Hey there I'm James and in this video we'll compare three different quickbooks online
plans to find out which one's right for you and your business we'll be looking at simple start
plus and advance I'll run through the features that each version offers, we'll talk a bit about payroll
and then at the end we'll weigh up the pros and cons of each version to find out which is best
for your situation so you can start by running a search for quickbooks online plans and pricing
or if you live in the US and you'd like to support this channel then you can scroll down
below this video and click on my affiliate link that way i'll make a small commission
should you choose to sign up and here are the three quickbooks online plans that I mentioned
at the beginning simple start, plus and advanced each of these requires you to pay a monthly
subscription and since quickbooks online is a cloud-based accounting software package you'll
have the flexibility to work from anywhere on any device so long as you have an internet connection
I should quickly mention that to the right of these we have quickbooks desktop pro plus this
is the entry level of quickbooks desktop please don't confuse it with quickbooks online it's an
entirely different beast quickbooks desktop needs to be installed locally on your computer and
nowadays you need to pay an annual license fee in order to use it but today we're going to focus on
quickbooks online and these three plans we'll kick things off with simple start simple start is the
cheapest of all the quickbooks online plans its regular price is 25 dollars per month which gets you all
of these basic features you're only allowed one user but you are able to invite an accountant
to help you out simple start helps you track your income and expenses which is essential
in any accounting software you can set it up to securely and automatically import your business's
bank transactions directly into quickbooks online that's a huge time saver the software then does
its best to sort your transactions into different tax categories to reduce the amount of work that
you have to do another cool feature that you get with simple start is the ability to capture
and organize your receipts using the quickbooks online mobile app this means that when you next
pay for a business expense you can use your phone to snap the receipt on the go the app uploads the
photo into quickbooks online and registers the transaction this helps keep you organized and
prepared for tax time since all of your evidence is stored in one place and speaking of tax time
quickbooks online can help you maximize your tax deductions when that dreaded season begins you'll
have everything you need stored in one place all your businesses income and expense transactions
which you allocated to the appropriate tax categories already at least i hope so all of this
information can be shared with your accountant so you can feel relaxed and prepared the mobile app
can also help you out with mileage tracking so when you're next driving along you can use your
phone's GPS to reliably log your miles then you can categorize the trips as business or personal
with a swipe of your thumb in the us intuit have partnered with green dot bank to offer you a free
quickbooks cash business account in theory this helps you manage your cash flow and lets you do
all of your bookkeeping and banking in one place but don't feel like you have to use this if you're
happy with your current bank simple start also lets you invoice customers and accept payments
you can use it to create professional looking custom templates with your business's logo once
you've sent an invoice you can track its status and issue payment reminders if you need to and
once you receive the payments you can match them to invoices no bother another key feature of any
accounting software is the ability to run reports simple start lets you run a basic set of general
reports which includes the three main financial statements the income statement which tracks your
income and expenses over a period of time, the cash flow statement which summarizes your cash inflows
and outflows over a period of time and the balance sheet which shows your assets, liabilities
and equity at a point in time in simple start you can also create and send estimates what
does that mean? It means that if you need to give a customer a quote a bid or a proposal for a new
job then you can fill out a template like this one it looks almost identical to an invoice template
but it won't charge the customer if you win the work then you can convert the estimate into an
invoice without having to go through the hassle of entering all of the details all over again finally
simple start helps you stay on top of your sales tax and keeps a record of all your payments to
independent contractors so you can fill out your 1099 forms but what about quickbooks online plus
this plan is a hefty upgrade on simple start but it does come at a price eighty dollars per month
so what does all that money get you plus includes all of the same stuff as simple start but you also
get up to five users and some extra reports including accounts receivable, accounts payable
inventory, enhanced sales, class and profitability reports if you need to track time plus allows you
to fill out employee timesheets you can enter these yourself or let your employees do it
