Should I choose QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Online (QBO)? As an accounting advisor, I get this question a lot from new business owners.
Not only new business owners, but many established business owners also question if they should switch from QuickBooks Desktop to QBO.
The answer, of course, depends on your business needs. However, most small business owners have similar needs – how much money am I making (or losing), how much cash is in the bank, who owes me, who do I owe. Both versions accomplish these tasks.
QBO’s cloud access means QBO > Desktop
Not quite. While it’s certainly an advantage to have QuickBooks available at your fingertips wherever you go, it’s 2016. Remote Access technology is nearly perfected. You can use a service such as MyQuickCloud, Teamviewer, LogMeIn, or plain old Remote Desktop Connection to access your desktop computer from any device.
Sure, you can’t enter invoices from your phone ( without a separate app), but the vast majority of businessess don’t need to.
This isn’t to say the cloud based access QBO provides isn’t an advantage, especially for a hands off business owner. Want to see your financial results from your phone – open the app and view reports. You don’t have to login to remote desktop service, open QuickBooks, click reports. It’s certainly quicker.
Both get the job done
It seems that since Intuit makes both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop, if you know one version, you should be able to jump into the other version right away. Well, its not quite that simple.
Both systems have the same core general ledger accounting functionality. You can track bills and invoices, handle credit card charges and bank debits, track undeposited funds, and reconcile any account.
However, the way each system goes about doing these common tasks somewhat differ. For example, good luck finding the credit card charge window in QBO…but you can still record them.
There’s plenty to say about the differences.
But you won’t get value from a chart or a quick blog about the similarities or differences. What you should take away is that both provide the same core functionality and both will work for most small businesses.