is also available as a mobile app.
you’re free to download it for any IOS or Android gadget.
QuickBooks Pro comes with a lot of features that are specific to accounting purposes.
It offers a wide selection of charts of accounts, journal entries, bank reconciliation, and financial reports.
Users also get over 130 charts of accounts templates to choose from.
It also offers to track invoices and pending payments to vendors.
It also features an improved company file size management system.
This version also allows you to easily transfer files under storage into a new unit.
QuickBooks recently updated its software, and this latest version comes with additional features.
You still get all the features from the original version, which we have enumerated above.
But this new version will allow you to do things like sending automatic payment reminders when invoices are due.
They have also improved the email functions of the software.
It also comes with improved bank feeds, new receipt management tools, and customizable payment receipts.
QuickBooks Premier
QuickBooks Premier is designed for small to medium-sized businesses and is industry-specific.
This means that several variants are available to cater to the particular use case of different companies.
It comes with all basic accounting functions, but it doesnt have industry-specific features.
You also have the industry-specific editions, which contain industry-specific features on top of basic features.
The PC-based format means that you could use the software even in the absence of an internet connection.
However, there will be functions within the software that will require an internet connection.
QuickBooks also encourages Premier users to sign up for cloud hosting but this comes at an additional cost.
QuickBooks Enterprise
Enterprise is another variation of QuickBooks that is designed for middle to large-scale businesses.
There are seven editions of Enterprise.
One is a standard edition, while the rest are industry-specific variants.
The industry-specific variants cover the same areas that Premier does.
These include industries such as manufacturing and wholesale, nonprofit, contractor, retail, and accounting.
At this point, you may be wondering how Enterprise differs from Premier.
The answer relates to the size of the user base and the complexity of features.
QuickBooks Premier was designed for small businesses and can only accommodate a maximum of five users.
Enterprise is also a more complex solution compared to Premier.
It has advanced tools for accounting, inventory management, contact management, and so on.
This variant of QuickBooks has a few advantages to offer large-scale businesses.
For starters, the software can support large files of up to 1 GB size.
It will also allow you to do some job costing tasks such as time-tracking and creating job costing reports.
A subscription to Enterprise also gets you one-year access to free tech support plus and an online vault.
An online vault is a place where you’ve got the option to store your confidential reports.
QuickBooks for Mac
QuickBooks for Mac is designed for local installation and is exclusive to Mac users.
The software is ideal for solo entrepreneurs and small businesses.
It can accommodate up to three user accounts.
QuickBooks Mac has all of the basic features found in QuickBooks Online.
Some of its key features include invoicing, expense tracking, and contact management.
Additional features include time tracking, project management, budgeting, and inventory functions.
You will also get approximately 100 chart-of-accounts templates.
Unfortunately, QuickBooks for Mac lacks some add-ons that are available for free on other editions.
It doesnt readily integrate with QuickBooks Payroll and QuickBooks Payment.
If you need those features, in particular, you would have to pay up extra for them.
Unlike QuickBooks Online, this version does not offer live bank feeds.
You would have to refresh the page connecting to your bank each time you oughta view your recent transactions.
QuickBooks packs each service plan with features that extend beyond basic accounting functions.
The software also makes it easy to extend its value by integrating external software and add-ons into the program.
Its also very easy to get an upgrade without risking data loss.
Finally, QuickBooks is always keen to innovate and keep up with the latest trends.
