Quickbooks Online?

[Bluebird]

Does anyone use Quickbooks online? I’ve been using Quickbooks since opening in 9/2014, but I switched to QB online recently. I’m having some reservations about it. Switching back now as opposed to later would save me a lot of work in the future, since you cannot export back into the desktop version.

 

[famousperry]

i have had it since they launched it…I granfathered into a $5/month price so I dont think that could be beat with not having to ever deal with updates, etc. I love the fact I can login from anywhere and my accountant can access as well…only knock is searching for entries by vendor could be better

 

[bigmoose]

I am a partner in two businesses (not pizza related) one uses QB on a local computer; the other uses QB online. I am typically all over the books of both businesses. I find online irritatingly slow, and non intuitive. Some of the automation functions with bank accounts are pretty good. The big thing for me is you cannot do a backup and restore from a saved file with the online version. I talked to QB about it, and they call it a feature, one to keep a rogue partner from uploading a fraudulent set of books. I call it a huge risk. If you ever “blow up” your QB data base, you cannot just restore the online version to the latest good version.

I have come to be able to live with each. Going forward I would prefer the stand alone version. That said, I always have 3 backups of the stand alone QB data base. 1 on the local computer, 2 on a USB stick, and 3rd on the cloud in another physical location. That way in case of fire, I still have the data.

We might have a little more tech knowledge available to us than the typical shop. We run the local QB off of a Synology Disk Station DS413j that is in a secure location with backup up power. We VPN into it, so we have access from anywhere with internet. Of course we need our laptop with the QB installed on it.

One plus for the online version is that my partner and I were able to be into the data base at the same time last week, trying to sort out a “mess.” We both could access and revise data. We were in different locations, so that collaborative feature was a plus that day.

Finally I think we are paying around $40/month for the online version. I am still using a 2004 version of the stand alone just fine. No monthly charges for that one!

You are right about the inability to swap between online and offline versions… what a great “feature!” Not!

 

[Bluebird]

The slowness is one of the things I don’t like about it. Also, it doesn’t seem to be saving accounts for each payee, and I need to enter it every transaction. At 5 bucks a month I wouldn’t complain though The pros are ability to access from anywhere,therefore keeping current, and hopefully I will be getting a bookkeeper soon, so I figured the online would be a lot easier in that regard. I’ll give it another month, and worse case scenario is inputting 2 months of data. I keep getting e-mails from QB, saying they are no longer supporting software older than 2010 (which is what I have), so no more updates, but my business is pretty simple so probably not a big deal.