Archive for the ‘Small Business Accounting’ Category

Free QuickBooks Online Offer? – Pros and Cons

Dec 18, 2009 Small Business Accounting

Like any interested consumer, I was interested in knowing about the free accounting software that was being marketed as free by Intuit. An old finance professor from graduate school, taught his class the “no free lunch theorem”, which states that, there are no free lunches. What we have here is a very light lunch -without the meat rather than a three course meal. The pros and cons of QuickBooks online free version which was launched in October 2009 will be discussed below:

Let me first begin by analyzing the pros before the cons concerning the QuickBooks Online free version software.

The positive aspects are as follows: 1. Easy set up which includes different companies and numerous examples of sample chart accounts. 2. It is web-based which offers anytime and anywhere access and automatic backups at Intuit’s servers. 3. The ability to print vendor checks. 4. Balance sheet and Income Statements with some other supplemental reporting features 5. iPhone compatible with read-only rights.

Some of short comings are as follows: 1.Can only process five customers. 2.Does not have the ability to use form 1099 3.Does not produce statement of cash flows — this is important, since this financial statement illustrates the sources and uses of your business’s cash from the beginning of the year to the end of the year 4.Only 1 user access and your accountant does not have free online Internet access 5.Cannot export to Excel

When using this software you’re using the a very scaled down basic version of QuickBooks which is called QuickBooks Online Simple Start.

As I mentioned above the setup is relatively easy, however there is one aspect that deserves discussion and a word of caution. The setup begins with a simple registration, completion of a company profile which includes selecting an industry, classifying your source of revenue as a customer, client, patient, etc… Towards the end of this process, Intuit requests billing information, i.e. Credit card information which they clearly state will not be used unless you purchase the software. To Intuit’s credit this is very clear on the website after you press the submit button and you receive a receipt indicating that the price is free.

In summary, unless you have a very small business with less than five customers or it’s not important to track revenue by customer, then this version of free accounting software might be suited for your purposes. In addition, another use of the software would be to perform a write up of the accounting transactions which generally occurs after the fact, which means it’s not used for real-time purposes. An example of a write up, is to prepare the year-end tax return or to prepare a financial statement long after the transactions have occurred.

QuickBooks Online Basic and QuickBooks Online Plus, provide you with a 30 day free period to test the software . Albeit, there is no expiration for the free use of the QuickBooks Online Simple Start, which makes it an attractive means to test or to use QuickBooks Online for more than 30 days. Generally speaking, 30 days is an insufficient time period to test the accounting software. Consequently, the option is to either utilize the 30 day free period offered by QuickBooks Online Basic and QuickBooks Online Plus, and if you require more than 30 days, then just purchase QuickBooks Online Basic for $9.95 a month or QuickBooks Online Plus for $34.95 a month. This is a viable option, since the software can be purchased on a monthly basis. The Intuit website clearly indicates “No contract, cancel anytime”.

And don’t forget to involve your accountant in the process of deciding which version of QuickBooks to version.

Learn more about how QuickBooks Online can help you and your business and obtain free accounting software. You are welcome to reprint this article – but get your own unique content version here.

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