Quickbooks software Used for your practice

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I’m curious if anyone has tried Quickbooks – self employeed for their business? I’m currently running an old desktop version and will need to upgrade to either a newer desktop version or go for the online.. any feedback for either would be great.

I have a few business clients on QB but don’t want to do the QB online accountant as I can’t use it for my quicken clients.

Any suggestions/advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Wendy

[Anonymous]

I have Quickbooks Simple Start for my company’s bookkeeping. I use Quicken for all my clients and would for my business but I like the invoicing feature in QB. I am happy with the product and after using the desktop version found the switch to be easy. (I suppose you saw the note that Self-Employed will not upgrade to another product.)

I find the folks at Intuit to be very helpful and interested in my happiness. Last year they suggested I downgrade from Essentials to Simple Start so my monthly cost would be more in line with what I wanted to pay and I wasn’t paying for unwanted features.

Anyway…suggest you call them to discuss. You shouldn’t get a hard sell and they seem very knowledgeable.

[Anonymous]

Thank you Lynn!

I have found them to be extremely helpful as well. Yes the drawback with self employed is that it can’t be upgraded and it might not serve me when my business starts booming (lol – positive thinking!). And like you all I really need now is the invoicing and the expense tracking which could be handled in quicken.

Really appreciate your response and all the help given by this group!

Wendy

[Anonymous]

Hi Wendy,

You said that you don’t want to use QBO Accountant for your personal clients – but I don’t care for Quicken for my business clients. So, I end up running with two systems anyways. I use Quicken for my personal clients. But then I use QBO Accountant for my own company. By being a businesses actual “Accountant” with QBO you can also give your clients a discount.

I don’t know if it is still the case, but by being a QBO Accountant, you can get it for free and also get then the discounts on other products for yourself or clients.

Something else to consider.

Katie

[Anonymous]

Hi Katherine,

That’s what I was wondering… can I use QBO accountant for my business allowing me to invoice my non-QBO personal clients so that it’s a functioning accounting system for my DMM business?

That would be wonderful. I’ve considered using QBO even for my personal clients who are high net worth as I could do balance sheet / net worth statement or any other client without their own software.

Does anyone else use QBO for personal clients and bill them through the wholesale program in QBO accountant?

Also on quicken clients, do you just add clients under your own quicken account or require them to purchase software separately. I have a few senior clients who had nothing in place so I just added them to my quicken and now I’m thinking I should have handled it differently and may need to move them to either QBO smallest package or their own quicken.

Thanks so much for all the guidance and help!!!
Wendy

[Anonymous]

Hi Kathrine,

Regarding QBO Accountant — You can use if for your business allowing you to invoice your non QBO personal clients. Also while I can’t promise this offer will continue, QBO has historically run offers for “5 for 5” which is 5 QBO client accounts for $5 a month per account. In other-words when you sign up for QBO accountant you may within a few months receive the option to purchase 5 new accounts for just $5 per month to then offer to your clients. You can then decide what kind of discount to extend. Again, I can’t guarantee that offer will continue but even if it doesn’t you will still have access to your own set of books for QBO and have the ability to offer wholesale pricing to your clients who may opt into QBO.

As for Quicken. I think it depends. I have clients who I run their finances and they have no interest in using or viewing quicken. I use it for keeping an eye on activity and for year end reports. They key here is if you put it under your own login then if anyone else needs that access that may be able to access all of the files. Quicken is constantly upgrading their features so they may have changed this feature, but for my purposes I assume as I’m setting something up that if I am using my login then it’s for my eyes only and the client knows they will not have access.

For clients who do want to be more involved or control their own systems they have their own account (ie: user ID and Login’s)

I hope that makes sense and helps.

Take care,
Alix Longfellow
http://www.Lionheartpro.com

[Anonymous]

Sorry – meant to address to Wendy not Kathrine…

Alix

[Anonymous]

Yes Alexandra that was my concern… I only have a few clients who are seniors and do not wish to open quicken but as I get new clients or as family members may become involved I see where it was short sighted of me to just add them to my quicken account.

Think I’m going to try the QBO accountant for my business and see how that goes – thanks for all your help!

[Anonymous]

I use QBO Essentials for my residential clients and QBO Plus for my commercial clients. I offer QBO E for $300 per year and QBO Plus for $500 per year for these clients.

I am working on my website, but will have more details about offering conversion services from Quicken and QB Desktop to QBO.

The nice thing about QBO is you can set up a family member with reports only access, this way they can see what is going on in their accounts without messing up your records. This is very helpful when it comes time for their CPAs to do their taxes.

Please let me know if you have any questions I can assist you with.

Rich

[Author]

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