QuickBooks is a small business accounting software program businesses use to manage income and expenses and keep track of the financial health of their business. You can use it for invoicing customers, paying bills, generating reports, and prepare for taxes. The QuickBooks product line includes several solutions that work great for anyone, from a solopreneur to mid-sized business.
Since there are several QuickBooks solutions, it’s important that you pick the right one. Before you commit, take QuickBooks for a spin by signing up for a free 30-day trial; the trial is a fully functional version of QuickBooks so that you can test all of the bells and whistles. Best of all, no credit card is required–but if you decide to buy, the software is currently 50% off.
Regardless of the nature of a business, the most vital requirement in running a business is to handle the various bookkeeping tasks effectively. Improper or incorrect recording of business activities will be disastrous for any business. The first issue in incorrect invoicing is that the business operations will be incorrectly recorded. It could cause delays in getting funds for different projects.
Incorrect or unsystematic business records can also make it challenging to file your taxes or even land you in hot water with the ATO. Using QuickBooks to keep your financial records lets the company evade those possible glitches in management.
QuickBooks has almost every feature of other software, with a few additional attractive features designed according to the needs of businesses. The software has multiple versions that are tailor-made for the business according to the industry they operate in. Businesses will have options for industries to choose from, such as:
The main issue with bookkeeping programs is that many of these programs are hard to use and difficult to maintain. QuickBooks, on the other hand, is intended to be instinctive and easy to comprehend, even for businesses that lack the necessary accounting or financial information about the company for bookkeeping.
The capacity of the software to incorporate with other programs is a huge benefit of QuickBooks. After using the product to take account of all the expenses and income generated by sales, the senior management of the company can easily export that data for filing taxes effectively. QuickBooks also has the capacity to integrate Microsoft Excel for all of the necessary data from different sources for useful bookkeeping.
QuickBooks offers different ready-to-use templates for businesses to use for generating invoices, business plans, charts, and spreadsheets. It also makes it easier for the QuickBooks application to customize the feel and theme of the documents for bookkeeping. The customization option gives the users a different approach to change their invoices according to the needs of the business. The ability of QuickBooks can help business owners in organizing their information about business activities, and each activity is recorded separately.
Businesses are required to sign several checks every day for different needs and activities. Using QuickBooks makes it easier for business owners to write checks for various expenses. QuickBooks has an automated process that saves time and generates signature checks by a simple and easy to use method for bookkeeping.
QuickBooks has an extensive user base; the product is popular around the world, and many experts have frequently tested the software. The extensive user base indicates that QuickBooks is very useful and reliable. QuickBooks has features that make it cost-effective for companies to use this software. The market does not have a similar product that can match the extensiveness of QuickBooks for bookkeeping.
QuickBooks is compatible with other applications that make it easier to export and import data from QuickBooks. This solution is ideal for small businesses who cannot afford to have multiple applications. They can simply import data from an excel sheet to generate online invoices. The premier edition has features that enable the company to have its own customized software that is according to the specification of an industry. For example, QuickBooks for a hospital will be significantly different from QuickBooks for an engineering company.
QuickBooks allows their certified customers to take care of their business activities in a very effective way. It allows three users to use the application by using a single license purchase. Using the multi-monitor support, a business can manage the list of its customers on one screen while it can track the invoice and payments coming from the customer on the other two screens.
Small business owners typically use QuickBooks to manage their invoices, pay their bills, and track their cash flows. They also use it to generate month- and year-end financial reports as well as prepare for quarterly or annual business taxes. It’s common for business owners to manage QuickBooks themselves or use an in-house or outsourced bookkeeper.
You can manage sales and income in QuickBooks by creating invoices to track sales by customer. Stay on top of what customers owe you (also known as your accounts receivable balance) by reviewing your Accounts Receivable Aging Report, which includes the details of both current and past due invoices. Below is a sample Accounts Receivable (A/R) Aging Report from QuickBooks Online.
QuickBooks automatically keeps track of your bills and expenses by connecting your bank and credit card accounts to QuickBooks, so all of your expenses are downloaded and categorized. If you need to track a check or cash transaction, you can record it directly in QuickBooks in just a few minutes.
QuickBooks will also help you pay your bills when they’re due. For example, you can ensure that you pay your bills on time by creating an Accounts Payable (A/P) Report. This report will provide you with the details of your current and past due bills so you can be sure to address any issues quickly. Below is a sample A/P Aging Report from QuickBooks.
By managing all of your cash inflow and outflow activities in QuickBooks, you can access several reports that provide valuable insights into your business and its financial health. All of the reports are prebuilt in QuickBooks and can be run in just a few clicks; reports are updated in real-time as you enter and save transactions.
