If you are looking for information on the benefits of QuickBooks and what is quick books, you have come to the right place. QuickBooks is powerful accounting software that can save you time and money. In this article, we will discuss the top benefits of QuickBooks so that you can decide if it is the right software for your business.
What is QuickBook, and How Does It Work?
QuickBooks is a piece of accounting software developed by Intuit that provides solutions for managing personal, company, and tax money.
It is available as desktop software for Windows in a variety of editions. You may also pick between the Mac and online versions.
QuickBooks can help businesses automate invoicing, payments, accounting, and more. These capabilities facilitate the management and tracking of firm finances.
How does QuickBooks work?
QuickBooks Online supports both monthly and yearly plans. After you join up, you’ll be able to access services tailored to your sort of company. There are additional desktop versions available.
The features are intended for freelancers, small and medium-sized company owners, and entrepreneurs.
QuickBooks Online works with other Intuit products. TurboTax (for preparing personal income tax returns) and ProConnect are two examples (tax software for accounting professionals).
It also interfaces with a wide range of other applications and apps.
These include mentioning a few, those that handle charity contributions, scheduling, time tracking, document management, payment processing, and inventory management.
Users may manage and automate a broad range of business operations with these connections and compatible technologies.
A free 30-day trial option is available before you have to part with your money. This is an excellent chance to learn about QuickBooks Online and if it may benefit your company. ³
10 Ways Small Businesses Use QuickBooks
Small company owners often use QuickBooks to handle invoices, pay bills, and monitor cash flows. It is also used to compile month-end and year-end financial reports and prepare for quarterly or yearly company taxes. Some company owners handle QuickBooks independently, while others choose to work with an in-house or outsourced bookkeeper.
1. Create and Track Invoices
Invoices are simple to make and can be printed or sent to clients. QuickBooks will automatically record your revenue and monitor how much each client owes you. By running an A/R aging report, you may see the number of outstanding invoices, also known as accounts receivable (A/R), and how many days they’re past due.
2. Keep Track of Bills & Expenses
QuickBooks automatically tracks your invoices and spending by linking your bank and credit card accounts to QuickBooks, which downloads and categorizes your expenses. If you need to track a check or cash transaction manually, you may do it in QuickBooks in minutes.
When you get invoices, put them into QuickBooks so that QuickBooks can help you monitor impending payments—or A/P. By establishing an A/P report, you may guarantee that you pay your payments on time. This report will provide you with information about your current and past-due invoices.
3. Print Financial Statements for Your Business
You may produce financial statements that give important information about how your firm operates if you manage all of your cash input and outflow operations in QuickBooks. When you apply for a small company loan or line of credit, lenders often need financial statements.
With a few mouse clicks, you may generate the following three major financial statements in QuickBooks:
- Profit and Loss report
- Balance Sheet report
- Statement of Cash Flows
Each of these reports is briefly described below, along with a screenshot of how they appear in QuickBooks Online.
Profit and Loss Report
The Profit and Loss report will show how lucrative your company is by aggregating its revenue and subtracting its costs. The report displays the net income (loss) for a specified period, such as a week, month, or quarter.
Balance Sheet Report
At a given moment in time, the Balance Sheet report reveals what your company has (assets), what it owes (liabilities), and its net value (equity).
Statement of Cash Flows
The Statement of Cash Flows in QuickBooks displays all of the operations that affect your company’s operating, investing, and financing cash inflows and cash outflows.
4. Track Employee Time & Expenses
Employees or subcontractors may input their own time as they work throughout the day, or if the employee submits a manual timesheet, a bookkeeper can enter their weekly time. The time entered and allocated to a client will be available to be added to the customer’s next invoice.
Any expenditure submitted may be billed and allocated to a client. These chargeable items, like time, will be available to add to the customer’s next invoice. You do not require the payroll add-on to monitor employee hours for invoicing reasons.
5. Payroll
Payroll is an area where you don’t want to cut corners by doing it manually. Payroll mistakes may result in costly fines and disgruntled workers.
