There's no denying that QuickBooks is one of the leading accounting software for businesses today. But there are so many different types of QuickBooks accounts that it can be hard to figure out which version of QuickBooks is best for your business.
Small business owners probably do not have to worry about QuickBooks Enterprise, which is designed for large companies. But they will probably want something more robust than QuickBooks Online, at least in the long-run.
So, it comes down to which desktop version of QuickBooks will suit your needs and your budget. Which is a difficult enough question on its own. Luckily for you, we've worked with many clients who have struggled with this same decision and have put together a comprehensive guide to help businesses choose between QuickBooks Pro and QuickBooks Premier.
The Cost of the Two QuickBooks Products
As a small business owner, you always have to keep an eye on your bottom line. This means that one of the first considerations that probably comes to mind when it comes to choosing between the two leading QuickBooks products is cost.
Both QuickBooks Pro and QuickBooks Premier are billed in the same way. For the cloud-based versions, QuickBooks Online, customers can choose between a monthly or annual subscription model. But the desktop version requires that small business owners pay a one-time license fee.
This means that the desktop edition costs more upfront, but it can end up being cheaper than paying the monthly or annual subscription over time. Especially since desktop versions tend to last around three years before becoming outdated. So if you can afford the one-off price, it is often the right business decision to help your financial stability going forward. But neither cost is truly prohibitive. And the annual subscription offers moderate savings compared to the monthly subscription, making it a cost-effective alternative to the desktop version.
Alright, enough about QuickBooks pricing in general: what about QuickBooks Pro vs. Premier?
The truth is that QuickBooks Premier costs significantly more than QuickBooks Pro. A Premier license will set you back $500, while Pro costs just $300. Deciding on price alone, Pro would be the best version of QuickBooks.
But $200 is a reasonable price to pay to upgrade to the right accounting software that will help small business owners run their companies more effectively. And, Premier comes with five licenses to Pro's three, narrowing the price gap for larger small businesses.
The main question is: is QuickBooks Premier worth the price increase over QuickBooks Pro? To answer this question, let's take a look at what you get in each version and compare how they help small business owners.
QuickBooks Pro
QuickBooks Pro was the first of Intuit's QuickBooks products. The brand released QuickBooks Pro in 2000 and it has continued to be one of the leading QuickBooks products providing competitive accounting services ever since. It may not be as robust as bigger siblings Premier and Enterprise, or as flexible as QuickBooks Online, but it is a solid choice that streamlines most basic accounting functions for small business owners. As the base version of QuickBooks, it is more accessible than some of the other versions, making it easier to navigate for small business owners who don't have their own accounting team.
Key QuickBooks Pro Features
QuickBooks Pro supports up to 3 users, which is sufficient for many small business owners. It also integrates seamlessly with Excel, Quicken, and other programs to centralize your finance data. Best of all, it is extremely simple to set up and use, allowing you to get started managing your finances right away.
QuickBooks Pro also has all of the core functionality that you need from accounting software. It allows you to manage invoices, record bank transactions, and generate financial statements. Payroll is easier as well, as Pro prints and e-files 1099s.
The accounting software streamlines accounts receivable by generating estimates and invoices by customer and job. It processes and records credit card charges and helps automate the billing and invoicing process by coordinating with third-party apps such as PayPal and Square. It even automatically flags invoices that are past-due to help you track and collect debts. But it does not support batch invoicing or sales orders, as Premier does.
Accounts payable are much easier with QuickBooks Pro as well. It allows you to easily manage purchase orders and item receipts and automatically pay your bills.
For product-based businesses, QuickBooks Pro also allows small business owners to track and manage sales tax and inventory to ensure that their business runs smoothly and makes tax compliance a breeze.
Pro also offers robust reporting and automatically generates budgets, operational reports, and financial reports. But its reporting and forecasting features are not nearly as robust as Premier's.
Overall, QuickBooks Pro covers a lot of bases and does its job extremely well. If you're looking to get started with accounting software, Pro is a solid choice. But it lacks the depth and flexibility that Premier offers, and particularly the industry-specific Premier configurations.
QuickBooks Premier: Advanced Features
Industry-Specific Reports
One of the key distinguishing features in Premier's favor when comparing QuickBooks Pro and QuickBooks Premier is the availability of industry-specific reports. Intuit offers several versions of QuickBooks Premier to meet the unique needs of professionals in different industries, including:
- Accounting
- Contracting
- Manufacturing
- Wholesale
- Nonprofit
Each of these options is configured to provide industry-specific reports and processes that make it easier for small business owners in these fields to manage their finances and their businesses. So, the features you ultimately end up within your Premier configuration will be different depending on which version of QuickBooks Premier you choose. But there are several advantages over Pro which are common between each configuration that makes Premier the most comprehensive of all QuickBooks products.