This can be beneficial if you need to provide financials to a potential investor or your lender for a small business loan or line of credit. In addition to the Accounts Receivable Report and the Accounts Payable Report, you can run the three key financial reports you need in order to assess the overall status of your business:
QuickBooks is the ideal business accounting software for small to mid-sized business owners. Here’s why you should be using QuickBooks.
You know you should be tracking your numbers… you’ve just purchased Quickbooks Online, you’re now subscribed to the monthly fee, so you figure you’re “paying to get that problem out of the way” – the problem is, now that you have the numbers, if you don’t use them to take the right action, you might as well have wasted the money or used it for something more valuable like marketing to get more clients.
You’re in Quickbooks, at most, once a month. It’s not exactly a mobile-friendly setup, and with all of the different dashboards, it can be difficult to figure out any clearly helpful information. Balance this, counterbalance that, ugh, I have a headache already. Just let me work on my business without needing an advanced degree to do it!
If you eventually learn how to use Quickbooks, it can be an amazing tool to help you to track expenses, file & pay your taxes on time, create a more profitable business, and manage your monthly or quarterly budget.
The learning curve on software like this can be so steep, that it almost makes it so that you need an accounting degree or bookkeeping certification just to be able to use it effectively and to its fullest potential. Doesn’t nobody have time for that! You have a business to run for crying out loud. You should be out there chasing down new clients, building marketing campaigns, and doing everything that nobody in your business can do except you – not something you can pay any assistant or intern (i.e., undergrad student a measly salary to do for you)! (I’m not advocating underpaying college students with student loans; they’re broke enough as it is.)
Similar to issue #2, Quickbooks is mostly back-office work. Yes, back-office work is important to the overall health of your business. However, if you’re stuck doing that, who’s steering the ship? If you crash into an iceberg, no amount of back-office work is going to help.
As a business owner, you need to be out in the field (or on the phone or computer), selling your product or service. Not buried deep in Quickbooks looking three weeks back for X, Y and Z.
Most business owners would agree that if you’re the owner and operator of your business, you need a business tool where you can wake up in the morning and…
Not buried deep in numbers trying to figure out if you hit your budget projections from 3 months ago!
For this reason, you probably need an app where you have a closer connection to the dirt rather than the clouds. You need to know the nitty-gritty of who needs what, not a 40,000-foot view of your performance against theoretical annual goals.
Yes, having perspective helps and can make the difference between steering into an iceberg and making it to the promised land. Still, if you just focus on the numbers, you won’t be acting on the few key responsibilities that only the CEO of your business can – namely, at least at the beginning – sales and marketing.
QBO boasts of many add-ons, integrations and payment processors. However, each product comes with an additional fee.
The most popular QBO add-on is payroll. Customers can choose between Self-service feature for $35/month or Full-service Payroll for $80/month.
The cheaper payroll option provides the framework for processing payroll through your QBO account but requires you to run it and file your own payroll taxes. With the full-service pay subscription, QuickBooks does everything for you, but you are also paying an extra $80 a month.
On top of your monthly payroll subscription, you are required to pay an extra $4 per month per employee, whether you are on the DIY or full-service payroll plan. These prices can add up quickly, depending on how many employees are on your team.
Many QBO customers love having their payroll processor immediately integrated with their accounting software, but other services offer payroll integration at a much more affordable price.
If you do choose to complete your payroll through QuickBooks, you can also order your tax forms through them. Blank forms start at $17.99 for ten forms. If you want to pre-print tax forms using information from your Payroll account, prices start at $57.99 for ten forms.
Services like Shopify, TSheets and MailChimp have integrated with QBO. However, each service comes with its own monthly subscription fee, separate from QBO’s price.
QuickBooks has partnered with payment processors like PayPal, Stripe and Square. Each product has its own fees. However, if you link your QBO account with QuickBooks Payments, (formerly Intuit Merchant Services), the fees are standardized. There is no monthly subscription price for QBO users, and rather, each transaction incurs a processing fee.
Cloud accounting gives you real-time updates without charging you for every desktop update. Your information is securely stored, accessible from everywhere and constantly improving. Because of this, cloud-based software products should be pristine, free from bugs and user-friendly. Unfortunately, the biggest complaints about QBO are about the lack of customer service and the buggy software.
If you are going to charge such exorbitant prices for your product, it better be perfect. And QBO seems far from perfect. Then, consider all the add-ons you get nickeled and dimed for, and it’s hard to say it’s worth the cost.
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