QuickBooks: Choosing the Right Edition
With many small and mid-sized businesses moving to QuickBooks, Intuit offers QuickBooks for every business type, each version tailored to specific business type. Sometimes it becomes really difficult for a business to choose the right software from the gamut of editions QuickBooks has to offer. However the information below should help you make that right decision, choose the right version according to your need and budget.
QuickBooks Online: Simple Start Edition
For a business with a very basic accounting needs, a single user edition, comes at a very low cost of under $15 per month, this edition does good enough. You can create invoices and email it to your customers, can track income and expenses and see your how your business is doing through the report it creates.
You can even download your bank transactions, print checks and record transactions. Its very easy to setup and use, but it doesn’t offer features like entering bills, managing inventory, tracking time, or sharing your company file with your accountant.
QuickBooks Online: Essentials Edition
Now if you’re a small business and expanding ,you can have up to 3 users use QuickBooks simultaneously for just under $30 per month .This essential edition also lets you manage and pay bills to your vendor, set up recurring invoices and comes with a lot more detailed built in reports, help you compare your earnings with industry trends.
QuickBooks Online: Plus Edition
The Online plus edition allows up to 5 users access. It offers great features often seen in the QuickBooks Pro and Premier Desktop editions. You can track inventory, create and send purchase orders, Prepare and print 1099s, track billable hours by customer, you can create estimates and budgets for your business.
Class tracking, tracking sales and profitability for each location are other important features offered under this edition. All this comes under a low cost of under $40 per month.
QuickBooks Pro Edition:
QuickBooks Pro edition is by far the most popular edition of QuickBooks. If you are a starter this version can help you a lot as it simple to use and does not require you to have a strong accounting background.
This version can be used for up to 3 users who can access the company file simultaneously in a multiuser mode. Being a Pro edition it does a lot for you, it allows you to have a total of 14500 customers, vendors, employees and other names combined together.
With QuickBooks pro you can Create & E-Mail Invoices, Purchase Orders, Print Checks, Pay Bills And Manage Expenses, Track Sales And Customer Payments, Track Sales Taxes, Manage Payroll, Payroll Taxes And Direct Deposits, Download Bank And Credit Card Transactions, Customize Your Invoices And Other Forms, Track Inventory, Set Reorder Points.
QuickBooks Premier Edition:
With QuickBooks Premier Edition you can have up to 5 users access one Company File simultaneously. There are six different industry specific editions within the premier edition to choose from. They are:
1. The General Business edition
2.The Contractor edition
3. Manufacturing & Wholesale edition
4. The Nonprofit edition
5. The Professional Services edition
6. The Retail edition.
Besides tracking inventory this edition also lets you Create Inventory Assemblies And Bills Of Material, Create Industry-Specific Reports, Forecast Sales And Expenses, Create A Business Plan and Create & E-Mail Sales Orders.
QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions:
QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions is the most robust version of QuickBooks designed for mid-sized business .Though this version can also be used by small sized business if the number of QuickBooks users exceeds five users. This edition allows up to 30 simultaneous users in one specific company file.
It also allows you to work on a secondary company file at the same time while you have the other company file open. Over a period of time QuickBooks Pro or Premier file gets large and often slows the performance while using in multiuser mode in the respective edition ,though there is no limit set on the pro or premier edition , enterprise edition often solves the problem as it has been optimized for working with large database files to work over a network.
It allows seamless upgrade from Pro or Premier Edition if you also decide to add more QuickBooks users in the same company file. Furthermore enterprise edition can be used for businesses who require advance features like Tracking inventory in multiple warehouses, serial/lot # tracking, bin location tracking, bar coding capabilities and FIFO costing.