QuickBooks Review: Is It Really Worth It?

*Prices are in CAD. 

Of all bookkeeping software, QuickBooks has long boasted the biggest market share. It owes its popularity to multiple factors: ease of use, comprehensiveness, and decent value for money.

Although the platform may seem more expensive than its competitors at first glance, the advantages it offers extend beyond the platform itself.

QuickBooks subscribers get access not just to powerful bookkeeping tools but also to a strong ecosystem of integrations, an extensive selection of support resources, and a massive community of platform experts, financial management professionals, and fellow users.

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QuickBooks Interface Overview

When you open QuickBooks, the first thing you’ll see is your home page. Surrounding it are two navigation bars: a title bar for supporting actions and a sidebar for tasks that support bookkeeping workflows. 

The left sidebar gives you quick access to essential bookkeeping tools.

• Create (+ New): Opens the fly-out menu where you can start new transactions such as invoices, expenses, bills, estimates, payments, and more.
• Bookmarks: Let you save any page so you can return to it with one click.
• Home (Dashboard): A customizable home page that shows shortcuts to common actions, recent business activity, and at-a-glance visualizations for financial data.
• Feed: A page summarising recent activity and financial updates across all business areas, including invoices, profit and loss, payments, and more. This page also includes IntuitAssist, an AI tool that offers suggestions based on your data and goals.
• Reports: Opens the list of all reporting options, including standard reports, custom reports, and analytics tools.
• All Apps: Gives you access to all major QuickBooks features. This includes accounting, sales, expenses, banking, payroll, and more.

At the bottom of the sidebar bar lies the Pinned section, which lets you pin your favorite tools for easy access.

Meanwhile, the title bar leads to high-level utility actions that are essential for account management but fall outside your main bookkeeping workflow. It consists of the following buttons and components:

• Logo / Company name: A shortcut that takes you back to the Home (Dashboard) screen.
• Search bar: Lets you quickly find transactions, contacts, reports, or other data. You can search by name, number, date, or amount.
• Contact Experts: Provides a way to reach professional help or support resources for bookkeeping questions or guidance.
• Integrations: Opens a list of connected apps and services. From here, you can manage or add integrations that work with your account.
• Notifications: Shows alerts, updates, or important notices related to your account, transactions, or system messages.
• Settings (Gear icon): Opens the settings menu where you can configure your company, update lists, manage users, change preferences, and access tools.
• Help: Gives access to help resources such as tutorials, articles, or chat support for guidance when you need it.
• User Account / Profile: Lets you manage your account, check profile details, and log out when needed.

QuickBooks designed its interface to support smooth workflows. It allows you to create bookmarks or shortcuts for your most frequently used apps and provides easy access to bookkeeping actions. While the breadth of available features can make the interface overwhelming to navigate, the straightforward labels, search bar, and chatbot support are there to help you find what you need. 

Does QuickBooks Have a Mobile App?

QuickBooks is also available on iOS and Android. Though these versions exclude some of the software’s more advanced features, they still let users do the following:

• Create and send invoices and estimates
• Send sales receipts
• Record customer payments
• Snap photos of receipts and attach them to expenses or bills
• Record and categorize expenses
• View basic activity dashboards
• Track mileage 
• Add or edit customer and vendor details
• Add or edit products and services
• Attach notes or photos to transactions
• Get alerts for invoice and payment updates

Feedback for the app is mostly positive, but there is a disconnect between user ratings and written reviews. Although ratings average at around 4.7 out of 5 stars on the App Store and 4.2 on Google Play, the majority of written reviews complain about unreliable functionality. 

Key Features

QuickBooks breaks its features down into multiple apps. Each focuses on a specific area of bookkeeping, making it easier to locate tools and initiate actions. 

Accounting

The accounting app covers all activities related to tracking, categorizing, and organizing transactions. Features under the accounting app include:

• View bank transactions: This page provides a tabular view of all banking transactions from connected accounts. Each entry shows critical information, such as dates, descriptions, payees, and amounts spent or received. You can categorize transactions directly from this page. 
• View transactions from other sources: This page displays your transactions from connected sales channels, including Amazon Business, Shopify, PayPal, Square, Etsy, WooCommerce, and more. 
• Attach receipts: This page lets you attach receipts and match them to existing transactions. It also provides a summary of all receipt details, including dates, vendors, amounts paid, and categories. 
• Reconcile accounts: This feature allows you to perform bank reconciliations automatically. It ensures that your QuickBooks records align with your bank statements. 
• Create categorization rules: This allows you to establish rules for auto-categorization. These rules tell the system which types of transactions belong to which category, speeding up manual sorting. 
• View and edit chart of accounts: This allows you to create and edit account types, such as bank balances, accounts receivable, inventory assets, and credit card expenses. You can also view balances per account. 
• View and edit recurring transactions: This allows you to create, edit, and view recurring transactions, such as rent payments and utility bills. 
• Revenue recognition automation: This lets you create schedules that record revenue at the moment you earn it, regardless of payment timing. 
• View fixed assets: This shows you a summary of your fixed assets and calculates their value after depreciation. 

