Right off the bat, QuickBooks Enterprise has the capability to hold more inventory items – up to 100,000 which is enough for even most enterprise-level businesses. It also allows more flexibility in how you track and manage that inventory. You can perform bin location tracking, serial number location tracking, and sync your QuickBooks Enterprise to a barcode scanner so your warehouse team can easily monitor what’s in stock. While QuickBooks Desktop is more expensive, you’re still paying nearly $2,000 a year for QuickBooks Online, hardly the affordable product it is marketed to be! QuickBooks Online can be a great option for small businesses and companies with only a few employees. It has many of the same features as Enterprise at a fairly low, monthly cost.

• To record this income in QuickBooks Desktop (this applies to Pro/Premier/Enterprise), you’ll set up the driving lesson as a service you’re selling on a list called the Item list, and then you’ll create a sales receipt.
• QBO’s integrations cover more business needs and include multiple payment gateway options.
• This means you can check in and manage your books from anywhere in the world, whether you’re relaxing on a beach in The Bahamas or enjoying a hot chocolate at a ski lodge.

But aside from cloud access, there are other differences between the two applications that we’ll talk about next. This may influence which products we review and write about (and where those products appear on the site), but it in no way affects our recommendations or advice, which are grounded in thousands of hours of research. Our partners cannot pay us to guarantee favorable reviews of their products or services.

QuickBooks Online VS Desktop Comparison 2023

Fortunately, a mobile app is now available with the introduction of QuickBooks Desktop 2022. However, the QuickBooks Desktop app is a very pared down version of the desktop and is poorly rated. These versions give business owners more features and reports geared toward their industry.

Both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop are capable programs with strong accounting features. Both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Pro and Premier have notoriously poor customer support (QuickBooks Enterprise support has better priority support). In contrast, QuickBooks Desktop offers hardly any payment gateways, making it difficult for the modern merchant to accept online invoice payments easily.

QuickBooks Online vs Desktop: Pros & Cons

QuickBooks Online Mobile AppsIntuit and QuickBooks Online provide a mobile app called QuickBooks Accounting. Some user reviews aren’t favorable for the mobile app, which offers limited features. Try using your mobile device web browser to access more QuickBooks Online features if you’re in the field with Internet access. Until Intuit’s announced that they were no longer going to support QuickBooks Desktop products after May 2023, this was a hard question to answer. Every business has its own needs and demands that make one accounting software version or the other a better fit.

Since its release in the early years of the 21st century, QuickBooks software has come to dominate the financial management space for small and medium businesses, with a total market share of more than 80%. Two of the most popular versions, QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop, lead the pack. Access to accountants is granted independently from your regular user limit in QBDT.

Support

Because QuickBooks Online is cloud-based, it is a great option for those who need QuickBooks access while not in the office. QuickBooks Desktop is often limited to the number of installations included in your chosen service tier, so you may not be able to access the service if you can’t access the specific device with the software installed. For many small-business owners, most of the time, QuickBooks Online works better than QuickBooks Desktop. It’s more affordable, easier to share with your accountant or other financial stakeholders, and offers better invoicing than its locally installed counterpart. The dashboard is super intuitive with large, easy-to-understand charts, and the mobile app is similarly easy to use. QuickBooks Self-Employed is a QuickBooks Online product for contractors and freelancers, specifically for those who do not have separate business and personal financial accounts.

• It takes half the time to get tasks done in QuickBooks Online than in the desktop version.
• The mobile app for Online is robust, and Desktop’s mobile app is so limited, that it essentially functions as a receipt uploader.
• QuickBooks Online Mobile AppsIntuit and QuickBooks Online provide a mobile app called QuickBooks Accounting.
• QuickBooks Desktop requires a one-time upfront payment, making it more cost-effective in the long run for users who don’t require regular upgrades.

Yes, you can migrate your data from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online. Intuit provides conversion tools and services to facilitate the transition. However, it’s recommended to consult the migration guide and backup your data before proceeding with the switch. It’s best to choose one based on your needs, but some businesses use both for specific purposes or workflows. Intuit has partnered with Webgility, an ecommerce accounting solution, to help small and medium-sized businesses save time, ensure accuracy, and make data-driven decisions to boost growth.

Feature differences between QuickBooks Online and Desktop

For example, nonprofits can use the desktop products to run donor contribution summary reports while manufacturing, wholesale and retail businesses have the ability to forecast product sales. Contractors income statement and professional service businesses can use the software to compare revenue by city, customer and job type. QuickBooks Online offers a large selection of reports, but they aren’t industry-specific.

Enhancing Desktop with Cloud Hosting

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