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Legacy software is harder to find, and even QuickBooks Desktop has moved to a subscription-based solution. Square Invoices doesn’t limit the number of invoices you send or the number of customers or users you have on your system. If you have a team working for you, track their hours worked for invoicing purposes using Square’s free team management add-on.

Looking at the mean score for the top 4 review sites, QuickBooks Desktop has a score of 4.3 and QuickBooks Online 4.15. QuickBooks Online boasts a user-friendly, intuitive design, while QuickBooks Desktop looks quite antiquated and summons memories from the mid 2000s. To access QuickBooks Desktop, on the other hand, you need to use the PC where you have the software installed.

Business stage

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. However, these versions (for the most part) have moved to a subscription-based pricing model that requires a yearly payment in order to continue using the software with included support. QuickBooks Enterprise is intended for use by larger-small businesses and can be used by manufacturing and distribution businesses with its advanced inventory features. QuickBooks Online is for more accounting-focused businesses looking for a web-based system, and/or a business that wants access to the large app-based ecosystem QuickBooks offers.

• When working with the Desktop version, it’s downloaded right to your computer.
• When signing up for QuickBooks Online, it only gives options for paying monthly.
• However features present in editions older than three years are subject to planned obsolescence, removal, and discontinuation to “incentivize” you to purchase a new release.
• The maximum amount of users you can have with a QuickBooks Online subscription is 25 (plus an accountant).
• At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations.

However, please note that access to add-on services will be discontinued for all QuickBooks Desktop software after May 31, 2023. Join me in GoSkills’ beginner-friendly QuickBooks Online course to gain the confidence you need to handle your business’ books, boost your accounting efficiency, and enhance your bookkeeping skills. For both cases, I strongly encourage you to find or buy a migration checklist.

QuickBooks Desktop plans and pricing

When she’s not trying out the latest tech or travel blogging with her family, you can find her curling up with a good novel. Another notable difference is QuickBooks Online offers a Self-Employed version for $15 per month, which is not available with QuickBooks Desktop. For an extra $50, sign up for a one-time live Bookkeeping setup with any of its plans. We save you money the moment you hire us by cutting out the expensive cost of hiring an in-house CFO. Construction projects are expensive, and labor is typically the largest and hardest cost to estimate. We’re going to show you a few ways to evaluate your construction labor costs and improve estimating — without getting bogged down with the numbers.

Webgility for QuickBooks Online

As you hire more employees or bring on more customers, you can scale up your software to match. And if you manage your business from multiple locations, you’ll want QuickBooks Online over Desktop. Only QuickBooks Online includes free access to a comprehensive version of the QuickBooks mobile accounting app, which is one of the best apps in the accounting sphere. QuickBooks Desktop is more traditional accounting software that you earnings before interest and taxes download and install on your computer, while QuickBooks Online is cloud-based accounting software you access through the internet. For the Desktop version, you pay an annual fee starting at $549.99 per year, and the cloud-based option starts at $15 per month. Both versions have mobile apps, but the app for the Desktop version primarily functions as a way to upload receipts, and the Online mobile app is robust in comparison.

Optional QuickBooks Online add-ons

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. You can pay extra (or upgrade to a pricier plan) to get data hosting through QuickBooks, which will let you access some financial information—though not all of it—on a different device. We also don’t recommend QuickBooks Desktop to Mac users, since there’s just one desktop-based plan for Mac users. This plan, QuickBooks Desktop for Mac, has the same features as QuickBooks Desktop Pro Plus, the most basic desktop-based plan. In other words, Mac users can’t scale up their software from one plan to the next as they add software users.

Mac users would need to download and install QuickBooks for Mac to use the service. QuickBooks Online is a cloud-based software with a monthly subscription, whereas QuickBooks Desktop is installed locally and has an annual license pricing scheme. Accounting software needs to be feature-laden for it to be useful for a small business, and that’s what we looked for when considering QuickBooks alternatives. With four plans, robust features and a user-friendly interface, QuickBooks Online is the ideal choice for most small businesses. QuickBooks Desktop, on the other hand, is a good option for businesses that prefer desktop software, need its advanced inventory tracking and reporting tools, or are looking for an industry-specific solution.

An overview of QuickBooks Desktop vs QuickBooks Online

You can get QuickBooks Online for as low as $30 per month at regular cost or pay as much as $1,340 per year for QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise. The main difference between QuickBooks Desktop and Online is that QuickBooks Desktop is desktop-based, while QuickBooks Online, you guessed it,  is a cloud-based software. This means that accessing your data with QuickBooks Online is easier and more convenient as all you need is a device with an internet connection. After that date, you won’t be able to access QuickBooks add-on services like Online Banking, Online Backup, Live Support and QuickBooks Desktop Payroll Services from any version of the desktop software. Despite the platform’s ubiquity, however, many business owners remain uncertain about the differences between QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online. Here, we’ll detail everything you should know about the two versions, including their core functions, pricing tiers, hosting location, extra features and latest updates.