Find our which QuickBooks online pricing plan fits your business and growth stage the best, so you don’t waste money on your accounting software. Updated on April 2, 2021 Martin Luenendonk QuickBooks Online offers four pricing plans for a wide range of small businesses and independent contractors. QuickBooks is by far the most recognizable name in the accounting software space. QuickBooks Online (QBO) is a cloud-based alternative to QuickBooks Desktop. The mobility of the platform is appealing to many users, despite frequent complaints of bugs and poor customer support. At a glance, QuickBooks Online pricing seems more reasonable than the Desktop version (starting at $299).

Whether you are a business owner starting a brand new small business or moving your existing books online, we have several QuickBooks® Online subscription options to fit your needs as your business grows. Let’s review each subscription level of QuickBooks Online and associated cost to help you find the best version of QuickBooks for your small business. Note: Pricing varies for each product; pricing can be reviewed online.

• QuickBooks Online Advanced is priced at $150 per month for 25 users, up to 3 accountant seats, and all features. Businesses can also benefit from a free 30 day trail. Competitors Pricing.
• About Quickbooks Online. QuickBooks Online is a web-based accounting solution that caters to individual accountants and small businesses. The solution helps with bank reconciliation, tracking expenses, drafting invoices and monitoring financial reports, among others.

Self-Employed

QuickBooks Self-Employed is designed specifically for independent contractors and freelancers who file a Schedule C form with their 1040 at year-end.

In QuickBooks Self-Employed, you’ll securely import transactions from your bank accounts and credit cards to easily separate business versus personal transactions, categorizing business transactions to Schedule C tax categories as you go. QuickBooks will estimate quarterly tax payments and help you avoid late fees.

• Using the mobile app, QuickBooks Self-Employed can automatically track mileage without draining your phone’s battery. Snap photos of receipts and QuickBooks’ receipt capture tool will record your expenses, helping you maximize your deductions at tax time.
• Create and send invoices to track sales, with the option to turn on QuickBooks Payments to accept credit cards and bank transfers from customers, right within the invoice (additional fees apply).
• Invite your accountant to review your books at no additional cost, or connect to TurboTax to file your state and federal returns (additional fees may apply).

The cost of QuickBooks Self-Employed is $15 per month. You’ll be able to access the account anywhere with an internet connection. Customer Support is included and available via live chat and email. QuickBooks Self-Employed is a major upgrade for those who are currently tracking in Excel, storing receipts in shoeboxes, or have no system of organizing their business finances for Schedule-C form filing.

Although QuickBooks Self -Employed cannot be configured for other business types/tax forms, you can leverage IRS resources or work with an accounting professional if you are unsure of your filing requirements. In addition, QuickBooks Self- Employed is not a good fit for small businesses that manage open invoices and/or bills across customer and vendor lists, pay contractors or employees, track inventory, or need a custom chart of accounts with financial reporting. If these needs apply to your business, consider a different subscription level.

Simple Start

QuickBooks Online Simple Start is designed to support sole proprietors, LLCs, partnerships, and other types of small businesses because you can configure the chart of accounts with up to 250 accounts to meet your needs. However, it is a best fit for solo-entrepreneur small business owners with basic accounting needs.

• Use Simple Start to track income and expenses. Securely import transactions from your bank accounts and credit card accounts, and create custom rules to automatically add categorized transactions. QuickBooks connects with thousands of financial institutions, helping you reduce data entry and keep your books current.
• Simple Start allows for unlimited estimates, invoices, and sales receipts. You can enable the option to accept credit cards and bank transfer payments from customers by using QuickBooks Payments (additional fees apply). Use sales form templates to create custom invoices, with the option to track up to three custom fields. In Simple Start, you can track accounts receivable, run reports to track sales, and monitor cash flow.
• Sales Tax rates are also automatically calculated for you based on what you sell, where you are, and where you ship, helping you stay compliant and file your sales tax returns, right within QuickBooks.
• Upload, email, or take photos of your receipts and QuickBooks’ receipt capture tool will help you categorize expenses. You can create sales transactions on the go using the mobile app and easily track sales at a glance.
• Simple Start is for one user, but you can invite up to two accounting firms to review your books at no additional cost. Add on a payroll subscription to pay employees and 1099 contractors by 24-hour direct deposit and handle payroll taxes, right within QuickBooks (additional fees apply).
• Run 20+ reports to monitor the health of your business. Schedule reports to email automatically, even to users not on QuickBooks.

