The most popular bookkeeping software for small and medium-sized businesses is QuickBooks. It simplifies tracking finances with its various features and reports. There are various plans for this software, such as QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Self Employed, and QB for Mac. Small businesses can use it to create and dispatch invoices, track bills and inventory, print financial statements, and manage tax and payroll.
If you’ve been wondering what is QuickBooks, this post will clear all your doubts about it. We will cover its uses, how it works, and the benefits you can avail.
What Is QuickBooks by Intuit
QuickBooks by Intuit, an American software company, is a comprehensive financial management suite with robust accounting packages. This software has desktop, cloud-based, and online solutions for monitoring financial data. QB facilitates creating reports about any business aspect.
Two chief reasons why QB is so popular among various businesses are:
- It is a user-friendly platform
- It has robust reporting features
From online banking to remote access capabilities, there’s hardly anything that this software does not cover.
Apart from being an original bookkeeping software, QuickBooks provides various other financial management and accounting solutions. Some major ones include the following:
- QuickBooks Payroll, through which enterprises can pay up to 15 employees via direct deposit and cheque.
- QuickBooks Online, which facilitates accounting on the cloud and access to accounting books from anywhere, anytime.
- QB Commerce gives you a centralized, real-time status of your orders and inventory.
- QuickBooks Payments lets you produce pay-enabled invoices and get paid by your customers digitally through the payment method of their preference.
- QuickBooks Live lets you seek the expertise of a professional bookkeeper to manage your bookkeeping needs.
- QuickBooks Time helps you monitor billable hours for your clients, employees, or projects.
How Does QuickBooks Work?
QuickBooks provides you with all the tools to manage your finances. You find everything about your linked bank accounts on the dashboard. This helps you find out how your business is performing. If you need to send invoices, the software lets you create and send customized invoices.
You can use the QB app to track expenses, mileage, and snap receipts. The software also sorts your expenses so you don’t miss deductions. You can label and track transactions wherever you want. It gives you insights tailored to your business.
You can start with any QB version and upgrade as your business expands. You can also use QB payroll when you hire more employees to simplify monthly payments.
What Is QuickBooks Used for
QB is one of the best & most popular accounting software of all time created by Intuit. There are several benefits of using QB Sofware.
Features of Quickbooks & How it Works?
- Invoicing – make invoices from a previous estimate or the beginning. You can configure an invoice for recurring payments and share it with your customers via mail or a hard copy.
- Track your bills and expenses – You can track your bills and expenditure by linking your credit card and banking accounts to this software. After that, your expenditure is downloaded and categorized.
- Time and expense tracking of employees – QB allows your employees to input their time on the mobile app of the software or upload it manually.
- Online bill payment – It enables you to pay your bills through a check or bank transfer straight from QB. You can pay multiple bills at a single time, and the software uses your payment information to process future transactions automatically.
- Payroll processing – Via payroll add-on, you can automatically compute the payroll. three plans you can use to add more features as your business scales.
- Chart of Accounts – It gives an entire listing of every account you require to monitor your financial information. Through it, you can easily track expenses, assets, income, and liabilities.
- Assess your profitability – QB Advanced and Online Plus let you track the profitability of every project through their project profitability summary report.
- Inventory management – inventory management in QB Plus and Advanced makes you track the cost and quantity of your inventory. When you sell inventory, the software assigns a part of your inventory of the cost of goods sold, an expense account. This allocation is essential for computing taxable income.
- Print financial statements – Print financial statements by taking care of your cash outflow and inflow activities. You can print and hand over the financial statements to lenders if you need a loan.
- Streamline tax time – The software simplifies tax time as it compiles your income and expenses. You just need to print your financial statements during tax time.
Different QuickBooks Options
You will find this software both as a desktop program and a cloud-based one. These include QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop.
QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks Online is a cloud financial management solution. It helps business owners with the following tasks.
- Make estimates and invoices.
- Monitor their cash flow and sales.
- Manage suppliers and customers.
- Monitor tax and simplify tax returns.
- Assess your company’s performance for budgeting.
There are three plans in QuickBooks Online. These include:
- Simple Start for $30 for nine months.
- Essentials for $16.50 per month.
- Plus, for $25.50 monthly.
You can also get a 30-day free trial for all these plans. Also, updates happen automatically in QuickBooks Online and do not affect the business data. You can use QBO on Android smartphones, tablets, and any iOS device using the QBO app.
QuickBooks Desktop
QuickBooks Desktop is similar to an ERP solution. It is an on-premise accounting system for businesses in different industries. The software serves around 40 users and comes with varying user limits. It is present in various versions, such as QB Desktop Pro 2020, QB Premier 2020, QB Desktop Enterprise 20.0, and QuickBooks Accountant Desktop 2020.
Businesses in manufacturing, retail, non-profit, professional services, and contractors can use this QuickBooks option. Some of its features include:
- Presence of advanced inventory modules.
- Integration with your CRM.
- Bank feeds
- Integration with a Live plan.
- Automated payment reminders
QuickBooks Desktop differs from QB Online because it provides desktop-only tools for accounting, reporting, data entry, inventory, and job costing.
Summing up
Hopefully, you now have a clear answer to the question, what is QuickBooks? The software is very effective for small and medium businesses as it helps manage finances and track growth. There are various editions, so you can choose one according to your needs. If you have any doubts about its functioning, contact a QuickBooks technical expert.