I just switched our office to QuickBooks Online for our accounting. It’s one of these new categories of applications called “cloud services” (because everything runs on a server off in the cloud somewhere; you’re not running actual software on your machine). This category is also referred to as “Software as a Service” or SAAS.
Here are my pros and cons about using QuickBooks Online on my Mac for our small business.
Pros
- I can do our accounting from anywhere – not just on the machine that has the software. This is the real reason I switched, because I’m working from many more locations than I used to.
- I can set up a login for Ivan, so he can check on our finances at any time, he doesn’t need to ask me to look things up.
- It works just as well on the Mac as on Windows (for once)!
- Our accountant can log in too, for free.
- There’s an iPhone/iPad app!
Cons
- The design has a lot of wasted white space, so I find myself scrolling a lot.
- It’s a web app so it’s a little slow.
- There’s a lot of mouse clicking and not so many keyboard shortcuts.
- It’s $27/month which adds up…
Summary: I’m glad we switched, because the flexibility is worth all the other trade-offs.
If you have questions about QuickBooks Online and the Mac, get in touch!
Photo is from the QuickBooks website.