Pros: I find QBO to be super user friendly. I love that they have a training program so you can become basic and advanced certified. We make everyone in the office do the certification program, but nothing beats user experience. QBO is the first cloud-based accounting software I was introduced to, and I find it fabulous. I even recommended it to my parents for their business instead of their custom desktop-based software and they are going to move to it at the end of August.
Cons: Sometimes the banking feeds have a hard time staying connected which can be very frustrating. It's not Quickbook's fault for this - it's the banks. But it is still frustrating at times when you lose a connection and have to call up your client to re-enter their details. Thank goodness for screen-sharing!
And in 2018 you can boost your workflow with multiple monitors and auto-stamped invoices. 60 day money-back guarantee. Special Offer: Your purchase of QuickBooks Desktop Pro 2018 includes a Free Year of QuickBooks Online. QuickBooks Online for Mac 2018 is an easy and intuitive way to run your business on your Mac and on the go from any mobile device. It is easy to set up and is personalized for your business. Track income, expenses, and profit information all in one place. Get paid fast by sending online invoices. Far Behind QuickBooks Pro: One of the most common complaints is that QuickBooks Mac does not compare to the capabilities of QuickBooks Pro for Windows. While QuickBooks Pro is much more developed, QuickBooks Mac is much easier to learn and is organized more intuitively, so there is a.
Their customer support has lovely people, but they are not always knowledge in the ways they should be. A lot of the times, we already know the issue that we are experiencing and need to speak to someone high-level to be able to resolve the issue. There should be an advanced call center to be able to speak to extememly well-versed people that know QBO in and out.
Overall: The freedom that QBO provides you is amazing. I recently moved to BC from Ontario and was able to keep my job because our firm uses QBO. If we had been on desktop for our clients, I would't have been able to keep my job and would have had to find work elsewhere. My boss is about to work remotely from her cottage for the month of August because she CAN! How many people do you know can say that?
Need a bookkeeper?
Try Bookkeeper360
- Date Established
- 1983
- Location
- Mountain View, CA
Pros
- Numerous features
- Cloud-based
- Easy to use
- Advanced invoicing features
- Numerous integrations
- Good tax support
- Good mobile apps
- Built-in lending
Cons
- Occasionally unintuitive
- Expensive
- Fair customer support
Overview
If you’ve heard of accounting, you’ve heard of Intuit QuickBooks. Intuit was founded in 1983 with the idea that there should be a better, simpler way to do accounting; it has been one of the biggest names in accounting and personal finance for three decades now. The company’s first product, Quicken, was launched in 1984. QuickBooks followed in 2002, and QuickBooks Online came along two years later.
Since its inception, QuickBooks Online has grown to 2.2 million users and the software has seen some significant changes and advancements, with one of the most recent being a long-awaited project management feature and a new pricing plan for larger businesses.
If you have a favorite hard drive to use with your Mac, be sure to tell us all about it in the comments below! Updated September 2018: These are still our favorite external hard drives for your Mac. This post may contain affiliate links. See our disclosure policy for more details. Best mac to buy 2018. Nov 05, 2018 Best Thunderbolt Devices for 2018. Our editors hand-picked these products based on our tests and reviews. If you use our links to buy, we may get a commission. Best Thunderbolt 3 external hard drive raid iMac in 2018: Heavy External Data Storage #1. G-Technology is acclaimed for making brilliant hard drives. We can assure that it is capable of giving excellent performance in RAID too. The device supports the latest Thunderbolt3 ports to transfer data with extreme speed.
While the software has a lot to offer, there are some drawbacks, including navigational difficulties, a semi-steep learning curve, and long support wait times. QuickBooks Online has also increased its prices — again — making it an expensive choice for some businesses.
Despite these drawbacks, QuickBooks Online has some great things going for it: strong reporting, customizable invoices, inventory capabilities, multiple currencies, and nearly 600 integrations. There’s also a unique lending platform called QuickBooks Capital.
In addition, there are several features offered by QuickBooks Online that you can’t get with the more traditional, locally-installed version of QuickBooks (such as automatic sales receipts, split transactions, scheduled invoices, and location and class categories). Many customers believe the sheer mobility of QuickBooks Online is entirely worth the upgrade. And despite the minor navigational difficulties I mentioned earlier, the program is still much easier to learn and use than QuickBooks Pro.