Simple Start is not a good fit for businesses that manage multiple users, track inventory, create purchase orders, track billable time and expenses, manage bills (accounts payable), track projects for job costing, create budgets, manage multiple currencies, or need more detailed reporting. If these needs apply to your business, consider a different subscription level.

Essentials

QuickBooks Online Essentials has all of the features included in Simple Start, with extra functionality for businesses with more needs.

• Essentials supports managing multiple users. You can add three users and configure their access. In addition, you can invite employees and contractors to have time tracking-only access to enter their own hours. These users do not count against the three-user limit. Each user signs in with their own unique login credentials, while QuickBooks tracks who does what in its robust audit log.
• Hours can be entered for payroll and marked billable to pass thru to invoices. Easily run reports to see billable time by customer and review time entries.
• Enter your vendor bills and track accounts payable. Review and pay multiple bills at the same time. Detailed reports will display who you owe money to – and who owes you. You can add the option to pay vendor bills electronically with Bill Pay powered by Bill.com (additional fees apply).
• Essentials has the option to create recurring transactions, saving you time and energy. Invoices, sales receipts, bills, and more can be created automatically on a schedule, as a template, or you can tell QuickBooks to remind you to create them. This powerful automation will save you time.
• If you do business internationally, you can track income and expenses in multiple currencies. QuickBooks will automatically update exchange rates throughout the day.
• Run 40+ reports to monitor and measure the health of your business. Essentials offers detailed reports for more insights into your financials and the ability to share custom reports with other users.

While double the price of Simple Start, you’ll have more users, the ability to manage and pay bills, time tracking and the option to mark time billable, as well as the option to automate transactions, manage multiple currencies, and double the number of reports to better understand your business.

Essentials is not a good fit for those who need to buy, sell, and track inventory, create purchase orders, mark expenses billable, track projects for job costing, or create budgets. If these needs apply to your business, consider subscribing to Plus.

Plus

QuickBooks Online Plus has the features included in Simple Start and Essentials, plus more functionality for small businesses with more complex needs. It’s the most popular subscription level.

• Plus supports managing multiple users. You can have up to five users and configure their access. You also can invite reports-only users to run reports, but not make changes. These users do not count toward the five-user limit.
• If you have segments of your business that you want to keep a close eye on and compare, you can turn on classes and location tracking, add up to 40 combined classes and locations, and assign them to transactions.
• If you buy and sell products, you can track inventory using first-in, first out (FIFO) valuation and easily review quantity on hand. Create purchase orders, receive products via payment or bill, and monitor stock status. Run reports for stock counts and create inventory adjustments, as needed.
• For businesses that perform work for customers by job with Project Profitability. Plus allows you to organize income, expenses, and time by project-by-project, as well as measure the profitability of the work performed. This job costing functionality helps you know which projects are helping your business grow. Plus also allows you to mark expenses as billable to pass through to customers and projects.
• Create budgets to plan the year ahead and monitor income and expenses. Run budget vs. actual reports to measure performance.
• Plus includes 65+ reports to monitor and measure the health of your business.

With Plus, you have the ability to add more users, track transactions by class and location, manage inventory, track jobs with Project Profitability, budgeting, and even more reports.

QuickBooks Online Plus is not a good fit for businesses with more than 250 active accounts, more than 40 classes and locations, and the need to manage more than five users. If these needs apply to your business, consider subscribing to Advanced.

Advanced

QuickBooks Online Advanced is the newest subscription level in the QuickBooks family. It includes the features in Simple Start, Essentials, and Plus, with additional features for a growing business approaching mid-market size. You can set up a chart of accounts with unlimited number of accounts to meet the needs of your business.

