Businesses deal with numerous customers and handle multiple transactions every day. Now, to keep the business aligned with its main objective, it is important to track the Finances involved in the daily transactions. Enterprises employ separate teams just to manage their Inventory and Accounting needs. However, a small business can not adopt this approach due to its constrained resources. In such a situation, an online tool like QuickBooks for Small Businesses can be of great help.
QuickBooks is a software tool that can collectively manage all aspects of a company’s Finance. It offers features like Accounting, Invoicing, Tax Calculation, and Tracking Tools that can automate an organization’s Financial Tasks. This article will introduce you to QuickBooks and will explain its different versions and advantages. Moreover, it will explain the use cases of QuickBooks for Small Businesses. Read along to get a thorough understanding of QuickBooks!
Table of Contents
Introduction to QuickBooks
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QuickBooks is a well-known online tool that businesses of all sizes use to manage their Finances and track their Income and Expenses. Intuit created this accounting software in 1983 to provide solutions for personal, business, and tax management tasks. You can use QuickBooks to invoice customers, provide online payment options, generate reports, and audit taxes. The QuickBooks product comes in various versions that are tailored for different users such as Quickbooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, etc.
QuickBooks Online is the most popular among these QuickBook products due to its Cloud-supported architecture. It allows small businesses to manage their Accounting, Income, Payroll, etc., without any additional infrastructure setup. It lets you view and manage all of your accounts easily through the online login portal. Furthermore, QuickBooks Online offers a mobile application for both Android and iOS. This way you can capture Sales Receipts, Track Expenses, Review Transactions and, Communicate with customers on the go.
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QuickBooks Working
QuickBooks is a complete package of tools when it comes to managing a Company’s Finance. It supports the needs of small-to-mid-sized businesses through the following features:
1) Accounting
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QuickBooks automates your key Accounting tasks. Moreover, it enables you to seamlessly monitor your Cashflows, and track Inventory. This way you can assemble all of your Financial Information on a single platform and keep better track of all tax deductions. Thus you don’t need to deploy separate software for these tasks. QuickBooks is a complete solution for your accounting needs. Moreover, if for a businessman, hiring an Accounts Team can be a costly overhead. Using QuickBooks for Small Businesses will safeguard them from this expense and provide better control over their Finances.
2) Invoicing
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Manual Invoicing is an error-prone & time-consuming process. Moreover, a hectic workload can cause you to miss out on regular Invoicing. In the long run, this could create inconsistency in your records and cause losses in your business growth. Using QuickBooks, you can automate the Invoicing tasks. You also get the facility to set up recurring Invoices and schedule them in alignment with your timeline. Furthermore, you can set up a notification system that will send timely reminders to your customers in case of overdue payments.
3) Payments Management
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Today customers use numerous ways of payments and to enhance your business you must provide as many of these payments options as possible. Tracking these payments and maintaining the Sales record, however, can be tricky with these many options floating around. Using QuickBooks for Small Businesses allows flexible payment solutions which can cope up with the needs of both online stores and actual shops.
It provides the basic Credit and Debit Card feature for bill payment. On top of that, QuickBooks also offer Contactless Payment via mobile applications and eCheck payments. Furthermore, QuickBooks Payments enter the commissions and cost records directly in QuickBooks Online. This avoids the need of accounting for the money afterwards. You can avail of the QuickBooks Payment services for a certain fee which is quite less in comparison to QuickBooks’ peer tools.
4) Payroll Management
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QuickBooks Online comes in different subscription plans which you can select according to your requirements. Each one of these subscriptions provides a Payroll service for some extra charge. This way you can outsource your Payroll Management task to QuickBooks to save your time and resources. So if you run a small business, the QuickBook Payments and Payroll features will manage all of your Financial Tasks and you can then devote your efforts towards Business Development.
Use Cases of QuickBooks for Small Businesses
QuickBooks for Small Businesses is popular in the following use cases:
1) QuickBooks for Small Businesses; Tracking Bills & Expenses
QuickBooks sync its services with your Credit Card and Bank Accounts. This way it monitors your Bills and Expenses and maintains records automatically. It also lets you edit the records manually in case you need to add or remove a transaction. Another key use of QuickBooks for Small Businesses is in tracking the upcoming Payments and managing your unpaid Bills. The software will notify you regarding both of these issues regularly.
2) QuickBooks for Small Businesses: Printing Financial Statements
Your business may require Financial help to expand in terms of size and production. This will require external loans that you can collect after presenting a Financial Statement depicting the Financial Health of your business. QuickBooks can print such Financial Statements in the form of reports by monitoring your Financial Transactions. QuickBooks can print the following 3 types of Financial Reports:
- Profit and Loss Report: The Profit and Loss Report summarizes the difference between your Income and Expenses over a period. The report contains records representing the Loss and Profit over a week, or a month, etc.
- Balance Sheet Report: The Balance Sheet Report depicts the Assets, Equities, and Liabilities of your business over a certain period. QuickBooks’ Inventory Management feature can provide the necessary data related to this report.
