A while ago I already wrote about how I changed my business accounting from a simple Excel Spreadsheet to the online version of Quickbooks: QuickBooks Pro Online. The Excel Spreadsheet really limited me in many areas. I can tell this now because for a little over 2 months I am using Quickbooks Online and I am extremely satisfied with it. For one, it is so much more convenient to do my accounting because all I need is a browser window to be open. Quickbooks Online – without me doing anything – goes in daily and downloads the latest transactions from my bank accounts and it is fairly smart to categorize the transactions. All I got to do is double-check in most cases. This cuts down in time for me to do accounting significantly.
It also syncs payments between the different accounts – something I always had problems with when I was using Quickbooks on my desktop many years back and something I never did properly when using Excel.
I love the reporting. With 2-3 clicks I have all the data I need in front of me. I can also create custom reports and drill down into my business activity. Something I could not do before.
There is a monthly service charge, but that is motivation for me to really use the service and as a result my business accounting is more timely and more accurate. That to me is well worth the monthly fee.
There are many more items I like about QuickBooks Online, but I want to write about 2 things I do not like or better things I am not fully satisfied with.
While the online import of data from my bank accounts is working well, sometimes the importer misses 1-2 transactions. I have not been able to identify why yet. It is easy to fix for me since I do not have that many transactions per month, but still – this should work. And the other item also has to do with the importer – PayPal. I do have quite a few PayPal transactions sometimes and QB Online does not have the capability to import data from PayPal. If possible I would like to export my PayPal data and then import it, but even that is not supported at this point. I heard Intuit is eventually working on it, but I have yet to see it.
Conclusion: QuickBooks Online is a great way to do business accounting for a small business. The monthly fees are moderate ($34.95) and it works awesome in my opinion. I love the features and the few Cons are no show stopper for sure. So, I highly recommend you check it out if you are in need of an affordable business accounting system (there is a free trial available, too). Click here to visit QuickBooks Online.
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