https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cebp5tzbsPo
What Is The Difference Between QuickBooks Versions?
Starting a business can be overwhelming, but tools like QuickBooks make it easier to navigate your day and focus on the tasks that utilize your skills. I know that many small business owners who are just getting started may see little to no difference in the versions of QuickBooks, but this is far from the truth. They think one accounting software is as good as the next. That’s not quite true in the QuickBooks ecosystem. I will point out that there is QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online. And as the names may point out to you, QuickBooks Desktop versions run on desktop platforms. QuickBooks for Mac is now available as well for a cloud-based experience.
My Experience at QuickBooks Headquarters
Funny story about the time I went to the mountain view Intuit headquarters: Primarily, QuickBooks has always been on Windows and I was surprised to see walking up and down the hallways of Intuit’s headquarters that pretty much everybody that works there has a Macbook and an Apple phone. This just blew my mind since there’s so many other QuickBooks editions on Windows.
Comparing QuickBooks Desktop Versions and Online Versions
So beyond that, let’s get back to it. There’s QuickBooks Desktop, which is on the Mac and on Windows, and then there’s QuickBooks Online. Which one should you choose? QuickBooks Online has been developed for a much shorter period than QuickBooks on the desktop. Desktop already has 20 years compared to QuickBooks online versions And so it has a lot more bells and whistles. QuickBooks Online is simpler, but it’s getting there – it’s adding more features all the time. But if you have a complex workflow or some really high end inventory tracking needs, start with QuickBooks Desktop. If you are a retail establishment, then I should also probably mention QuickBooks point of sale, which is a cash register through software that I happen to specialize in and it does a lot with inventory. And then it synchronizes your sales figures over to QuickBooks Desktop. But back to QuickBooks accounting. The QuickBooks Desktop you have, three different versions. There is QuickBooks Pro, which is the lowest version. There’s QuickBooks Premier, she’s the intermediate. And then there’s QuickBooks Enterprise, which is a very robust program for small to medium sized businesses as a whole. Now, accessibility for QuickBooks Online is a little nicer and a little easier. It’s in the cloud, which means you can access it from anywhere. All you have to do is download the app on your phone and you can use it freely with an internet connection. It’s great for a small business: very simple invoicing, very simple inventory. With QuickBooks Desktop, you’re going to get more features than you get with QuickBooks Online. But that Pro version is stuck on a Windows computer. So if it’s on your business machine in your office, then that’s the only place you can access the software. Usually, the only reason I see people using the Premier desktop version is having one of the types of business that Premier promotes itself for, such as manufacturing or nonprofit. QuickBooks Premier allows you to have up to five users. So if you have multiple users who need access to the software, you might want to head to Premier. QuickBooks Enterprise version has a ton of advanced inventory functions for receiving and building and putting out different types of inventory, and there’s a lot more advanced reporting as well. Special reports that you would need for kind of a large and complicated business. With QuickBooks Enterprise, you can host in the cloud as you can with the others. It’s just seeing more often that’s in the cloud and you can go up to 30 users with QuickBooks Enterprise so you can be using it for a fairly large business. Seeing as how many users can jump into it at one time and of course in your upkeep and your maintenance, it gets a little more complicated in that regard. I will also mention that another main differentiator of QuickBooks Enterprise, is that it’s priced on a subscription model; you’re going to end up being paying every single month for QuickBooks Enterprise. Whereas with QuickBooks Pro and Premier, you can buy it one time and you can use it with the integrated Internet services that are within it for up to three years before you have to upgrade again. And so it’s going to be a lot less expensive than QuickBooks Enterprise where you’re paying per user every single month on Enterprise. There’s a silver and a gold and a platinum level on that subscription, which include more features associated with reporting and inventory functions. In this brief video, I’ll take a closer look at the differences between:
- QuickBooks Desktop
- QuickBooks Online,
- QuickBooks Pro
- QuickBooks Premier
- QuickBooks Enterprise
- QuickBooks Point of Sale
Are you ready to pick a version of QuickBooks? Check out our download center today.