Continue reading to learn more about QuickBooks Online’s recent changes and to see if QuickBooks Online is a good fit for your business.
Have you received a loan offer from QuickBooks Capital? Read our complete QuickBooks Capital review to learn more about this financing option.
Tired of slow-paying customers? Looking for more consistent cash flow? With invoice financing, it’s possible to get cash for your invoices right away. Learn more about invoice financing in our Merchant’s Guide To Invoice Financing guide and/or check out two of our favorites: BlueVine and Fundbox.
Table of Contents
- User Reviews
Pricing
Rating: Fair
QuickBooks Online has four pricing tiers. The company recently added the new Advanced Plan geared towards medium to large-sized businesses that need up to 25 users and advanced reporting and support. QuickBooks Online offers a free 30-day trial of any plan and a test drive account of QuickBooks Plus. No credit card information or contracts are required, and you can cancel the service at any time.
QuickBooks has recently increased prices for the third time in the just over a year, so discounts are more important than ever. Luckily, Intuit is constantly offering discounts, so be sure to check if they are running any promotions.
Note: Discounts are invalid if a customer uses the free 30-day trial before purchasing.
Simple Start Plan
- $20/month
- Unlimited invoices
- Unlimited estimates
- Expense tracking
- Live bank feeds
- Reports
- Integrates with 200+ apps
- one user
Essentials Plan
- $40/month
- Unlimited invoices
- Unlimited estimates
- Expense tracking
- Accounts payable
- Time tracking
- Live bank feeds
- Reports
- Integrates with 200+ apps
- three users
Plus Plan
- $70/month
- Unlimited invoices
- Unlimited estimates
- Expense tracking
- Accounts payable
- Time tracking
- Inventory
- Project management
- Class tracking
- Live bank feeds
- Reports
- 1099 tax support
- Integrates with 200+ apps
- five users
Advanced Plan
Quickbooks Online For Mac Reviews
- $150/month
- All of the features of QuickBooks Plus
- Fathom subscription for advanced reporting
- Import invoices
- Custom user permissions
- A dedicated customer success manager
- Priority Care
- QuickBooks training (five classes through Real World Training)
- 25 users
Extra Costs
Before purchasing QuickBooks Online, there are several additional costs to be aware of:
- Payroll: QuickBooks Online has two different payroll plans ranging from $35 – $80/month + $4/month per employee. You can choose between Enhanced Payroll and Full-Service Payroll depending on your company’s needs.
- QuickBooks Payments:QuickBooks Payments allows you to accept payments from your customers. Payment processing costs 2.4% + $0.25/per transaction when a customer pays their online invoice with a card, 2.4% + $0.25/per transaction when a customer swipes their card, or 3.4% + $0.25/per transaction that is keyed in. There’s a 1% charge for ACH transfers ($10 maximum fee).
- Worker’s Compensation Insurance: QuickBooks Online offers pay-as-you-go worker’s compensation insurance. You can calculate a quote directly from your QuickBooks Online account.
- A Custom Invoice Template: You can pay an extra $4.99 for a custom invoice template.
Cloud-Based Or Locally-Installed
Cloud-based; no downloads or installation required.
Powerpoint for mac 2011. • Video editing and enhancing and creation option contained in the powerpoint application. • Office 2018 Video recording: A video recording service that is writing business users with an Office 2018 Academics or Organization license What’s new in Microsoft Office 2018? • Focusing on the Mac OS and MS Windows 7, 8 and 10.
Hardware & Software Requirements
Rating: Excellent
As cloud-based software, QuickBooks Online operates with nearly all internet browsers so long as you have internet access. QuickBooks Online also has desktop apps for Windows and Macs, which are said to run faster.
In order to read forms and use the print checks feature in QuickBooks Online, you will need Adobe Reader 7.0+ or the Firefox PDF plugin.
QuickBooks Online also has mobile apps for Apple products (iOS 9.3+) and Android products (4.1+).