Expenses and Bills

The Expenses and Bills app encompasses all activities related to spending. It lets you do the following:

• View spending overview: You can view a graphical summary of spending over time, including summaries of spending by supplier, category, class, or location. This tab also provides insights into your spending history and links to shortcuts for spending-related tasks. 
• Categorize expenses: This provides a tabular summary of all expenses. From here, you can categorize each expense or edit details. 
• View, edit, and pay vendors: This outlines details about the vendors you work with, including company names, contact information, and open balances. You can view what you owe each vendor and send payments directly from the page. 
• View billing summary: This summarizes all bills, including due dates, due amounts, and statuses. You can schedule or initiate instant payments directly from the page. 
• Track mileage: You can track mileage directly from your QuickBooks mobile app as you move. The app’s built-in mileage tracker will then display your total miles and calculate potential deductions. 
• View, edit, and pay contractors: Similar to the vendors page, this allows you to view and pay the contractors you work with. 

Sales and Payments

The sales and payments tab, called the Sales & Get Paid tab on the software, groups all tasks related to receiving income. This app lets you:

• View income overview: This provides a summary of income-related activity. It includes a visualization of income over time, a list of overdue invoices, and shortcuts to payment-related actions and tasks. 
• View and edit sales transactions: This summarizes all sales. It includes a visualization comparing total estimates, unbilled income, overdue invoices, open invoices, and recently paid invoices. It also provides a tabular view of sales activity details, including sales types, customer names, and amounts due. 
• Create, view, and edit invoices: This summarizes all invoicing activity. It provides a visualization comparing overdue invoices against unpaid open invoices, and another visualization for undeposited paid invoices and deposited paid invoices. It also lists all invoicing activity with details like dates, customer names, amounts due, and statuses. 
• Set up recurring payments: This allows you to schedule recurring payments. It is only available with Essentials plans and up. 
• Set up sales orders: This lets you create and manage sales orders so you can track items promised to customers before you invoice them. You can review open, fulfilled, and closed sales orders and convert them to invoices when you are ready to bill.
• Connect sales channels and view reports: This allows you to link your online sales channels, such as e-commerce or point-of-sale platforms, so your orders automatically sync into QuickBooks. You can also view reports that show sales performance across all connected channels.
• View inventory: This shows your current stock levels, item details, and inventory values. You can track what you have on hand, see which items need restocking, and review inventory-related transactions.

Customer Hub

The Customer Hub brings all customer-related activity into one place, allowing you to manage relationships, track interactions, and monitor open work.

• View customer activity summary: This page gives you a snapshot of each customer’s activity, including recent invoices, payments, estimates, and outstanding balances.
• Create, view, and edit customers: This lets you add new customers or update existing records. You can adjust contact details, billing information, and any notes you keep about the relationship.
• Create, view, and edit estimates: This allows you to build estimates, review their status, and convert approved estimates into invoices with a few clicks.
• View reviews: This shows the feedback your customers have shared, giving you insight into their experience and helping you respond or make improvements.

Team Management

The Team Management app helps you organize the people you work with and keep track of their information.

• Manage employees and contractors: This lets you add, view, and update employee and contractor profiles. You can track details such as contact information, pay rates, and active status.
• Set up workers’ compensation: This allows you to set up workers’ compensation, which is a type of insurance that covers work-related injury or illness costs, such as medical costs, lost wages, rehabilitation, or other support.

Time-Tracking

The Time Tracking app helps you record and review the hours worked by your team.

• Track hours: This allows employees or contractors to log their time. You can review these entries and use them for billing, payroll, or project costing.
• View project overview: This shows how tracked time connects to your projects, clarifying progress, workload, and labor costs.

Projects

If you subscribe to QuickBooks Plus or Advanced, you get access to the Projects app. It provides a clear view of each project, including visualizations of details like income, expenses, time entries, and overall profitability.

Taxes

QuickBooks provides two tax-related apps: Sales Tax and Business Tax. 

• Sales Tax: This monitors the tax you collect from customers. You can set up tax rates, calculate tax on payments, and track what you owe to tax agencies. You can also file and record sales tax payments. 
• Business Tax: This app monitors the tax your business is responsible for. It provides an estimate of taxable profit and a checklist of items to prepare before tax season. 

