Quickbooks Overview, Review & Alternatives 2014

Overview

Quickbooks is an accounting software better suited for double entry and developed for small businesses as well as accountants to let them organize business finances with ease. Some of its newly added features facilitate the user to simplify their accounting related tasks such as sales receipts, inventory records and tax forms etc.QuickBooks is a fairly easy to use software and one can easily learn the features as well.

Features of QuickBooks

Processing Multiple Transactions, Memorization and User Interface: Imagine a situation wherein you have multiple transactions and you are running out of time due to bulk orders. This can be a hectic situation, and may lead to errors, which can be hazardous for any business. QuickBooks can work as a time saver by memorizing your recurring transactions and update them as per your preferred time schedule. These transactions may be related to the payment of monthly rent, client, depreciation entries, etc. This feature not only saves time for you, but also brings accuracy in your work-flow management. It can be used to remember the format of complex journal entries, which eases the pressure of your accounting work. The user interface seems to be a little bit confusing at times, and may require training for some users.

Loan Manager: This feature can be extremely useful, if you need to keep a track on your loan repayments. It lets you set loan parameters such as its term, interest rate, repayment date, and generates the correct payment check accordingly. We did find some scope of improvement in its audit trail feature though. There were some instances wherein financial information could be modified without any kind of notification.

Reporting and Custom Field Management: There may be situations, when your book keeper is unable to produce all the necessary
financial reports on daily basis. So, we were in the quest of a similar feature, which could let us view financial reports as per our set parameters. We found, that processing daily, weekly and monthly financial reports and printing them as per groups, can be extremely simple using a feature, called “Process Multiple Reports”. This tool can be accessed through the “Report” menu. On the other hand, you can make use of its custom data fields to manage various shortcomings in your accounting system. These data fields let you filter your financial reports, as they can easily be incorporated in your reports.

Pricing

As compared to other related online accounting software, buying QuickBooks can be slightly costly. Though you can download it free of cost for 30 days, but the basic version of this software can be bought in $12.95/month. It comes in various editions including “Simple Start”, “Essential” and “Plus”, which can be chosen as per your business requirements.

Alternatives of QuickBooks

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Freshbooks

In the first glance, the Freshbooks interface turns out to be clean and tidy. The user can easily navigate to various features through tabs. The new design of FreshBooks helps you quickly perform all of your accounting tasks, and also lets you switch to classic view, if required. This app is smart enough to save your client’s generic information such as currency, language preference, and quickly calculates taxes and discounts etc. FreshBooks app can be used by iOS as well as Android users.

 

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Xero

Xero, an accounting based software designed for small to medium sized organizations, has been under limelight in the financial market since a couple of years. It is majorly used for expense reporting, payroll management and other tasks pertaining to billing and invoicing. Xero is observed to be fully compatible with cloud and more than 180 applications related to business operation: CRM, POS and inventory management. It supports multiple currencies, and also makes your financial transactions automated, which can be customized by tweaking its rule sets, as per your business requirements.

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Zoho Books

The name has been present in the market for more than 12 years. This cloud based software supports double entry book keeping, and lets the accountants add manual adjustments for depreciation and other expenses. Supported by a multiple currency option, this software is extremely helpful for time tracking of projects that involve multiple users. You can also make use of its role based access to define the roles of your employees, which keeps data integrity issues at bay.

 

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Wave

Wave is compatible with cloud, and designed to bring the amalgamation of speed and accuracy in the accounting of small/medium businesses. It is compatible with Mac, Windows and Linux, and works well with various latest browsers including IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc. One of the reasons of its popularity, is its futuristic mobile application. It has an option to view simple cash flow analysis along with a notification center to keep the user updated with all the happenings in his/her business. The software has been used by more than 1.5 million users, and has won awards too.

 

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