Quickbooks Online Review

Online accounting software or Cloud Accounting Software options continue to grow as an increasing number of service providers offer new and intuitive accounting software solutions. Quickbooks which has been a long term key market player in the accounting software sector in Australia has released their own cloud accounting software solution named Quickbooks Online. Throughout this article we will take a look at what their new accounting software offering brings to the market.
Try Before You Buy
Quickbooks offer a 30 day free trial and offer their accounting software at a lower price compared to the majority of other service providers in the marketplace. The trial version gives a user full functionality of everything Quickbooks Online has to offer. At which point after the 30 days expire you have the opportunity to subscribe or the Quickbooks Online (visit their website) will deactivate the trial.
Dashboard or Home Page
One of the main features of Quickbooks that distinguishes it from the rest is its simple navigation interface. Once logged in, a user will automatically be redirected to a the home screen containing a Click Map – similar to the Quickbooks Desktop offering which gives the user who may lack understanding of general bookkeeping processes, an understanding of the typical process from sale through to reconciliation and purchase through to reconciliation. The Home page also contains a list of Quick links for easy navigation to tasks which are undertaken regularly, a list of recent transactions and a tasks and messages section where Quickbooks will offer hints and advice and enable the user to add task reminder to be attended to at a later date. For user convenience Quickbooks Online allows users the ability to customise this page as the user sees fit.
Sales Function
Quickbooks Online sales features are still fairly basic but will support the average small and medium sized business that don’t need to account for inventory. Customer set up is fairly fast and the ability to create and send an invoice on the run is a definite upside. A big plus is the ability to use Quickbooks Online to accept credit card payments needing no additional software, obviously additional fees do apply as per normal merchant transactions. A feature which is really mandatory these days is the ability to customise invoices to suit which is available to users. The downside at this stage is the invoicing function is still very basic which does not allow users to capture additional information that they may want to create reports on at a later stage.
Purchases Function

The purchasers function in Quickbooks Online will allow a user to do all the standard functions which a user requires to run the business. Some key features are:

• The ability to write notes on an invoice which will not be seen by the client when sent.
• The ability to set credit limits for Vendors
• The ability to add attachments to each invoice.
• The ability to raise a purchase order and later convert to a bill.

The screens are easy to navigate and not cumbersome with the detail which needs to be provided in order to execute each step.
Banking

In our opinion the greatest achievement of Quickbooks Online Accounting Software which will save you time and money is the ability to upload bank files to hasten the bank reconciliation process. Unfortunately as this is not a product originated in Australia, this feature is not offered to customers with accounts in a typical Australian bank. This is a short coming which hopefully will be rectified very soon.
Reporting
Another great feature offered by Quickbooks Online is the very visual and simple reporting layouts. Divided into sections for company, customers and employees, banking, accountant and taxes and lists the reports provide well-organised up-to date information that is required on a day to day basis to effectively manage a business. All the typical reports are available such as the profit and loss, balance sheet, ageing payable and receivables are available but beyond this Quickbooks Online offer the use of graphs which was a strength of their desktop offering.
Conclusion
Overall we would class this product as a work in progress due to the fact it is still a relatively new product and has not had the opportunity to have a great deal of customer feedback in order to shape and improve their offering. There are still a number of short comings particularly in relation to the bank feeds, however as this product is improved Quickbooks Online will certainly be a product to look out for in the future. For further information get in contact with this bookkeeping service provider.