Advantages of QuickBooks Online vs. Desktop: Which is the Best Fit for You?

When bookkeeping tasks slow your business growth, it helps to have QuickBooks there to back you up. Since its launch in 1998, QuickBooks has been known as the foremost finance software for small and medium businesses. QuickBooks currently has over 80% of the market share for small business finance software. Many organizations are preparing for the future of work by bringing their software online, including their accounting apps. Today, businesses can access QuickBooks in the cloud in two ways: QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop.

Let’s do a quick exploration of which QuickBooks cloud solution is best for your business.

Moving to the Cloud: QuickBooks Online vs Desktop Hosting

QuickBooks Online is a cloud-based SaaS solution that offers the basic features small business accounting requires. It gives you remote access to company files, and takes care of data backups for you. It’s available in five versions, with increasing capabilities at each level. QuickBooks Online has continued to add new features and functionalities over the years to build a respectable platform for use when system basics are best.

QuickBooks Online vs Desktop 2020 – which is a more robust solution. It includes rich features that most accountants are used to as well as industry-specific editions. Depending on the size of your business and the complexity of your files, QuickBooks Desktop may likely be the better option. If that’s the case, you can still get the benefits of the cloud provided by QuickBooks Online [and more] by choosing to host your QuickBooks Desktop.

With both versions, you will have anytime, anywhere access. However, with QuickBooks Desktop it’s the same version you may already be used to so you’ll require no specialized training to get started. You can bring your licensed 3rd party applications with you and leverage the power of the cloud to continue to meet all of your existing and future business needs without ever having to consider changing. Hosting further provides affordable access to enterprise-grade reliability and security, and an easy-to-access collaborative platform for businesses of all sizes. And thanks to a per-user pricing model some providers offer, it grows and scales with your business. That’s the benefits of QuickBooks in the cloud vs online!

When considering which option is best for your business, follow these suggestions:

1. Think about your industry and business size
2. Consider the customization you need
3. Plan which, if any, third-party tools you’ll need to integrate

Take Your Pick: QuickBooks Comes in Multiple Versions

QuickBooks offers robust versions of both cloud instances. For more details on QuickBooks Online, visit their website. There are three versions of QuickBooks Desktop software, each of which you can choose to host in the cloud to enable you and your team to work from anywhere and to better collaborate with your customers and clients. Here is a brief breakdown:

Professional

QuickBooks Pro is the broadest and most popular version offered. It offers the basic tools for accounting needs. These features include: estimates and invoices, expense and order tracking, and simultaneous users. It allows for up to three concurrent users per company.

Premier

QuickBooks Premier offers additional features to streamline your accounting experience. With Premier, you get features designed for a specific industry’s needs. These include business plans and reporting for industries including retail, manufacturing, construction, and professional services. It allows for up to five concurrent users per company and offers hosted QuickBooks premier benefits.

Enterprise

QuickBooks Enterprise is the most powerful version. It provides advanced features including inventory tracking, profit management, and customized reporting. It also allows for up to thirty concurrent users per company.

These are the three versions of QuickBooks Desktop software. Now that we’ve quickly explored the differences between QuickBooks Online, and the versions of QuickBooks Desktop you can host on the cloud, the question is: which hosting provider can you rely on?

Leverage the Full Power of QuickBooks Through the Cloud

Visory’s founders were CPAs and accounting firm owners themselves, so we understand what you need as accountants and business owners. Because of this, you don’t have to adapt your business to Visory. Rather we built Visory from the ground up to support your needs by hosting essential software applications — like QuickBooks — that adapt to the way you operate today and in the future.

Visory hosting goes beyond what QuickBooks Online can offer, with cloud-based access to the feature-rich, full versions of QuickBooks Pro, Premier, and Enterprise. We support hundreds of third party integrations, including Bill.com and Salesforce.

We built Visory from the ground up to support your needs by hosting essential software applications — like QuickBooks — that adapt to the way you operate today and in the future.

Another Visory differentiator is that we place the highest priority on ensuring system availability and security. Our enterprise-grade systems are hosted in secure SOC II facilities from industry-leading data centers and offer >99.95% uptime. We back up every 30 minutes. You’ll have a magic undo button so you can restore from any of the backups done over the last 24 hours or any of the nightly backups done over the last 30 days.

And we go beyond the industry standard remote desktop used to access applications and instead overlay with Citrix or CloudJumper for an enhanced user experience that delivers speed and performance while also providing an extra layer of security that protects against malware and other cyber attacks. It will feel just like your applications are working on your local desktop.

We also offer a self-service marketplace that gives you control of account and user management. You can transfer your existing license, lease a license+hosting package, or buy a license+hosting package. We can get you set up in under an hour.

Interested in learning more? Read about the competitive advantages you’ll get by accessing QuickBooks hosting with Visory.