Specific Size Of Business
QuickBooks Online is ideal for small businesses in need of strong accounting, ample features, and mobility. The addition of QuickBooks Advanced has opened the software up as an option for mid- to large-sized businesses as well. Businesses can have five – 25 users depending on their plan (Intuit does not count time tracking-only and reports-only users toward your user limit). You can set user permissions to control user access, and there’s a complete audit log of all activity.
Business owners with multiple companies will need to purchase a separate QuickBooks Online subscription for each business. QuickBooks Online is available in over 225 different countries (although this post focuses specifically on the US version).
Accounting Method
Rating: Excellent
Both cash-basis and accrual accounting.
Ease Of Use
Rating: Good
For the most part, QuickBooks Online is intuitive and easy to use. The UI is beautifully designed, though the organization could still be improved. Some features are hidden in settings and frustratingly difficult to find, but the built-in help button can make it easier to find what you’re looking for.
Features
Rating: Excellent
QuickBooks Online has an impressive feature selection. Here are some of the features that QuickBooks Online supports:
- Dashboard: A basic dashboard gives you an overview of your business’s financial state with charts for Invoices, Expenses, Bank Accounts, Profit and Loss, and Sales. There’s a menu on the left to navigate the most used features and a plus button and gear button on the top right-hand side of the screen where you’ll find shortcuts and more advanced features. There’s also a search transactions button and a help button, and you can enable an AI chat button in the settings as well. The “see all activity” option at the bottom of the dashboard will take you to a full audit log and history of recent activity.
- Sales Overview: In addition to a traditional dashboard, QuickBooks Online has recently introduced a Sales Overview page where you can view your income over time and quickly access sales shortcuts like “new invoice” or “new sale.”
- Invoicing: QuickBooks Online offers five invoice templates and ample invoice automations (you can also import an existing invoice template via Microsoft Word). You can customize the logo, logo position, font, font size, color scheme, header, footer, number of columns, and more. You can add shipping charges, discounts, and attachments to invoices. If you have the Essentials, Plus, or Advanced plan, you can send invoice reminders to late customers, and you can create recurring invoices. QuickBooks Online is also one of the few accounting programs that lets you autoschedule invoices. QuickBooks Online now offers invoice tracking, so you can see when customers view their invoices; it has added support for progress invoicing as well.
- Estimates: Creating estimates and converting them to invoices is easy. Estimates are sent via email, and customers receive the documents as PDFs. Sadly, there is no separate estimates tab for estimates, making it difficult to view past estimates.
- Client Portal: QuickBooks Online does offer a client portal, but only for invoices, not estimates. Customers can view, print, save, pay, or ask questions about their invoices.
- Contact Management: QuickBooks Online has a highly developed contact management system. You can save an incredible amount of information on your customers and vendors, including a display name, billing address, shipping address, preferred payment method, default payment terms, opening balance, attachments, and default tax codes. You can attach important files, such as contracts, to each contact. You can also send batch emails to contacts. As a recent addition, you now have the ability to change what you call customers (e.g. clients, customers, donors, guests, members, patients, or tenants).
- Expense Tracking: You can add individual expenses, manually import bank statements, or enable live bank feeds. You can categorize expenses, create custom bank rules, and attach receipts to expenses. QuickBooks will automatically match transactions (although you still have to manually approve the matches). Unlike most accounting programs, QuickBooks Online does not use Yodlee for their live bank feeds, and as Yodlee is known to violate some banks’ terms and conditions, QuickBooks Online gets extra points for using their own bank connector.
- Bank Reconciliation: You can easily reconcile bank accounts in QuickBooks Online and run a reconciliation report.
- Chart Of Accounts: QuickBooks Online has a default chart of accounts, which you can customize to fit your business, or you can import your own. You have to track fixed assets manually by using the chart of accounts (rather than having a built-in depreciation schedule for assets like Xero).
- Accounts Payable (Essentials, Plus Plan, & Advanced Plan Only): With QuickBooks Online, you can enter and sort bills easily. You can also create recurring bills. There’s a nice vendors dashboard that shows your total purchase orders, overdue bills, open bills, and recently paid bills.
