According to fundsquire, 20% of all businesses fail in the first year of operation, and financial constraints are a leading cause of the failures. Thus, accounting is the backbone of any business, especially startups. It determines its financial health and allows business owners to plan and account for funds accurately to secure their organization’s future. As expected, accounting software has become an indispensable part of managing a company’s finances. The software helps automate, simplify, and streamline manual financial processes, such as invoicing, reconciling bank statements, and recording daily transfers.
Quickbooks is a simple accounting software developed by Intuit that is designed for small and medium-sized businesses. It comes in different versions, formats, and packages that work for different companies. Today’s article looks at two main packages: Quickbooks Online and Quickbooks Desktop and explains the best for startup businesses.
Quickbooks Desktop is a built-in or locally hosted version that is installed on a single computer. Whereas Quickbooks Online is a cloud-hosted or browser-based version that you can install on multiple remote devices, including tablets, PCs, and smartphones, provided you have an internet connection.
The two are similar in multiple ways, including equal billing and bookkeeping features and a desirable customer experience. However, Quickbooks Desktop has a broader, more comprehensive, and developed range of features.
Selecting the best accounting software version for your company depends on the functionality you are looking for, your core financial features, and internal processes. Generally speaking, Quickbooks online is the best accounting software for startups.
That’s because it offers you more freedom and flexibility to run your growing business on the go. Quickbooks is encouraging more small and medium-sized companies to switch from Quickbooks Desktop to Quickbooks Online.
Quickbook Desktop remains a good choice for small and large organizations that prefer locally hosted software and need industry-specific reports.
Affordable Pricing
Affordability is vital for startups, and Quickbooks Online offers a more affordable alternative than Quickbooks Desktop. There is no upfront cost to gain access to the software. You get a 30-day free trial, and if you like what you find, you start paying a monthly subscription fee. There are various plans with varying prices you can choose from that start from as low as 12$ per month. Additionally, with QBO, you do not need to sign any contracts or commitment forms; hence, you can switch between plans or cancel your subscription whenever you wish.
Web-Based
QBO allows you to access your books from your web browser, so you don’t have to worry about operating system compatibility, which is a common problem when downloading and installing traditional software. You only need an internet connection to open up a world of accounting possibilities. With this web-based version, you can import all your customer contacts, sync your data to the cloud, and you can start automatic transaction updates and data backups.
Remote Access
Remote work is our new reality. Thus, many startup businesses can benefit from accessing their accounting reports and documents from anywhere. Because Quickbooks Online is web-based, you can access it using multiple devices and from various locations. Various users can use it, and you can specify the features each one of them gets to access. The online version also features a reliable accounting app that you can use to monitor cash flow, send invoices, track sales, and compute taxes from anywhere. Even better, you can take photos of your receipts and upload them on Quickbooks Online to keep track of your real-time expenses.
Automation Functions
Quickbooks Online is designed to provide you with convenience and help you save. For this reason, most of the tedious and taxing accounting processes, like customer billing, income and expense tracking, inventory management, downloading bank transactions, time and project tracking. Automation also ensures that your data is backed up every few minutes to enhance cloud data storage security. You also get to enjoy free software updates and upgrades and unlimited customer support, which is not possible with Quickbooks Desktop.
Electronic Invoicing
The invoicing capabilities of QBO are unmatched, starting with its ability to create attractive and customized customer invoices. You get to choose from various clean and modern invoices that your customers can access from their mobile devices. If you have synched your Quickbooks Online with Gmail, you can create and send invoices directly from your Gmail account and have them saved on your Gmail and Quickbooks. Electronic invoicing allows you to track invoices, auto-schedule invoices, translate invoices into six languages, send late payment reminders, and accept online payments.
Multiple Integrations
QuickBooks Online offers 650+ integrations with third-party applications, including apps that perform payment processing, email marketing, time tracking, payroll services, and customer relationship management. The integrations save you time and streamline multiple business processes that depend on the various software programs. In addition, they allow you to sync automatically, import, or export data in real-time. Quickbooks Desktop has fewer integrations, which limits the ability of startup business owners to accept online payments.
Simple and Friendly Interface
As aforementioned, QBO is designed with time-saving capabilities, which should make your work and life easier. It eliminates manual data entry by automatically matching your debit and credit card transactions with expenses, including payment links in your invoices to facilitate easy online payments and reconciling bank statements. The online software also includes multiple support and learning resources, such as training classes, video tutorials, and on-demand webinars.
Safety and Security
Quickbooks Online has multiple safety features that make it more secure than Quickbooks Desktop. These features include a password-protected login, secure encryption technology, and firewall-protected physical servers. Your data is automatically backed up, allowing restoration of previous data versions, and autosaves bookkeeping changes to enhance security.
It is clear that Quickbooks Online is the best accounting software for startup companies in today’s digital world. The features described above should convince you to switch to the web-based accounting platform, or if you are yet to subscribe to either, you can be confident that Quickbooks Online is a great choice. If you still have questions on the technology to run, Contact 403Tech and Award-Winning Calgary IT Support Company.
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