• Advanced has even more controls for multiple users. Advanced supports up to 25 users and up to three accounting firms. User permissions can be narrowed for the 25 users to better delegate work and restrict visibility. You can also invite time tracking and reports-only users, which do not count toward the 25-user limit.
• Accelerated invoicing allows you to create multiple invoices at once for batch processing to multiple customers, or import hundreds of invoices at once via excel import. Both functions allow you to manage higher volume in a fraction of the time.
• Advanced allows for unlimited classes and location tracking, enabling you to track transactions across even more business segments. You can also create and manage up to 10 custom fields to track more information at the customer or transaction level. Customize your reports to get deeper insights across these areas.
• Advanced includes a subscription to Fathom—a $468 per year value. Fathom is a powerful financial analysis and reporting app that helps you assess business performance, monitor trends, and identify opportunities. You’ll have interactive tools and visual dashboards, along with options to compare financial and non-financial data. Fathom lets you create customized, visually engaging management report packages.
• To help you along the way, Advanced offers Priority Circle support. You’ll have a dedicated customer success manager to connect you with the right resources. When you call in, you’ll be routed to the front of the line and connect with our top agents. Advanced also includes five online QuickBooks courses—a $2,000 value—to help you and your team learn QuickBooks Online.

While priced higher than Plus, Advanced has 20 more users, an unlimited chart of accounts, class, and location lists, accelerated invoicing, the ability to track 10 custom fields (Simple Start, Essentials and Plus are limited to three), a subscription to Fathom for advanced reporting and analytics, and Priority Circle benefits.

A few things to keep in mind

All subscription levels of QuickBooks Online allow you to securely access your books from anywhere you can connect to the internet. There’s nothing to install, no servers or data files to maintain, and no backups needed. Many small business owners report a reduction in IT expenses (and fewer IT headaches!) when they work on the cloud.

To use many features of QuickBooks Online on your mobile device, sign in from your web browser and download the QuickBooks app from the Apple store or Google Play. Multiple users can be signed in at the same time without any complicated network setup or expensive hosting service. Simply sign in and run your business.

You can switch plans or cancel at any time, allowing you to adjust to fit new business needs as you grow. In addition, third-party apps can be connected to make QuickBooks Online even more powerful, some of which you may already be using in your business. Apps.com showcases a variety of tools that work with QuickBooks Online.

Get current pricing and promotions; if you work with an accounting professional, you may want to speak with your accountant or bookkeeper prior to signing up for any possible discounts or packages. Many accounting professionals also offer set up services, ongoing support, and advisory services to help your small business work successfully on QuickBooks.

The following information is taken directly from Intuit resources and customer reviews. We hope this article will be helpful in your evaluation of accounting software, whether you choose to try our product or not.

QuickBooks is by far the most recognizable name in the accounting software space. QuickBooks Online (QBO) is a cloud-based alternative to QuickBooks Desktop. The mobility of the platform is appealing to many users, despite frequent complaints of bugs and poor customer support.

At a glance, QuickBooks Online pricing seems more reasonable than the Desktop version (starting at $299). We’d like to take a closer look at their pricing structure as well as the additional costs accumulated by QuickBooks Online users.

Tiered Pricing

QBO offers four tiers of pricing as well as a Self-Employed plan, which is separate from the other plans. (In fact, if you want to upgrade from “Self-Employed” to “Starter” you have to create a new account).

As expected, each upgrade includes more and better features, for a higher cost. If users choose to integrate with Payroll, the monthly subscription rate increases by either $39 or $84.

Accountant Bundles

If you are registered for a QBO Accountant plan, you can purchase client bundles at a wholesale price. Firms are billed at 50% off the current list price, but can resell QBO to small business owners at a much higher markup.

Currently, the only plans offered to accountants at the wholesale discount are Self-Employed, Essentials and Plus. The discount is not available for current subscribers, only new clients who accountants register for QBO.

Monthly Subscription

Customers are charged a monthly rate for using QBO. There is no contract—users can switch plans or cancel service at any time. In some cases, users are offered the option to pay for an entire year for a less expensive overall price.

Quickbooks Online Pricing For Multiple Companies

However, one customer said that he was initially quoted an annual rate, but then ended up getting charged the more expensive monthly price instead.

Short-lived Discounts

QBO often offers promotional “Buy Now” pricing to offset the high monthly cost. Discounts can be up to 50% off for the first three to six months only, after which, the short-term pricing stops and customers are billed for the full amount.

