Easy to Use Accounting Solution for Small Business

Known for its ease of use and user friendly interface, Intuit's QuickBooks Online has quickly become one of the most popular SaaS based hosted accounting systems in the market.

Solution Highlights

• Easy to use SaaS (Software as a Service) application, no accounting knowledge necessary
• Set up process is incredibly simple and account creation is very straightforward
• Accounting features geared towards small to medium businesses needs
• Robust Cloud Computing infrastructure provides strong reliability and security
• Seamless integration with online banking
• View company accounting and financial information from an iPhone, Blackberry, or Android based devices

Description:

Founded in 1983, Intuit is a leading provider of financial management software for small and medium sized companies.  QuickBooks Online is the hosted SaaS (Software as a Service) version of their popular packaged QuickBooks accounting software.

QuickBooks Online is an easy to use accounting solution for small businesses and is geared towards people without any accounting knowledge. QuickBooks Online helps small businesses manage all of their financials in the system, which keeps track of all sales and expense data, as well as inventory management.

Intuit offers two versions of their online SaaS solution: QuickBooks Online Plus and QuickBooks Online Basic. QuickBooks Online Plus has a richer feature set, includes more user accounts, and has a more comprehensive support package than the Basic version. Intuit also offers the Intuit Billing Manager, which is a free, though limited, solution for managing invoicing online.

For this review, we’re going to focus on the features and functionality of the QuickBooks Online Plus solution.

Getting started is very easy, as it took this reviewer less than three minutes to open a QuickBooks Online Plus account. When you start using the system the user is guided through a series of questions relevant to their business and then the system is configured to their needs.

The QuickBooks Online user interface is very intuitive and straightforward, and offers two main types of navigation through the system. The user can either click on the tabs that are found at the top of the page to go from section to section, or they can use the navigation maps that are found throughout the site.

 Screenshot: QuickBooks Online Purchase Orders

The home screen of the QuickBooks Online application provides a dashboard view of the company’s accounting activities. This screen can be configured by the user to meet their specific needs, where they can easily add or remove different modules according to their preference. The various modules offer views of recent transactions, messages, unpaid invoices, and a company snapshot among other things.

The main areas of the QuickBooks Online Plus application can be found in the tabs at the top of each page in the system: Company, Customer, Vendor, Employees, Banking, and Reports.

The Company section includes company information, configuration preferences, and budgeting functions. The section also includes an Activity Log where the user can track detailed activity related to the system, and the main user on the account can manage other users in this section.  The import and export data functionality are also found in this section. If you are using the QuickBooks desktop version and decide to move to the online hosted solution, then you can import your data from the desktop version by using these functions (data associated with those features that are found in both the desktop and online versions can be imported).

The Customer section is where all customer related activities are managed. Creating new customers in the system is very straightforward, as is creating invoices and sales receipts. In QuickBooks Online Plus you can easily create recurring billing cycles, helping companies manage subscription type billing.  Sales forms, such as invoices, receipts, estimates, refund receipt, and more, can be customized to fit the specific businesses needs. Credits and refunds are managed in this section, as is the list of the company’s products and services.  QuickBooks Online enables businesses to accept credit cards through the Customer section, but this requires separate registration for the Merchant Service for QuickBooks Online from Intuit. There is a separate charge for the Merchant Service, which includes a set-up fee, monthly payment, and per transaction fees.

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Under the Vendor tab, the user manages all vendor related activity, including a list of vendors and bills. You have the option to manage bills to pay later – providing the ability to enter bills and payments separately allowing you to keep track of bills you owe but you can pay them later. Once you enable this setting, then additional functions are added to the Vendor tab, including Enter Bills, Vendor Credits, Pay Bills, and Pay One Vendor. In order to utilize the Pay Bills function you need to enter your bank account information under the Banking tab.

QuickBooks Online enables you to easily manage inventory and purchase orders, and seamlessly integrates these functions within the QuickBooks Online application.  Using the system you can create, manage, and send purchase orders and connect these purchase orders to payment to vendors by Bills, Checks, Cash Purchases, or Credit Card.  QuickBooks Online uses the FIFO (first in, first out) accounting method for its inventory management functions. The inventory features allow you to automatically track and adjust on hand inventory, and helps you with IRS compliance by accounting for the purchase and sale of inventory items.

In the Employees section, you can manage employee information including personal contact and hiring data. You can also manage time sheets to track how much time employees and contractors spent working on tasks related to specific customers. This also provides the capabilities to charge your customers by time spent on the task by your employee or sub-contractor. Intuit offers Payroll for QuickBooks Online, an add-on module that is integrated to the system and lets you manage payroll. The payroll module costs and additional $19.95 per month (see more on pricing below).

The Banking functions enable the user to manage many banking activities through the QuickBooks Online application.  First you need to enter your bank information into the system to link the QuickBooks application to your bank account (for participating banks). Once configured, you can download information from your bank account into the system and access it through the QuickBooks Online Banking Center feature. In the Banking section you can also write and print checks (on voucher checks ordered from the IntuitMarket), make deposits, transfer funds, and more. Overall, the seamless integration of QuickBooks Online and bank account information provides a very strong user experience.

The Reports section of QuickBooks Online Plus includes over sixty-five pre-configured accounting and financial reports that can be customized to the needs of the user. Ready-made reports include profit and loss statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements, sales by customer, vendor balance, and more.

Within the Reports tab of QuickBooks Online Plus you can also find the Company Snapshot section which provides a high level view of your company’s financials. Click on the “My Business Scorecard and Industry Comparisons” link in this section to access the Scorecard feature to quickly track your net profit margin, sales growth, and cash flow. The Trends feature provides access to reports on the status of other companies in your industry.

Intuit has invested heavily in the Cloud infrastructure to support their online services, including QuickBooks Online. Their data centers handle millions of transactions a year for services such as Turbo Tax for the Web, so they certainly have the capabilities to handle large volumes of important data. They claim strong availability and reliability of the QuickBooks Online service, with uptime of more than 99.81% since January 2007. Intuit also has back-up systems in place to automatically back-up your data offsite. Intuit has also put significant security measures in place to make sure their system is safe and secure.

The main weak point we came across when testing the service was that the response time was very slow in comparison to other SaaS applications.We tested it using different Internet connections with different bandwidth speeds, so the connection does not seem to be the issue. We recommend testing the system response time yourself if you decide to trial the application.

Pricing

Intuit offers two versions of its QuickBooks Online solution:

• QuickBooks Online Basic - $9.95 per month
  • 1 user plus your accountant
  • Basic features, email customer support
• QuickBooks Online Plus - $34.95 per month
  • 3 users plus your accountant (can add more users for an additional fee)
  • Advanced feature including time tracking, delayed and recurring billing, automated online banking, robust reporting, and more; call-back and chat customer support

Payroll for QuickBooks Online is a module that can be added on to both the Basic or Plus versions starting at an additional $25 per month. Your QuickBooks Online subscription does not require any contract and you can cancel it at any time.

The Bottom Line

QuickBooks Online is an excellent choice for small businesses to help manage their accounting, financing, and purchasing functions. The system is easy to configure and use, and includes the features that small businesses need. This SaaS accounting application is run on Intuit’s robust Cloud Computing infrastructure offering strong reliability and security. However, the system is not suited for large enterprises as it is missing more advanced accounting, vendor management, inventory and employee management functions. If you are a small business looking for an accounting and financial management system, we suggest you try the free 30 day trial of QuickBooks Online which you can access here.