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Accounting & Payments Quickbooks

It is easy to manage your finances when you’re just starting a business. You can crunch manually crunch numbers with a calculator and rely on handwritten ledgers to track your sales and expenses. But once it grows and flourishes, manually managing your finances can become increasingly overwhelming and time-consuming.

With increasing numbers of transactions like sales, inventory, and salary, you must recognize the need for a more streamlined solution. Luckily, there is Quickbooks.

QuickBooks empowers you to navigate the complexities of finance with confidence, leaving behind the limitations of manual methods and embracing a new era of financial management. Let’s take a look at what this platform can do for your business.

What is Quickbooks?

Founded by Intuit in 1983, QuickBooks is a popular accounting software that is designed to help small and medium-sized businesses manage their finances, track income and expenses, create invoices, pay bills, generate financial reports, and perform other accounting tasks.

It offers both cloud-based and desktop versions to cater to different business needs. The online version, called QuickBooks Online, allows users to access their financial data from anywhere with an internet connection, while the desktop version is installed on a local computer.

Main Features and Benefits of Using Quickbooks

QuickBooks excels in its wide array of features, encompassing robust capabilities such as reporting, invoicing, inventory management, and mobile app functionality. The following are among its notable features:

Financial Management: With Quickbooks, you can track income and expenses, create and send invoices, manage accounts payable and receivable, and reconcile bank transactions. It provides a centralized platform to organize and analyze your financial data.

Expense Tracking: You can easily track and categorize your business expenses. It enables you to record expenses, attach receipts, and monitor spending patterns. It can easily track sales tax rates like VAT, GST, GCT, ICVA, ITBIS, and TOT. It also has prefilled tax rates in 21 countries. This feature simplifies tax preparation and provides a clear picture of your business’s financial health.

Invoicing and Payments: The platform allows you to create professional invoices and send them to your clients. You can customize invoice templates, add your company logo, and include payment details. QuickBooks also supports online payment options, making it convenient for your customers to pay invoices electronically. It can also schedule recurring invoices, send automatic reminder emails for due or overdue invoices, track invoice payments in real-time, set customer language preferences (English, French, Spanish, Italian, Traditional Chines, and Portuguese), and use over 145 different currencies to accept and make payments.

Bank Account Integration: QuickBooks can connect to your bank accounts and credit cards, automatically importing revenue and expenses, categorizing transactions, and setting up bank feeds to save time and reduce errors. You can easily reconcile accounts and have an up-to-date view of your cash flow.

Reporting and Analytics: It provides a variety of pre-built financial reports, such as profit and loss statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements. These reports offer valuable insights into your business’s performance, allowing you to make informed decisions. Customizable reports enable you to focus on specific metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs).

Inventory Management: Inventory tracking capabilities are the highlights of Quickbooks, enabling you to manage your stock levels, monitor item costs, and track sales. You can set reorder points, receive notifications for low inventory, and generate reports to analyze inventory turnover and profitability. It also tracks not just inventory items but also non-inventory items such as services and bundles.

Payroll Processing: QuickBooks simplifies payroll management by automating calculations and generating pay stubs. It helps you stay compliant with tax regulations and facilitates direct deposits to pay your employees accurately and on time. It also provides year-end tax form preparation, including W-2s and 1099s.

Third-Party Integrations: The platform integrates with a wide range of business tools and applications, such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems, e-commerce platforms, time-tracking software, and more. This integration expands the capabilities of QuickBooks and streamlines workflows across different systems.

Mobile Accessibility: QuickBooks provides mobile apps that allow you to access your financial data on the go. You can create and send invoices, capture receipts, track expenses, and view key financial reports from your smartphone or tablet.

Security: QuickBooks utilizes state-of-the-art security measures endorsed by the industry to ensure the confidentiality and safety of your financial data. QuickBooks Online is a securely certified product by DigiCert, the foremost authority on secure sockets layer (SSL) Certificates. By employing password-protected login, firewall-secured servers, and employing the same robust encryption technology (128 bit SSL) employed by leading global banks, QuickBooks ensures that all necessary security components are in place to provide you with peace of mind.

User Experience with Quickbooks

QuickBooks offers a user-friendly experience, particularly for individuals who possess a fundamental understanding of basic accounting principles. It is an efficient accounting software that simplifies your financial management processes.

Pricing Structure

Quickbooks offer a 30-day trial to get an idea of how the platform works. As the current writing, Quickbooks offers $1 per month for 6 months for all of its paid plan subscriptions namely Simple Start, Essentials, and Plus. Regular price is $18 per month for Simple Start, $27 per month for Essentials, and $38 per month for Plus. Check this link for the latest offer from Quickbooks.

Review Summary

Feature:

Renowned as the gold standard in small-business accounting software, QuickBooks emerges as a reliable and versatile choice for businesses across the spectrum. Particularly suitable for enterprises seeking ongoing collaboration with bookkeepers or accountants, QuickBooks offers a rich set of features catering to both modest ventures and expanding organizations in need of comprehensive reporting tools to evaluate various aspects of their operations.

Ease of Use:

While QuickBooks Online boasts user-friendly features, it's important to note that there might be a slight learning curve, especially if you're not well-acquainted with the fundamental principles of accounting.

Customer Service:

QuickBooks offers various support options, including phone support, live chat, and community forums. They also have Help Articles and Tutorials that cover various topics and common issues. It’s important to note that the availability and specific contact options may vary based on your location and the QuickBooks edition you are using.

Value for Money:

Quickbooks presents an excellent choice for numerous small businesses seeking streamlined customer invoicing and seamless integration of invoicing and payments into their general ledger. The platform allows businesses to tailor their usage, selectively leveraging the features that best suit their needs. Moreover, the inclusion of a mobile app appeals to those desiring on-the-go accounting solutions. With the mobile app, users gain access to a majority of the online platform's features, along with convenient mileage tracking and receipt capture capabilities, facilitating efficient and hassle-free recordkeeping.

Overall Rating: