QuickBooks Online Advanced

QBO Online Advanced- Not Perfect, but a Great Option for a Growing Business

Comments: I am an advanced user, so my experience has been mostly positive. As I mentioned, I think the software is not always intuitive, so it can be frustrating for less experienced users. However, customer service is great and always responsive.

Pros:

Quickbooks Online Advanced is robust and offers a pretty impressive suite of options for a growing small business. I love that a business owner can run so much of their business from one piece of software. As a business owner and a bookkeeper, I get frustrated with all of the options out there and appreciate that QBO Advanced eliminates the need for multiple programs.

Cons:

There are definitely some improvements that could be made. The software is often glitchy, causing frustration for users that are not experienced. I would also love to see even more customization in the reporting screens. I'd love to be able to click and see drop downs on the main profit and loss screens.

QBO is Definitely Different

Comments: Our overall experience with QBO Advanced has been pretty good. I think with the development and implementation of more features or customization of different "modules" to be customer specific it would serve us perfectly. And hey, the price is WONDERFUL!

Pros:

What I like most about using QBO Advanced is how user friendly and simplistic it is to use. We transitioned our entire financial management system and for the most part it was relatively smooth.

Cons:

There were many obstacles to overcome in the transition to QBO Advanced. It mainly involve how to find work around solutions for areas not offered in QBO Advanced such as specifically detailed inventory management and also fixed assets. The inventory process in QBO is clunky and too simplistic for our company, BUT since QBO is so easy to use we have customized processes to make it work for us.

New To Office Management Made Easy!

Pros:

There are so many tutorial videos on the QuickBooks YouTube channel which makes training yourself in Office / Business Management is not very difficult! During my first few months as Office Manager at our small business, we used QB Desktop; I prefer the updated look that the Online version has compared to the Desktop App version.

Cons:

When switching from Desktop App to Online Advanced, there were some features we lost. I used Sales Orders as the initial auto / marine mechanic work order form so as to let my technicians know what vehicle/boat needed what work. I am not very upset about losing this feature because we ended up subscribing to ARI software to create our work orders (as well as keep saved vehicle / marine information saved with specific customers). I also would prefer that QB Online had customization abilities.

Adequate for simple product businesses

Comments: We run our business on it and have to work around all the limitations, it gets the job done, but we spend a lot of time having to use excel outside the product to get things completed. It is getting better but so slowly we have considered moving to another online software package.

Pros:

QBO is an easy to use intuitive accounting software package with generally reliable online access. It has the basic accounting features that you would expect for a small business, but lacks the detailed features necessary for a bundled product business (one where your product is composed of Bill of Materials and you need to track the details on the sub components - think of gift baskets with 10 items in it, and the basket has a single SKU.) QBO has been improving in many ways and priority circle is a welcome addition to getting support.

Cons:

The Reporting is really poor, you cannot simply build a report using any fields there are significant limitations of what fields you can include in a report. For instance you cannot write a report with customer and invoice information in it. IE. What customers have bought what products and when - this can't be done you need to export all the data and then do your own intersection to answer that question. There is really limited inventory tracking - as long as you stock and sell individual wigets your are ok, but if you sell bundles you are screwed. We have to do all inventory tracking outside of QBO because it is so lacking. You can't not do line item discounts. You cannot have negative product line items ( like volume discounts or returns, etc.) There are so many basic features in QBO Desktop that are totally lacking in the online version.

Pretty good, not CRM valuable

Comments: The support staff help, overall the software does a pretty good job with most tasks I need to complete, but would be nice to include all the CRM features so I don't have multiple subscriptions

Pros:

Really is the only software most CPA's are familiar with. Pretty easy to use and leave is mind that it's always backed up in the cloud.

Cons:

Still doesn't do a great job as CRM, so have to get third party software that communicates well with this one