Reporting

While reporting is not included under QuickBooks’ app center, it is a key feature of the platform. Reporting gives you access to a wide range of business performance reports, including business overview reports, sales and customer reports, expense and vendor reports, employee reports, and accounting reports. It consists of the following pages:

• Standard reports: This page lists all built-in reports available in QuickBooks. These include essentials such as financial statements, sales summaries, inventory reports, and expense breakdowns. You can run reports using preset filters and adjust the date ranges to fit your needs.
• Custom reports: This lets you save your own versions of standard reports. You can modify columns, apply filters, change grouping, and reorder sections. Once customized, you can save and reuse the report whenever you need it.
• Management reports: This page allows you to create polished reporting packages that combine multiple reports with cover pages, notes, and summaries. 
• KPIs: This provides a quick view of key performance indicators relevant to your business goals. You can track trends in sales, expenses, cash flow, or other important metrics to stay aware of your financial health.
• Spreadsheet sync: This page lets you connect QuickBooks to spreadsheets so you can pull report data into Excel or Google Sheets. You can refresh the data as needed and keep spreadsheets updated without manual entry.
• Performance center: QuickBooks Advanced users get access to the Performance Center, which provides dashboards and other visualizations, allowing you to track trends, compare periods, and spot patterns in your numbers.

Financial planning: This feature supports budgeting and financial forecasting. You can build budgets, compare actual numbers against goals, and plan for future periods using the financial data.

QuickBooks Plans

Like most bookkeeping software, QuickBooks offers scalable plans for all business sizes. Though plans are pricier than competitor offerings, they are also more comprehensive from the get-go, offering receipt capture, mileage tracking, estimates, invoices, and AI support even at the most basic tiers. These plans are best suited to small businesses and larger. 

EasyStart

EasyStart is QuickBooks’ most basic plan. It offers all necessary bookkeeping tasks, including automated bookkeeping, unlimited invoices, unlimited estimates, and extensive reporting. Useful supplementary features include mileage tracking, cash flow planning, and AI assistants. The only critical features it is missing are bill management, recurring invoices, and time-tracking.

These features make QuickBooks EasyStart suitable for small businesses. However, solopreneurs, freelancers, contractors, and self-employed individuals might find the price point too steep. If you have smaller bookkeeping needs, you may be better served by FreshBooks, which costs $22 per month and offers unlimited invoicing, estimates, time-tracking, and mileage tracking. The only caveat is that it limits billable clients to five. 

Essentials

Essentials is the most complete QuickBooks package. It adds a number of valuable features, including bill management, time-tracking, lead management, and reputation management. It also provides a few quality-of-life upgrades, such as the option to set up recurring invoices, add two more non-accountant users, and collaborate with AI-assistance.

QuickBooks Essentials can be a worthwhile investment if you are a small- to mid-sized business. It provides all necessary bookkeeping features at a relatively fair cost. However, if you find it too expensive, some decent alternatives are Xero Standard, which offers bill management and unlimited invoicing at just $55 per month, and FreshBooks Premium, which provides bill management, unlimited invoicing, and project profitability reports for $60. 

Plus

QuickBooks Plus gives businesses more control over complex operations. It includes free inventory tracking, ideal for retailers, e-commerce stores, or any business with fast-moving stock. It also offers project management, which helps agencies track profitability across multiple projects or clients.

The monthly fee for QuickBooks Plus is higher than many competitor solutions. While inventory tracking and project management add real value, not every business needs both at once, so the price may not always be justified. For a more cost-effective option, consider pairing a lower-tier QuickBooks plan with an external solution.

Advanced

QuickBooks Advanced is designed for larger businesses. Its main selling points are advanced reporting, deeper financial insights, and higher user capacity. Its best feature is the Performance Center, which displays real-time dashboards and KPIs, giving users a broader view of financial performance. This plan also supports up to 25 users, making it ideal for businesses with larger teams or multiple departments.

This plan is most suitable for high-revenue companies that require sophisticated financial management, such as multi-location retailers, growing e-commerce businesses, or agencies handling multiple projects simultaneously. However, most businesses may struggle to justify the $220 monthly fee. In these scenarios, it may be more cost-effective to use a pair of lower-tier plans with third-party apps.

When to Choose an Alternative

Despite being the most popular bookkeeping software, QuickBooks isn’t the best fit for every situation. It can cover the needs of most small- to mid-sized businesses, but falls short when it comes to multi-user support, budget-friendliness, and industry-specific tools. 

You work with a large team

The number of available user seats depends on your chosen QuickBooks package.  EasyStart allows one user, Essentials allows three, Plus allows five, and Advanced allows twenty-five.  QuickBooks does not offer extra seats for purchase, so the only way to add users is to upgrade plans. This can be inconvenient for teams that need more access but do not need the added features or higher cost of a top-tier plan.