- Checks(Plus & Advanced Plan Only): You can order and print checks directly from the software.
- Inventory (Plus & Advanced Plan Only): While each plan allows you to add items or services, only the Plus and Advanced plans track inventory. When adding items, you can save default sales prices, purchase prices, SKU numbers, images, and create item descriptions. You have the unique option to create item bundles, which makes invoicing a breeze. You can now set inventory reorder points and see the current stock level when you are creating invoices.
- Project Management (Essentials, Plus, & Advanced Plan Only): You can create projects, add billable and unbillable time, and create billable and unbillable expenses. You can easily create invoices for projects, and you can use progress invoicing to invoice in steps. There is no way to add tasks at this time, but there is basic job-costing so you can track job profitability. There’s also a project management screen with quick access to project reports and an overview of that project’s transactions.
- Time Tracking (Essentials, Plus, & Advanced Plan Only): In QuickBooks Online, you can create single-time activities or timesheets. Weirdly enough, if you create a time activity that is separate from a project, it will show up under sales (one of those navigational difficulties I mentioned earlier). You can attach billable and unbillable time to projects.
- Reports: QuickBooks Online has over 80 reports. The exact number of reports varies with each plan and the features you have access to. These reports cover everything from accounting and sales to cash flow and job-costing, and more.
- Budgeting(Plus & Advanced Plan Only): Unlike the desktop version of QuickBooks (which only allows one year-long budget), you can have multiple budgets in QuickBooks Online. You can create monthly, quarterly, or yearly budgets. You can use data from a previous financial year as your basis for a budget and run numerous budgeting reports.
- Journal Entries: You can create journal entries as needed.
- Purchase Orders (Plus & Advanced Plan Only):You can create purchase orders and recurring purchase orders in QuickBooks Online. You can easily convert purchase orders to bills. You can record payments and receive inventory from purchase orders in full or in parts.
- Credit Memos: You can create credit memos and customer refunds.
- Sales Receipts: Sales receipts are another way of recording sales in QuickBooks Online. Instead of creating an invoice, where you have to wait for your customer’s payment, sales receipts are to record sales for which you have already received payment. Sales receipts are the method restaurants, salons, and other similar businesses would use to enter daily sales into the software.
Quickbooks Desktop For Mac 2018
- Packing Slips: You can create and print packing slips.
- Class Tracking: This unique feature lets you sort transactions, estimates, and billable hours by a specific location or class. You can also run reports by specific location or class for more detailed reporting.
- Default Email Messages: You can save time by creating default email messages. You can create messages for your invoices, estimates, credit memos, sales receipts, customer statements, refund receipts, and purchase orders.
- Routines (In Beta): QuickBooks Online has a new beta feature in QuickBooks Labs called routines. The idea is that you can create custom workflow routines to help streamline your business, which sounds great, but the feature glitched on me every single time I tried to use it.
- Sales Tax: You can save as many sale tax rates as needed. In addition, you can assign a default sales tax to your customers.
- Tax Forms & Support (Plus & Advanced Plan Only): The Plus plan lets you prepare and print 1099-MISCs and W-2s for each employee. There is an additional fee to e-file these forms.
- Multiple Currencies: QuickBooks Online supports over 150 currencies.
- Importing & Exporting: QuickBooks Online’s importing feature is refreshing and easy to use compared to most other programs. You can import your customers, vendors, chart of accounts, products, and services. Exporting is more limited. You can export reports to Excel. All other data can only be exported via Internet Explorer.
- Lending: QuickBooks Online offers built-in lending called QuickBooks Capital. QuickBooks Capital uses the financial information within your account to determine if you are eligible for a loan. Read our full QuickBooks Capital review to learn more.
Customer Service & Support
Rating: Fair
In the past, QuickBooks Online has been notorious for long phone wait times and poor customer support. It used to be that I would wait 20-40 minutes before speaking to a representative, and the last time I reviewed the software, I experienced a major software glitch that took three weeks to fix.
Quickbooks Online For Mac 2018
More recently, my hold times have been shorter — and my calls were answered right away about half of the time. The level of helpfulness from each representative varies. Some are incredibly helpful and get your issue resolved right away, while others are uninformed and can’t answer your questions. The other drawback is that there is no email support. But while support is still not ideal, QuickBooks is trying. They’re working on shortening wait times, have redesigned their help center, and have added new in-software support options.
