QuickBooks Enterprise

Avantages

I mostly use the "QuickBooks:Self-Employed" features of this software. I love the versatility with the mileage tracker that allows me either to have trips automatically tracked or to add and delete trips on my own. Living in a metropolitan area, the mileage tracker will sometimes count rides on public transportation as a car ride. I'm easily able to delete that trip and also check on my transactions to make sure that the money spent on transportation is documented appropriately as business or personal.
One of my VERY favorite features are under the "Reports" section. I love the ability to get a preview of what kind of information I'll be sharing at tax time. I can download an excel spreadsheet that breaks down all of my Schedule C Transactions as a different page for each category (assets, meals, etc.). Before I started using Quickbooks, I didn't even know what most of these terms event meant! Now I'm able to work more freely and confidently as a "first generation freelancer".

Inconvénients

When manually adding a trip to the mileage section, you are able to input the beginning address and the end address. However, QuickBooks does not have a feature that will calculate the miles between those addresses. As of now, I have to go back to my Google Maps app to see what the number of miles were. It makes the experience less fluid.

Avantages

The best part in QB is that it doesn’t allow others to toy around when it comes to managing the ‘returns for your efforts’.
You don’t need to be an accounting professional to work with QB, but a little playing around with the software gives you a glimpse of the workings and gradually guide you through to become an expert in managing your financial matters yourself or even supervise a basic level staff member in handling your financial matters if it’s a small to average scale business. The passwords systems at various levels ensure the security and prevent manipulation of data by other fellow users. With long years of improvements and with the feedback of users of various levels and a variety of trades, QB has become the leader in this category.
QB has simplified most of the bookkeeping tasks in a diverse array of businesses be it services, trading, manufacturing or your personal accounts. It has gone beyond accounting software to function as an ERP in our manufacturing facility. It has become another machine in our plant with no complaints of overwork, no leave, no annual bonuses, and no work stoppages. If the accounts guy is away, I myself take his place with all other priorities. It’s so simple even for those who are not IT savvy.

Inconvénients

whenever there are glitches, there are enough resources available in the community forums or the Intuit support team. Having said that, I wouldn’t say that QB is the only and perfect system, as there could be glitches during different applications, but with the help of the users, QB team can update the system for better performance for the benefit of all concerned.

Avantages

Quickbooks contains everything you could need for most organizations. The user interface is a bit difficult to navigate, and could use updating, but the funcionality is there. My favorite feature is being able to attached scans of documents or receipts right to a transaction. You can upload saved scans from your computer, or quickbooks will interface with a scanner to scan them directly into quickbooks, which is very handy. This cuts down on lots of paper in the office. Also, the accountant function is great for utilizing a 3rd party bookkeeper. You can send out a portion of the quickbooks file to your accountant to make changes, meanwhile still being able to use the software and update with new changes.

Inconvénients

The interface takes a lot of getting used to. The usual keyboard shortcuts don't work in Quickbooks, and pulling reports is clunky, but functional in the end. There is so much functionality packed in that it is hard to navigate to simple things sometimes. Not all companies need inventory management and purchase order tracking, and complicated payroll features, but some of these functions are always turned on.

Avantages

Once you familiarize yourself with the product it's easy to use. I have been using QuickBooks for 16 years for my small business for all of my daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly bookkeeping needs. It saves me time and money on accounting expenses and allows me to stay organized. Because I handle all the day to day accounting needs thru QuickBooks I only have to pay my accountant to handle my yearly tax return. And because QuickBooks makes it easy to stay organized with income, sales and expenditures my accountant spends less time preparing my tax return which also saves me money.

Inconvénients

That the Cloud version is a bit too pricey for my small business needs.

Avantages

MILEAGE TRACKING!!!
The software tracks your trips and you later pick business or personal for each trip. It shows you the address for both origina & destination, as well as time of day, which makes it easy to figure out what the trip was for. QB keeps an updated tally of your mileage deduction for tax purposes.

EASY CATEGORIZATION OF EXPENSES:
Automatically populates transactions from your bank AND credit card accountant into the ledger, so all you need to do is select which expense category it belongs t! Qb will ask if you want to set up a “rule” so that all transactions from AT&T (let’s say) are automatically categorized into utilities when they are imported from your financial institution.

INVOICES
Create a template and you can duplicate it later when billing the same person/business. You can easily send the invoice from the QB platform and what the client get s is a really professional, polished email with the invoice in the body of the email, and he receiver can download a pdf if they choose. QB keeps track of paid and unpaid invoices, making it easy to see who you need to follow up with for payment.

TAXES:
For tax purposes, the reports QB does make saving and tallying receipts a *ridiculous* practice. There is NO reason to ever do your books on excel. Too many mistakes when things are done manually. And it requires SO much time to input amounts, categories, etc. This is all done for you in a fraction of the time using QB Self-Employed.

Inconvénients

CHART OF ACCOUNTS:
I switched which credit card I use as my business card and want to stop automatically importing transactions from the old credit card (which I am now using for personal expenses). You can’t turn off imports for a particular account without losing all former transactions associated with that card/account. This completely changes the Profit and Loss reports. I had to call customer service and they had to do a whole delete thing where now all transactions from deleted accounts are called “cash,” which is misleading and unclear.

INCOME:
There is only one income category to choose from. I have to classes of self-employed work I do that uses the same bank account and credit card. I’d like a way to assign Income A and Income B, so that when I look at my Profit & Loss reports, I can see at a glance how much I earned from type A kind of work and how much I earned from Type B.

EXPENSE CATEGORIES
There is no way to add or change the provided categories. I understand QuickBooks does this so that each category that is offered is automatically associated with a particular tax deduction item approved by the IRS, but it would be nice to be able to add a category that suits my business and select the associated IRS deduction category when setting it up.

INVOICES
You can’t make up your own invoice numbers. I would like use the same first 2 numbers or even letters for each client I invoice, but you can’t. You have to use QB’s automatic numbering system.