- Invoicing
- Estimates
- Expense Tracking
- Inventory Management
- Tax Management
- Contact Management
- Banking Features
- Project Management
- Payroll
- Reports
- Client Portal
1) Invoicing
Quickbooks Online boasts of a robust invoicing feature. It has several customization options that you can take advantage of to personalize your invoice. For one, the software offers six invoice templates to choose from. For another, you can customize everything from the font, color scheme, logo position, to the number of columns. In addition, the software allows you to send out invoices in six different languages, including Spanish, French, and Chinese.
Strengthening this feature further are the automation tools that the software offers. You can set up recurring invoices and schedule automatic email payment reminders to your customers. Additionally, Quickbooks Online will automatically create invoices for customers who have unbilled activity. Like with most accounting software, you can also add a ‘Pay Now’ button to your invoices so that customers can pay quickly and easily online. The software’s invoice tracking feature alerts you when a customer views your invoice.
2) Estimates
Like the invoicing feature, Quickbooks Online lets you customize your estimates and quotes to reflect your business logo and colors. Besides, you can add custom fields, include exclusive discounts, and even append a personal message. Importantly, you can attach up to 25MB worth of supporting documents to the estimate. Customers receive your proposal in PDF form, ensuring that they cannot edit it in any way. They can then reject or accept and sign your estimate right from their mobile devices. Helpfully, once a customer approves an estimate, you can convert the quote into an invoice with one click, a nice feature that saves you the hassle of manually re-entering the data. The only drawback here is that the software does not have a separate estimates tab with which you can view past estimates.
3) Expense Tracking
This accounting software helps you track all your expenses from one central location. It automatically imports your income and expenses from your banks, credit cards, and other payment gateways such as PayPal and Stripe to give you an overview of your financials. The software’s expense dashboard gives you a bird’ s-eye view of money coming in and out. Importantly, this includes all your journal entries too. It also has a built-in cash flow statement in the form of a bar graph, which gives you a visual representation of your income versus your expenses.
The intuitive software automatically sorts all transactions according to customizable user-set rules, eliminating the need for you to sort them manually. Also, you can reclassify transactions in bulk with a few clicks. Another helpful automation feature is the receipt capture feature. With this, you can scan and save receipts, and the software will match them to your expenses automatically.
4) Inventory Management
Quickbooks Online provides you with a basic item list to which you can add items or services on all their plans. However, to take advantage of their out-and-out inventory management features, you will need to subscribe to their Plus or Advanced plans. With it, you can save comprehensive details on your inventoried items such as product images, purchase prices, sales prices, stock-keeping unit (SKU) number, and item descriptions.
Uniquely, you can club products or services usually sold together, making adding bulk items to your invoice a breeze. Importantly, the software provides you with real-time stock levels when you create an invoice, estimate, or purchase order. You can also define the reorder level, and the software will notify you with a low-stock alert when your inventory drops below that. Additionally, the software automatically converts the purchase order into a bill once your ordered items arrive, prompting you to pay your vendor on time.
5) Tax Management
This accounting app has several features that can make your life easier come tax season. First, its tax calculator automatically calculates the quarterly tax amounts you need to make allowances for. The software has several tax categories to which your expenses are automatically sorted into throughout the year, ready to be used when you file your taxes. Alternatively, you can set up your categories. What’s more, since Quickbooks Online is an IRS-approved e-file provider, you can e-file through Quickbooks Online when tax season rolls around. This service will cost you $15 for three forms.
Second, the software helps you stay compliant with 1099 and W2 IRS tax rules. The software tracks every employee payment you make and separates the ones made to independent contractors. Helpfully, it also distinguishes between payments made for services received and those made towards equipment rented from a vendor, labeling the latter as an expense rather than a payment. At tax time, it automatically creates 1099 tax forms that are ready to send out to your contractor.
Last, the software takes care of all sales tax-related calculations based on which state you are in, which state your customer is in, the date, and type of service or product. It then applies the correct rate to any invoice, estimate, or quote you generate. The software’s sales tax report gives you an up-to-date overview of your nontaxable and taxable sales.
6) Contact Management
This accounting software has a robust contact management system with which you can easily add or track customers. The customer information window gives you a substantial amount of data on your customers and vendors. These include customer name, email address, phone number, billing and shipping address, and payment and delivery methods. Additionally, you can define unique payment terms, allocate tax exemptions, if any, and choose a language in which to communicate with each customer. The software also allows you to attach documents, such as a contract, to each client. Uniquely, you can add any number of sub-customers to a profile, an excellent way to keep multiple service locations or providers for a customer under one umbrella.
If you want to add several customers in one go, Quickbooks Online has the tools for that too. The software allows you to import Excel and CSV files and match the fields in your spreadsheet with those in Quick Books to add them to the customer database. Once a customer’s information is saved, the software uses it to automatically populate appropriate fields whenever you initiate a transaction with them.
The only fly in the ointment with the contact management system is that it does not automatically merge customer information. So, if you have the same customer on two different spreadsheets, you will end up with a double entry for that customer if you import both lists.
7) Banking Features
Quickbooks Online has all the necessary tools to satisfy the bookkeeping needs of small businesses. These tools include easy bank reconciliation and syncing with corporate credit cards and payment gateways such as PayPal. It collaborates with close to 18,000 financial institutions, so the chances are that your bank is one of them. Additionally, it supports over 150 different currencies. You can also order and print checks from within the software.
Another nice feature is its in-built lending service called Quickbooks Capital, with which you can apply for a loan from the company. It uses your account information to judge if you are eligible for one.
8) Project Management
Project management is one of the software’s latest feature additions. With it, you can efficiently manage the financial aspects of your projects. While you cannot add or track tasks, you can easily assign invoices, expenses, payments, estimates, and bills to a specific project.
The project dashboard gives you an overview of each project’s cost and income by category. Importantly, it shows you what is contributing to your project’s cost.
In addition, the software’s project profitability feature lets you know how profitable each project is by displaying up-to-date profit percentages on the right upper corner of the dashboard, helping you make better business decisions.
Furthermore, you can track time using the software’s time tracking feature. Time tracking can be done on a daily, weekly, or one-off activity basis. However, as the software does not have a timer function that records time, you need to input your billable hours manually. Timesheets can be easily added to a customer’s invoice with one click whenever you want to bill them.
9) Payroll
Payroll is an addon feature. It will cost you an additional $4 – $10/employee/month along with a base fee of $22.50 – $62.50 per month depending on your subscription plan. This feature boasts of unlimited payroll runs and automatic time tracking. Additionally, it automatically calculates, processes, and files payroll tax forms for all 50 states. Also, it allows you to add several pay types and pay rates for different employees as well. With the payroll’s employee portal, your employees can access all their payment-related information, including W-2s and available time off.
10) Reports
The reports feature is another jewel in this accounting software’s crown. It has around 80 different reports you can choose from. There are reports for every department, from sales to vendor accounts and everything in between. Apart from the standard software-generated reports, you can also create custom ones using a variety of filters such as date range, transaction type, customer data, and so on.
11) Client Portal
The client portal is one of the software’s few lackluster features. It offers only basic functionality. Here, customers can view their invoices and pay their service providers directly from it. Alternatively, they can update their contact information, print, and ask you questions regarding their invoice through this forum. You cannot, however, use the portal to send estimates, quotes, or share project details with your customers. For these, you will have to resort to the email method.