If the above scenario applies to you, the best alternative is Xero. Every Xero plan allows unlimited users, which lets you choose the package you want without paying extra for additional seats.

You are on a budget

With plans starting at $30 per month, QuickBooks is far from the most budget-friendly bookkeeping software. It can provide great value to users who can afford it, but may be inaccessible to businesses that are just starting out. If you only need basic bookkeeping services, consider using Zoho Books, which provides invoicing, journals, online payment acceptance, and financial reports for free. 

You need advanced inventory tracking, job costing, or project management features

QuickBooks’s versatile bookkeeping tools can accommodate most small- to mid-sized businesses. However, its built-in features do not cover all industry-specific needs. Features like advanced inventory, in-depth job costing, or full project management are limited or only available in higher-tier plans or integrations. If you need these specialized capabilities, consider exploring software tailored to your industry. 

To find alternatives, check out our industry-specific buyer’s guides.

• Best Bookkeeping Software for Churches
• Best Bookkeeping Software for Construction Companies
• Best Farm Bookkeeping Software
• Best Bookkeeping Software for Nonprofits
• Best Property Management Bookkeeping Software
• Best Bookkeeping Software for Restaurants

QuickBooks vs. Competitors

What Users are Saying

Feedback about QuickBooks on user review platforms is predominantly positive. The company scored an average of 4.3 stars on Capterra and 4.5 stars on G2, based on thousands of reviews. Positive reviews typically praised the software’s accessibility and comprehensiveness. Users found the QuickBooks interface extremely intuitive and claimed that it made bookkeeping tasks easy to execute. 

Negative reviews typically commented on the software’s price point. Many found the monthly fee and extra cost of add-ons too steep for the value the software provided. They also disliked that useful features were exclusive to expensive plans. Outside pricing, users complained that the system was occasionally slow or laggy, and that advanced features were far less intuitive than basic features. 

Bottomline

• Enormous market share: As the most widely used bookkeeping software, QuickBooks has engendered an abundance of supplementary resources, tutorials, and discussions. It is also popular among accountants and bookkeepers, which makes it easier for businesses to find financial management partners.
• Comprehensive reporting: QuickBooks provides an extensive library of reports, including financial statements, custom reports, and dashboards. Even at the basic level, it offers useful visualizations and financial planning tools.
• Intuitive user interface: The QuickBooks interface was designed to support bookkeeping workflows. Common tasks are easy to access via shortcuts, bookmarks, and pins, while search bars and chatbot assistants allow easy navigation.

Although QuickBooks is more expensive than most competitors, the investment is often worth it. Plans provide a powerful set of features that cover all bookkeeping needs. The strength of the QuickBooks brand name also adds to the software’s value. Because QuickBooks is so popular, it has inspired a wealth of resources, tutorials, and community discussions. QuickBooks users who outsource bookkeeping will also find it easy to find software experts to work with. 

Start Your Bookkeeping Journey with EpicBooks

The right support can make bookkeeping a breeze. EpicBooks provides bookkeeping, accounting, and financial management guidance tailored to your organization’s needs and objectives. With extensive bookkeeping experience and an in-depth understanding of Canadian markets, our experts can help you modernize your bookkeeping systems. We offer a comprehensive range of bookkeeping services, including account reconciliation, asset management, journal entries, and financial reporting. 

FAQs

Can I learn QuickBooks by myself?

Yes, you can learn QuickBooks on your own. While its many features can make the interface feel overwhelming at first, QuickBooks uses clear labels that make everything easy to find. QuickBooks also provides a search bar for easy navigation and an in-app chatbot to answer any software-related questions. 

Can I use QuickBooks without an accountant or bookkeeper?

You can run QuickBooks without an accountant or bookkeeper. The interface was designed to be accessible to users of all levels, including beginners. Tasks like invoicing, expense categorization, and payroll are easy to execute. 

However, having an accountant can help you maximize QuickBooks’ potential. Accountants can access your financial data, such as your journals, reports, and dashboards, and extract deeper insights. They can use their expertise to conceptualize financial management strategies that align with your organization’s needs and goals. 

How safe is my data with QuickBooks?

QuickBooks protects your data with multiple layers of security. It encrypts your information during transmission and while it is stored, the same level of protection is used by major banks. Your data lives on secure servers with 24/7 monitoring, firewalls, backups, and environmental safeguards. QuickBooks also keeps regular backups across multiple locations, making it easy to recover data in case of hardware failure or accidental deletion.

Customizable user permissions allow you to control who has access to your account. Bank connections are read-only, so QuickBooks can see transaction data without moving money. The software also maintains audit trails and activity logs, allowing you to track who made changes and when.