themselves and on top of that you can track your billable hours by client which you can later
add to invoices quickbooks online plus also gives you the ability to manage and pay
bills so if your business regularly owes money to suppliers or is owed money from customers i.e you
sell products or services in a buy now pay later type situation then you can use plus to organize
all your bills and invoices in one place you can even schedule and make payments online
when they're due you can also measure income and expenses by project using job costing so you can
keep an eye on profitability by project and plus opens up inventory management that means you can
track products and record cost of goods sold for any physical inventory that you're selling
quickbooks online advanced at a whopping 180 dollars per month it's more than double the cost of plus
that money gets you up to 25 users and now you get access to quickbooks online's powerful smart
reports these help you review key metrics like revenue and cash flow all from one dashboard
advanced also lets you set custom user permissions to control who can or cannot see certain things
and you're also able to speed up some monotonous tasks by batching up invoices and expenses the
smart reports that I mentioned a moment ago include business analytics and insights which is
powered by fathom it lets you track your financial and non-financial key performance indicators to
see how well your business is doing you can also create pretty reports for presentation purposes
and you have the ability to compare, rank and benchmark your company's clients or franchisees
quickbooks online advanced also gives you enhanced custom fields so you can track a certain criteria
which you can then search, sort and filter it integrates with premium apps like bill.com
salesforce and hubspot and you get a dedicated account team who you can call, email or schedule
an appointment with you can also resolve technical support questions quickly with experts who are
available 24/7 on the phone or via chat intuit also offers quickbooks online advanced users free
on-demand online training so you can nail down how everything works you can automate workflows to
reduce errors and make things more efficient and you can continuously and automatically back up any
changes you make so you can restore your company data to how it was at a particular date and time
if you mess up that might come in handy also I should mention one more thing before we jump
into our final summary payroll these three plans don't include payroll if you have any employees
then you'll need to add it let's say i go with quickbooks online plus i'll click select and we'll
jump to the payroll tab where there are three options payroll core, payroll premium and payroll
elite each of these charge an additional monthly fee as well as an extra amount per employee per
month i know it all adds up doesn't it core is the cheapest option to get full service payroll
it costs you forty five dollars per month and an extra four dollars per employee per month premium
costs seventy five dollars per month and an extra eight dollars per employee per month it processes
direct deposits faster gives you access to the HR support center, an expert review and mobile time
and location tracking elite is the most expensive payroll plan it costs 125 dollars per month and 10
dollars per employee per month a quickbooks payroll expert will complete your setup if you give them
all that they need to do it you'll get tax penalty protection on IRS penalty fees and interest up to
25,000 dollars per year, 24/7 expert support and a personal HR advisor anyway you can select an option and
add it to your plan or you can choose to ignore payroll completely for now because you can always
add it later so which quickbooks online is right for you? Simple start is obviously the cheapest
at 25 dollars per month it could be a great bookkeeping option for small startup businesses that sell
digital products or services but keep in mind this only covers the basics and you only get one user
plus costs 80 dollars per month and adds on bills, time tracking, inventory tracking and profitability
by project you also get up to five users if your business sells physical products and you need to
track your inventory then you'll need plus at a minimum and finally quickbooks online advanced is
into its premium offering it costs 180 dollars per month and gives you a heap of custom tools that can help
you grow your business with advanced you get up to 25 users and the ability to customize access by
role along with batching and automating processes and tasks to increase your productivity it's been
designed for high-growth medium-sized businesses my advice would be to choose conservatively
you can easily upgrade if you need to but why spend extra money on features that you
don't need it's also possible to downgrade but that's not quite as simple depending on
where you're based there's also quickbooks online essentials it slots in in between simple start and
plus and it lets you manage your bills and track time but it doesn't let you track inventory or
project profitability like you can in plus every business is different and requires
different features so it's worth doing the research to find out exactly what you need
well i hope that helped clear a few things up for you and best of luck on your quickbooks adventure