QuickBooks Online offers phone support from 6 AM – 6 PM PST, Monday through Friday; Saturday hours are 6 AM – 3 PM PST. All of QuickBooks Online’s support services include:
- Phone: You can call QuickBooks Online for help.
- In-Software Help: QuickBooks Online features a help button in the top right corner of the software. You can search a database of help articles with step-by-step instructions. You can also enable the QuickBooks Assistant in QuickBooks Labs. The QuickBooks Assistant is an AI live chat that helps with questions like “how much money did I make last month” or “which customers are late on their invoices.”
- Help Center: QuickBooks Online has a comprehensive, redesigned help center that is far easier to navigate. It features how-to articles, FAQs, and questions from other members of the QuickBooks community.
- Videos: QuickBooks Online provides video tutorials to explain how each feature works.
- QuickBooks Training: QuickBooks Online offers both in-person and online classes at an additional cost.
- QuickBooks Resource Center: There is also a QuickBooks Small Business Resource Center that hosts articles, business advice, and guides.
- QuickBooks Pro Advisor: You can search for and hire a QuickBooks Pro Advisor who will walk you through the program.
- QuickBooks Blog: QuickBooks has a blog with information on software updates and company news.
- Social Media: QuickBooks has a Facebook page where they post updates and helpful advice articles. QuickBooks also maintains Twitter and YouTube accounts. It’s worth mentioning that YouTube can also be a great source to find videos from CPAs and other seasoned QuickBooks users.
User Reviews
Rating: Fair
Negative Reviews & Complaints
Although many customers like QuickBooks Online, there are a few significant shortcomings to the software. Frequent complaints about the software running slowly have been addressed but other problems have risen to replace this issue. Some common gripes include:
- Poor Customer Service: This is by far the biggest customer complaint. Many users dislike the slow service and report being on the phone for obscene amounts of time. A couple of users say the customer service used to be better but has since declined, and a few people claim that QuickBooks tried to scam them into paying an extra service fee in order to fix the problems they were having.
- Bugs & Crashes: Various bugs and crashes are reported across multiple sites. In the past, downtime and outages have also been a fairly common complaint, especially with its mobile apps. While this problem seemed to be getting better for a while, just a few months ago, while I was retesting the software, there was a worldwide outage where users were unable to login to their QuickBooks Online accounts — and QuickBooks didn’t say a single thing about the issue: no tweets, no ETA on a fix, no admission that there was even a problem.
- Doesn’t Compare To QuickBooks Desktop: Another common complaint is that QuickBooks Online does not compare to the desktop version. Quite a few customers were so underwhelmed by the software that they ended the service completely, while others switched back to the desktop version.
- Expensive: When we last reviewed the software, users were already complaining about the increase in price. Now, QuickBooks Online has raised its Essentials plan by $5/month and their Plus plan by $10/month, making the software even more expensive.
- Unauthorized Charges: One customer reported that her account was charged without authorization, and it took five months to fix the problem.
Positive Reviews & Complaints
Despite the above complaints, there are many happy QuickBooks Online users. Intuit is accredited by the BBB with an A+ rating. QuickBooks Online, specifically, receives 4.1/5 stars on GetApp and 3.9/5 stars on G2 Crowd. The mobile apps rank highly with Android users (4.3/5 stars) and iOS users (4.7/5 stars).
Here are a few of the things users love about QuickBooks Online:
- Mobility: The most common praise is that QuickBooks Online offers mobility to users and companies. Previous QuickBooks Desktop users particularly like that they are no longer tied down to one computer.
- Good Accounting: QuickBooks Online is praised as one of the best full-featured accounting software options around. Accountants in particular rave about the reports, chart of accounts, and bank reconciliation features.
- Easy To Use: Many customers find QuickBooks Online easy to learn and use, especially compared to the desktop version of the software. Even non-accountants find the software enjoyable to use.
- Saves Time: Countless businesses report that QuickBooks Online saves time and keeps their companies organized.