Inventory Management with Premier
While Pro lets you track inventory, Premier provides much more in-depth inventory management and sales order management. That might not matter for all small business owners, but it's a godsend for retailers and wholesalers.
Backorder tracking is one major improvement over Pro. Premier lets you track which products have been invoiced and what is still waiting to be shipped to the customer. This feature is especially powerful when combined with Premier's Availability Tracking. Several of the versions of Premier allow you to track your current availability to prevent backorders and give customers an accurate estimate of your inventory that has not been assigned to other clients. And Premier also supports sales orders with sale order fulfillment worksheets and workflow management. These features can be absolute lifesavers for product-based businesses such as retailers and wholesalers.
And wholesalers and retailers will be extremely relieved to see that Premier allows small business owners to set the price level by item. With Pro, you have to increase or decrease all of your prices by the same fixed percentage. But this model simply does not work for most product-based businesses, who need to be able to set prices based on the supply and demand for each item in their inventory.
Job Costing for Manufacturers and Contractors
Manufacturers and contractors can also benefit from upgrading to Premier. The Job Costing feature allows you to take the estimate that you can generate with Pro and use it to generate a purchase order for the entire bill of materials. It also supports managing change orders, tracking unbilled time and expenses, and batch invoicing for both time and expenses. And billing rate levels can be set per employee as flexibly as product-based businesses set prices per item.
Advanced Reports and Chart of Accounts
Beyond these more industry-specific features the differences between QuickBooks Pro and QuickBooks Premier are the advanced reports and chart of accounts available with Premier.
If you want to use QuickBooks to help plan your business strategy rather than complete basic accounting tasks, Premier's advanced reports make it the clear choice. The Business Planner creates comprehensive business plans based on the data from your QuickBooks files, minimizing the amount of data entry you have to do and maximizing your ability to think strategically. Premier also generates forecasts to identify trends, challenges, and opportunities which will help small business owners grow their businesses sustainably.
Premier's customizable chart of accounts also makes it a much more powerful accounting software solution than Pro. It supports up to 10,000 accounts, allowing you to easily navigate your business's finances and switch between accounts to view current balances and more. The chart of accounts is also searchable, making most accounting tasks significantly easier than with Pro, especially for small business owners whose businesses have expanded.
Alternatives to QuickBooks Pro and QuickBooks Premier
At this point, we've explored most of the differences between QuickBooks Pro and QuickBooks Premier. We'll get to our conclusion about who wins in a QuickBooks Pro vs. Premier showdown in a minute, but first, it's good to keep in mind what other options exist. Accounting software is a booming industry and there are more options than ever before, so you don't have to be limited to different versions of QuickBooks, let alone the desktop edition. Let's take a look at some of the leading alternatives.
Free Accounting Software: Wave
Despite the advantages that Premier has over Pro, many small business owners won't be able to afford the extra $200 for the advanced version. But if the $300 price-tag for Pro seems too much? Well, Wave is one of the few accounting software options that are entirely free.
And Wave is no pushover. It supports many of the same essential accounting functions as QuickBooks Pro, including custom invoices, robust reporting, and bank account syncing. And as your business grows and you find yourself needing more accounting features to keep things running smoothly, Wave lets you pay modest subscriptions for each additional feature such as online invoice fulfillment and payroll management.
Zoho Books
Zoho provides a full-service business software suite that covers a wide range of productivity needs. But its accounting software is an excellent option for most small business owners, even if you don't use any other Zoho tools. It is extremely accessible and flexible but also contains a surprising amount of depth.
Zoho covers all of the main accounting tasks, including sales, purchases, time-tracking, and inventory management. You can't customize the reports effectively as with QuickBooks Premier, but Zoho provides a wide enough range of reporting options to satisfy most users. It also comes with a mobile app – which you certainly don't get with the desktop edition of QuickBooks.
The two main draws that will convince many small business owners to ditch the QuickBooks Pro vs. Premier debate and sign on for Zoho are the product's price and level of support. Zoho is cheaper than most accounting software options out there, perhaps to encourage users to invest in the entire Zoho suite. Like cloud-based QuickBooks products, Zoho Books offers monthly and annual subscription models with the annual model costing the equivalent of ten month-to-month payments. Zoho is about $4 less per month than QuickBooks Online and $100 less per year than QuickBooks Premier. Zoho also provides more helpful resources and support options than almost any other accounting software out there, including QuickBooks. But it does lack some key features, including a robust payroll feature.
Xero: Cloud-based Accounting Software
Unlike many competitors, including QuickBooks Online, Xero was built for the web from the get-go. It boasts robust double-entry accounting features including sales, purchases, and inventory management. And small business owners in most states, Xero also offers an excellent payroll system.
Xero is also constantly expanding its feature, including one of the first fixed-asset management systems as well as expense management, broader payment processor integration, and a new and improved iOS app. Its pricing model is based on your stage of growth, with “Early”, “Growing”, and “Established” tiers, with each step up adding new features and capabilities.