- Statement of Cash Flows: The Statement of Cash Flows lists the endeavors that affect the Cash Inflows & Outflows for your business. QuickBooks tracks the ongoing transactions of your business regularly to generate this report.
Therefore using QuickBooks for Small Businesses ‘ reporting can save a lot of valuable time.
3) QuickBooks for Small Businesses: Simplifying Tax Calculation
QuickBooks plays a major role in managing your Taxes. Businesses face a huge challenge in calculating an accurate Tax Return. Due to variations in their monthly business revenue, it gets difficult to track down the exact Income and Investments. QuickBooks can automate this for you and thus will save your time by compiling your Tax Return. You just need to print your Financial Statement for the past year and that will provide you with sorted data required for your Tax Return calculations.
4) QuickBooks for Small Businesses: Accepting Online Payments
Small businesses can enhance their customer experience by offering online payment options. So, for fixed fees, You can use QuickBooks Payments which is an in-built payment tool, to send E-Bills to your customers which they can pay online. QuickBooks for Small Businesses also helps in tracking the Sale, Credit Card Fees, Payments, etc., and provides you a detailed record of your online transactions.
QuickBooks Versions
QuickBooks is an Accounting Software that has users from different verticals. Now depending on the user requirements, the following 4 versions of QuickBooks are available in the market:
1) QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks Online is an Accounting Software that operates on Cloud technology. It does not require any extra hardware setup or software installation. QuickBooks designed this version for user convenience. Small businesses running on a tight budget can utilize this product without worrying about infrastructure costs. Moreover, as it operates on the Cloud, QuickBooks Online offers high scalability and easy access from mobile devices. This version supports several subscription plans namely, Simple Start, Essentials, Plus, and Advanced. Their prices and services offered are shown in the below image.
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A major reason for QuickBooks Online’s popularity apart from its ease of access is its Multi-Currency feature. This feature enables you to manage Payments and Cash Flows in various international currencies. It is a must-have tool if you plan to operate internationally. Furthermore, QuickBooks Online is highly secure and provides you with a unique ID to access its services from any computer or mobile device.
2) QuickBooks Desktop
QuickBooks’ Desktop version is a software application designed to work on Windows. It offers 3 plans that can cover all of your Accounting and Financial Tasks. All 3 plans provide unlimited Customer Support, Offsite Backup of Business Data, and Annual Software Updates. The premium plan contains some additional services like advanced granular user permissions, automatic data backups with encryptions, etc. Furthermore, to take things one step further you can use a 3rd party hosting provider that will provide you access to the QuickBooks application anywhere using a remote server.
3) QuickBooks Self-Employed
QuickBooks Self-Employed version caters to the needs of small entrepreneurs including Real Estate Agents, Independent Contractors, Freelancers, etc. You can access this Cloud-based version from any device with an Internet connection. This version of QuickBooks offers you unique tools that QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop don’t offer. Tracking Business Expenses and Personal Finances from the same Bank Account, automating the Tax Calculator are some of the features offered by QuickBooks Self Employed. A major drawback of this QuickBooks version is that you cant upgrade it to any other version. This is a bottleneck for businesses that are looking to increase their workforce.
4) QuickBooks for Mac
QuickBooks Mac is a version specially designed for business using Mac systems. The features offer the same services as the Desktop and Online versions, but they are updated to suit the needs of Mac users. This version is effective for small businesses and is available at an annual fee of $399.99. This feature is most popular among those who use QuickBooks for Small Businesses.
Benefits of Using QuickBooks Online
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QuickBooks Online is the most popular version among the QuickBooks Products in the market. Small businesses can benefit by implementing it in the following ways:
- Simple Accounting: QuickBooks Online enables you to have better control over your Accounting data, It allows you to access, modify, create, copy, and share accounting data with Employees, Consultants, etc.
- Security & Backup: QuickBooks Online operate on Cloud and the data once entered is protected by the Cloud’s in-built security mechanism. Moreover, you can easily import that data into Spreadsheets and build a backup. QuickBooks Online also monitors customer payments and notifies them in case of processing errors. This way their money is not at risk.
- Responsive Service Desk: If you have paid for a user license, QuickBooks Online will provide you fast access to its Online Help Desk. The service center will solve your doubts related to the set-up process, general errors, payment failure, etc.
- Inventory and Payment Options: QuickBooks Online can seamlessly track your Inventory. It maintains the historical and current record of your Assets and updates them whenever a transaction occurs. Furthermore, it offers you the option of Online Payments, something that your customers will prefer.
- Transparency: QuickBooks Online provide automatic sync among all of your connected devices. It also lets multiple users using the same subscription, connect and share data. You can, however, restrict the users which can contact you using QuickBooks.
Conclusion
This article introduced you to QuickBooks and explained its various benefits. It also listed the different versions of this tool and explained it’s working. The article further discussed the use of QuickBooks for Small Businesses. It explained how this tool can save you a lot of time and effort by automating the various tasks related to the Financial aspects of your business.
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Share your views on the use of QuickBooks for Small Businesses in the comments section!