- Ample Integrations: With 590+ integrations, it’s no wonder customers like the number of add-ons available to them.
Here’s what a few users are saying:
I am not an accountant. Not even a bookkeeper. But I find QuickBooks pretty easy to use. I help and do various tasks for a small service business called 1 on 1 Lessons. Either at the end of each day or at the end of the week, I record sales and expenses and add receipts or attachments for every item. It is very easy to do this and feels intuitive to find things in QuickBooks.
QBO is consistently becoming more and more robust. In true Intuit fashion, they are listening to their users and adding new features constantly. And if QBO doesn’t do it, there’s an app that does that will sync seamlessly with your file.
QuickBooks Online has impacted our business by allowing us to just focus on marketing and on sales and not on accounting, which is so crucial for a small business when sales is the most important thing. Because of QuickBooks, accounting hasn’t been a headache.
Quickbooks Online For Mac 2018 Reviews
Integrations & Add-Ons
Rating: Excellent
Since our last review, QuickBooks Online has increased its number of integrations from 280 to 590, including 25 different payment processing options (like QuickBooks Payments). The QuickBooks Online Advanced plan also comes with a built-in Fathom integration at no extra cost. API is also available for developers.
Interested in accepting online payments from your customers? Read our comprehensive merchant account reviews to learn the pros and cons of popular providers and see which payment processing option is best for your business.
Security
Rating: Good
QuickBooks Online uses 128-bit SSL encryption and multi-factor authentication. Physical safeguards have been implemented at the Tier 4 data center, and routine testing ensures security. For more information on Quickbooks security, and to learn how you can play a factor in making your data even more secure, check out the Intuit website.
Final Verdict
QuickBooks Online comes with a wide breadth of features and has the complex accounting capabilities that small business owners need. The software offers an impressive number of integrations and is working on bettering customer support. Recently, QuickBooks Online added a much-needed project management feature along with other new features, such as progress invoicing.
Apart from poor customer support, one of my biggest issues with QuickBooks has been its limited users. Now, with the QuickBooks Advanced plan, the software is a more viable option for larger businesses (especially since time tracking-only and report-only users don’t count toward your user limit). However, the advanced plan comes at a steep price compared to other mid-sized accounting programs such as Xero.
There are still a few kinks in the software’s organization, and while I’m still not happy with the recent price increase, the sheer number of features and strong accounting still make QuickBooks Online a good option for small businesses.
Overall, Quickbooks Online has a lot to offer in terms of features, accounting, and usability. Take the software for a spin to see if QuickBooks Online is right for your small business.
https://omgwaves.netlify.app/quickbooks-desktop-premier-2018-for-mac.html. QuickBooks Desktop Premier helps you organize your small business finances all in one place so you can be more productive. Stay on top of invoices, manage expenses and get reliable reports for tax time. Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for QuickBooks Desktop Premier 2018 with Industry Editions [PC/Mac Disc] [OLD VERSION] at Amazon.com. QuickBooks Desktop Premier 2018 4-User. QuickBooks Desktop Premier 2018 with Industry Editions [PC/Mac Disc] [OLD VERSION] Intuit. 3.7 out of 5 stars 42. QuickBooks Desktop Premier 2018 5-User Intuit. 3.4 out of 5 stars 2. QuickBooks Desktop Premier 2018 3-User. QuickBooks Online works on your PC, Mac, tablets, and phones. 3 Is there an additional fee for the QuickBooks mobile app? QuickBooks Online mobile access is included with your QuickBooks Online subscription at no additional cost. Download QuickBooks Desktop Premier 2018 - Mac/Windows + Crack Manage your home or office finances with 2018 Intuit QuickBooks Desktop Premier edition software. It generates industry-specific reports to maintain complete company records, and it lets you take credit card payments through the mobile application.
Chelsea Krause
- Easy Accounting Software For Small Businesses - August 23, 2019
- The Best Quickbooks Online Alternatives - July 5, 2019
- The Best Accounting Programs For International Businesses - July 3, 2019
- CPA VS Accountant: Which Do You Need For Your Business? - June 19, 2019
- What Is ERP Software And Do I Need It? - June 18, 2019