Ultimately, Xero offers an excellent web-based alternative for small business owners who would opt for Pro over Premier. But it lacks the industry-specific features of Premier as well as sales orders and the customizable chart of accounts.
Hybrid Solution: Sage 50cloud
Sage accounting products have been around as long as QuickBooks products have and 50cloud is the accounting titan's answer for QuickBooks Online (see below). While the product was released in 2019 and offers a compelling combination of desktop software and cloud computing, it ultimately shows signs of the franchise's age and is really only the right choice if you're looking for that unique combination of desktop and cloud.
Sage has been doing this for a long time and so Sage50 is just as feature-rich and deep as you could hope for. It boasts a high level of customization, strong inventory management, integrated payroll, advanced job costing, and seriously in-depth reports. In short, just about everything, an accountant could hope for. Except for a dashboard, that is.
Sage 50cloud's powerful integration with Office365 is the product's biggest selling point, allowing the software to share data through the cloud and access the application's data through a remote computer. That adds much-needed flexibility that desktop QuickBooks products currently lack.
But for all its power, Sage 50cloud is more complicated than most small business owners will want to deal with and lacks important features of modern cloud-based solutions, including a customizable dashboard, integrated time-tracking, and perhaps most significantly, a comprehensive mobile app of the kind featured in QuickBooks Online. 50cloud also has the distinction of being one of the most expensive products on the market, with annual subscriptions ranging from $503.23 to $778.63 per user.
All-in-all, 50cloud is a worthwhile upgrade for current Sage users and a decent way to ease your way into cloud-based accounting. But unless you will take advantage of the software's more complicated features, you're better off opting for the cheaper and easier to use QuickBooks products.
QuickBooks Online
Of course, you may want to opt for QuickBooks but take it to the web. While QuickBooks started with the desktop edition, Intuit is increasingly focusing on the online version of QuickBooks.
QuickBooks Online is a cloud-based accounting software solution like Xero but delivers much more powerful features if you opt for the more expensive versions. Intuit has recently added project management and invoicing tools to the online version of QuickBooks, including PayPal invoicing with same-day payments.
The problem with QuickBooks Online is that its cheaper versions are pared down compared to other QuickBooks products, and you will have to shell out $60 per month for the Plus version (not to be confused with the desktop edition Plus version) to get features like inventory tracking and contractor management. That's a lot more than the $300/year price tag for the desktop version of QuickBooks Premier, let alone the cheaper QuickBooks Pro.
But the highest tier does combine most of the advantages of QuickBooks Pro with the flexibility and accessibility of online accounting software like Xero. Which made QuickBooks Online PC Mag's editors choice for small business accounting software.
Overall, opt for QuickBooks Online if you want flexibility and don't need the depth of Premier or the price savings of Pro.
QuickBooks Pro vs. Premier: Who Wins?
Alright, so we've explored the features offered by QuickBooks Pro and QuickBooks Premier in-depth and even taken a quick look at the main alternatives to the desktop edition of QuickBooks. Now it's time to give a definitive answer to the question of when it comes to QuickBooks Pro vs. Premier, which choice is better for your business?
Both versions allow you to track inventory, manage sales tax, and manage the balance sheet for up to 14500 vendors and clients. But Premier is the clear choice for most small businesses thanks to its industry-specific reports and features, sales order management, batch invoicing, and searchable chart of accounts.
That isn't to say that Premier is the right choice for your specific business. If you are a service-based business that does not incur expenses and does not need to generate purchase-orders or bill of materials, Pro may well be the better choice. Premier's industry-specific reports and features are more useful to product-based businesses, such as retailers and wholesalers, and contractors. You may also not need Premier's advanced reports if you are just starting out as a small business owner. And if you want even more robust accounting software, QuickBooks Enterprise may be the better choice.
But at just $200 more, Premier is well worth the upgrade.
SHOW ME MY APPROVAL OPTIONS// <![CDATA[ (function() { var qs,js,q,s,d=document, gi=d.getElementById, ce=d.createElement, gt=d.getElementsByTagName, id="typef_orm_share", b="https://embed.typeform.com/"; if(!gi.call(d,id)){ js=ce.call(d,"script"); js.id=id; js.src=b+"embed.js"; q=gt.call(d,"script")[0]; q.parentNode.insertBefore(js,q) } })() // ]]]]><![CDATA[>
Checking for pre-approval will not affect your credit score.
[author] [author_image timthumb='on']https://capitalcollab.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/JP-Photo-1.jpg\[/author\_image\] [author_info]Jeremy Pearlman | Jeremy is a New York native enjoying the good life in the Big Easy. In his writing, Jeremy covers a wide-range of topics, but his specialties are personal finance and business leadership.[/author_info] [/author]