QuickBooks includes its payroll module that can calculate and perform payroll as often as possible. When you input employee time, the hours flow not just to your invoices but also to the payroll module. In this manner, you can be certain that every hour you pay your staff is likewise billed to a client.
The nicest part about utilizing QuickBooks payroll is that it is fully connected with QuickBooks, so your financial statements are always updated as of the most recent payroll run. You must buy a QuickBooks Payroll subscription to manage payroll, but you may select from different tiers of service to meet business requirements.
When you do your payroll with QuickBooks, you will be able to:
- Employees might be paid by cheque or direct deposit.
- Automatically calculate federal and state payroll taxes
- Allow QuickBooks to fill out the payroll tax forms for you.
- Pay your payroll taxes with QuickBooks.
6. Track Inventory
QuickBooks helps keep track of the amount and cost of your inventory. As you sell inventory, QuickBooks will automatically assign a part of it to the cost of goods sold (COGS), an expenditure account that affects your revenue.
This allocation is required for computing taxable income and is very time-consuming to do by hand. QuickBooks may also automatically remind you to order inventory when quantities are low.
7. Simplify Taxes
The essential thing QuickBooks can do for your small company makes tax time easier. The most difficult aspect of completing a tax return is gathering your income and spending. You need to print your financial statements around tax time if you use QuickBooks throughout the year.
With QuickBooks Online, you can provide your tax preparer immediate access to your account, allowing them to evaluate your figures and print any information they need to file your return.
8. Accept Online Payments
Offering consumers the opportunity to pay their bills online is one of the finest methods to boost your cash flow. QuickBooks Payments (previously known as Intuit Merchant Services) may be added so that consumers can pay online immediately from their emailed invoice.
QuickBooks Payments works in the same way as other merchant services. However, since it is linked inside QuickBooks, the sale, credit card charge, and a cash deposit are all immediately recorded as they occur.
9. Scan Receipts
Another essential to having tax season go as smoothly as possible is the ability to arrange your receipts in QuickBooks.
All QuickBooks Online customers may download the QuickBooks app for free on their mobile device, snap a photo of a receipt, and upload it to QuickBooks Online in minutes—no more misplaced receipts or manually matching receipts with recorded banking transactions.
QuickBooks enables you to attach a receipt to a banking transaction. Because receipts are kept in the cloud with your data, you may upload an infinite number of them to QuickBooks Online.
10. Track Mileage
Many self-employed people and company owners utilize their automobiles for work. This translates into a hefty tax break of 58.5 cents per mile in 2022. However, to obtain the deduction, you must maintain a record of your travel date, mileage, and purpose.
QuickBooks Online makes this very simple. Its mobile app will utilize the GPS on your phone to detect whether you are in a moving car. Then you may go through your excursions and categorize them as personal or business and designate them as billable to a client. Billable mileage expenditures will be ready to automatically add to the next invoice you produce for that client.
QuickBooks Versions
QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks Online is a cloud-based program that does not need any software installation. QuickBooks offers many membership options, including Simple Start, Essentials, Plus, and Advanced. It is appropriate for any company that does not have complex job-costing needs. By utilizing your secure login, you may access your data from any computer with an internet connection.
QuickBooks Desktop
QuickBooks Desktop is available in six configurations: Pro, Pro Plus, Premier, Premier Plus, Enterprise, and QuickBooks for Mac. Each one requires the installation of software on your computer. QuickBooks Pro is suitable for most small enterprises that do not produce goods and prefer a desktop solution.
QuickBooks Premier is great if your company is in the manufacturing, contracting, retail, or nonprofit sectors. QuickBooks Enterprise is designed for big businesses. These industry-specific QuickBooks Desktop editions contain a customized chart of accounts and industry-specific reporting.
Instead of a one-time purchase, the Plus editions of Pro and Premier are marketed as yearly subscriptions. Your yearly subscription includes each year’s new edition, unlimited customer service, and off-site backup of your firm data.