QuickBooks also offers a free 30-day trial, which includes Payroll and Payments integrations. However, “Buy Now” promotions are invalid if customers use the free 30-day trial before purchasing.

Limited Users

Each plan comes with a limited number of users plus two accountants who can access the account. While you used to be able to purchase additional user seats, since they’ve released the software update for QBO Advanced, this is no longer a possibility.

The only way to increase the number of users on your account is to upgrade to a more expensive plan.

Note: This is one of the more confusing issues on their website. Many of the “Help” articles I looked up provided contradicting information. I finally had to jump into a chat with a Sales rep who told me that it was impossible to add users and pushed me to upgrade.

Price Changes

QuickBooks did raise their prices last year and many customers commented that they feel like price changes happen often. This is a frustration for many, because the learning curve, time and information they’ve put into QuickBooks make it unlikely for them to switch, despite price increases.

QBO boasts of many add-ons, integrations and payment processors. However, each product comes with an additional fee.

Payroll

Quickbooks Online Pricing For Proadvisors

The most popular QBO add-on is payroll. Customers can choose between Self-service feature for $35/month or Full-service Payroll for $80/month.

The cheaper payroll option provides the framework for processing payroll through your QBO account, but requires you to run it and file your own payroll taxes. With the full-service pay subscription, QuickBooks does everything for you, but you are also paying an extra $80 a month.

On top of your monthly payroll subscription, you are required to pay an extra $4 per month per employee, whether you are on the DIY or full-service payroll plan. These prices can add up quickly, depending on how many employees are on your team.

Many QBO customers love having their payroll processor immediately integrated with their accounting software, but there are other services that offer payroll integration at a much more affordable price.

Tax Forms

If you do choose to complete your payroll through QuickBooks, you can also order your tax forms through them. They offer W-2, 1099, W-3 and 1096 forms for purchase. Blank forms start at $17.99 for 10 forms. If you want to pre-print tax forms using information from your Payroll account, prices start at $57.99 for 10 forms.

Integrations

Services like Shopify, TSheets and MailChimp have integrated with QBO. However, each service comes with its own monthly subscription fee, separate from QBO’s price.

Here are just a few of the fees for QuickBooks integrations.

Please note: there are many other integrations available and some may offer a free plan. These numbers are intended to give perspective of what users might pay in conjunction with their QBO monthly fee.

Payment Gateways

QuickBooks has partnered with payment processors like PayPal, Stripe and Square. Each product has its own fees. However, if you link your QBO account with QuickBooks Payments, (formerly Intuit Merchant Services), the fees are standardized. There is no monthly subscription price for QBO users, rather, each transaction incurs a processing fee.

We are big supporters of cloud-based software—check out our post on Xero vs QuickBooks to see why. However, we also believe that one of the best advantages of cloud-based products is the freedom to offer great prices.

Cloud accounting gives you real-time updates without charging you for every desktop update. Your information is securely stored, accessible from everywhere and constantly improving. Because of this, cloud-based software products should be pristine, free from bugs and user-friendly. Unfortunately, the biggest complaints about QBO are about the lack of customer service and the buggy software.

If you are going to charge such exorbitant prices for your product, it better be perfect. And QBO seems far from perfect. Then, consider all the add-ons you get nickeled and dimed for and it’s hard to say it’s worth the cost.

We’re not about to call ourselves perfect, but we do believe we’ve created something pretty cool. We formed ZipBooks with small business owners in mind, not just accountants. Our interface is simple, intelligent and affordable. Consider our price structure compared to QBO’s most popular plan.

We’re not going to nickel and dime you for every service. We too are small business owners, and we want you to succeed!

Our free starter plan includes everything you need—invoicing, accounting, contact management, simple reports, review gathering and publishing. For businesses looking to take the next step, we offer paid accounting and growth plans starting at $15/month.

We know we’re not the only QuickBooks alternative out there, but we invite you to try ZipBooks for free and see for yourself why it’s better!

Rachel Cottam is a content writer at ZipBooks and a former high school English teacher. Her writing and editing have been featured in academic journals and tech websites alike.