For those customers that choose to stay on Desktop Plus subscriptions, we’ll continue to focus on product maintenance and security. You must purchase additional licenses if you want to access it on multiple computers. While you can add cloud access to QuickBooks Enterprise, it involves an additional fee. Offers four plans to accommodate a range of businesses with different needs; each plan limits the number of users, though. We believe everyone should be able to make financial decisions with confidence.

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It’s an acceptable system but isn’t nearly as convenient as sharing your books through QuickBooks Online. Additionally, all versions of QuickBooks Desktop allow you to set up cost estimates for projects and then compare them to actual expenses. In contrast, you need to upgrade to Advanced to be able to use QuickBooks Online’s budget vs. actual reporting feature. While QuickBooks Online and Desktop have their strengths and weaknesses, they ultimately balance out—which makes them tied in terms of overall features. Below we provide a detailed comparison across each feature, where we also determine a winner for each category.

Advanced

The assisted migration offer is eligible to Desktop customers that are migrating their data and setting up QuickBooks Online. Personalized setup is limited to a 1-hour session with a customer success product expert. Intuit reserves what is not sufficient funds the right to limit the number of sessions and the length and scope of each session. Assisted migration results may vary based on business complexity and file size. Terms and conditions, features, support, pricing, and service options are subject to change without notice. Terms and conditions, features, support, pricing, and service options subject to change without notice.

I spent time in both the online and desktop versions of QuickBooks. Subscription clients in QuickBooks Desktop 2023 (R1) or older versions will need to update to the latest 2023 (R3) version before their subscription expires. 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 the 4 balanced scorecard perspectives are grounded in thousands of hours of research. Our partners cannot pay us to guarantee favorable reviews of their products or services.

QuickBooks Contractor Payments

It takes a bit of time to click gusto review around and understand where everything is, but a quick run-through is more than enough to familiarize yourself with what QuickBooks Online can do. It’s designed to foster collaboration between multiple users, facilitating multi-user access to accounting data. Each user has their own login credentials, which can be customized to limit access to sensitive information. There’s also a feature that facilitates inviting your accountant to the platform, so they can have direct access to your data.

1. Our meticulous evaluation process makes us a trustworthy source for accounting software insights.
2. Unlike QuickBooks Online, Desktop Pro includes built-in inventory management.
3. Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments Inc., licensed as a Money Transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services.
4. QuickBooks Online is simply easier to learn, provides a detailed onboarding process, and is very intuitive.

There is workflow automation, data restoration, batch invoices and expenses and on-demand training. This plan also gives you a dedicated account team to help with training, troubleshooting and setup. You can download a 30-day trial version of QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise only—both the Premier Plus and Pro Plus plans come with a 60-day money-back guarantee, but no free trial. Alternatively, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial with QuickBooks Online. Just know that doing so waives your option to get 50% off your QuickBooks Online subscription for your first three months. QuickBooks Online can be accessed anywhere you have an internet connection, and because it’s web-based, you can work with your accountant in real time.

Upgrade to Plus for $42.50 per month for the first three months, then $85 per month afterward, and you will receive access for up to five users, inventory tracking and the ability to track project profitability. For $1,922 per year, get the Enterprise plan with advanced pricing, reporting and inventory. The higher your plan tier, the more reports and users you can add, although it’s important to understand concurrent users are each sold separately. Terms, conditions, pricing, special features, and service and support options subject to change without notice. If your home or office has a slow or unpredictable internet connection, QuickBooks Desktop can ensure you can reach most of your data even if the internet goes down overnight. The downside to locally stored data, though, is that you can only access it from where it’s stored.