In our QuickBooks Desktop comparison article, we break down each product to help you comprehend the different versions.
Furthermore, using a hosting provider may increase your productivity using QuickBooks Desktop. QuickBooks hosting allows you to access your Desktop program from any location through a remote server. Examine our list of the finest QuickBooks hosting companies.
QuickBooks Self-Employed
QuickBooks Self-Employed is an excellent choice for freelancers, real estate brokers, and independent contractors like Uber and Lyft drivers. It’s a cloud-based program, similar to QuickBooks Online, that can be used with your secure login from any computer with an internet connection.
It has capabilities that QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop don’t have, such as managing the company and personal spending from the same bank account and transmitting data to TurboTax.
QuickBooks Self-Employed will calculate and notify you of your projected quarterly tax payments. QuickBooks Self-Employed price levels include Self-Employed, Self-Employed Tax Bundle, and Self-Employed Live Tax Bundle. Read our QuickBooks Self-Employed guide to learn more.
QuickBooks Self-Employed is not the best QuickBooks option for a starting firm looking to increase its staff. QuickBooks Self-Employed cannot be updated to a later version of QuickBooks.
QuickBooks for Mac
QuickBooks for Mac is the only desktop QuickBooks application available for Mac users. This version is quite comparable to QuickBooks Pro, and it is suitable for the majority of small enterprises that do not create items. To learn more, see our QuickBooks for Mac article.
Other QuickBooks Products
Being one of the market’s leading accounting software suppliers, QuickBooks provides additional items to enhance your entire QuickBooks experience. These are some examples:
- QuickBooks Online: QuickBooks Online, the rapidly increasing cloud-based version of QuickBooks, allows you to keep your records organized on the cloud.
- QuickBooks Payroll: QuickBooks Payroll makes it simple to manage your payroll. QuickBooks Payroll and QuickBooks Online make it simple to track employee hours and billable time.
- QuickBooks Live: Do you need assistance with your bookkeeping? QuickBooks Live is an online accounting solution that allows you to engage with a ProAdvisor on your bookkeeping requirements.
- QuickBooks Payments: Using QuickBooks Payments, you can effortlessly integrate payments into QuickBooks Online. Get paid quickly and simply using online payments.
- QuickBooks Time: QuickBooks Time, formerly known as TSheets, provides time-tracking services for workers to monitor client or project billable hours.
- QuickBooks Capital: QuickBooks Capital provides extra lending choices of up to $100,000.
Discover how QuickBooks’ range of tools may benefit companies in various ways.
FAQ
Is QuickBooks easy to learn?
It is so simple to learn that you may master the fundamentals and begin using them in one day. You may learn how to invoice customers, input invoices owed, enter credit card expenditures, and generate reports.
How is QuickBooks different from Excel?
While Excel requires you to customize and test your spreadsheets with the appropriate formula, QuickBooks is pre-built for your accounting needs. Income statements, invoice templates, balance sheet templates, and other business templates will assist your company, giving you more time to concentrate on other tasks.
Is QuickBooks bookkeeping or accounting?
Whether you prefer to handle your money yourself or hire an accountant, QuickBooks makes it simple to remain on top of your finances. QuickBooks provides you with the finest of both bookkeeping and accounting tasks. QuickBooks can assist you with: Keeping track of your sales, costs, and earnings.
Do I need an accountant if I use QuickBooks?
An accountant is required to assure compliance.
QuickBooks may help by giving information to conduct these activities, but it cannot identify problems or check that the filings are full and correct. Compliance requires the services of an accountant.
Conclusion
QuickBooks is an accounting software package developed and marketed by Intuit. QuickBooks is designed to help small businesses manage their finances more effectively. It can track sales and expenses, generate invoices and reports, and even file taxes.
The benefits of QuickBooks are numerous, but some of the most notable include its ability to save time and money, streamline business operations, and improve decision-making.