The Best Quickbooks Features for Online Businesses
Table of Contents
(Quick jump to any feature by clicking the bullet points below.)
Quickbooks is a bookkeeping behemoth. It’s the software everyone thinks of when they think about bookkeeping. And there’s a reason for that: It’s great software that has stood the test of time.
Is it perfect? No, of course not! It can be overkill for early stage businesses, and comes with a not-insignificant monthly subscription fee. (The lowest tier is $30/month, as of May, 2024). I actually recommend AGAINST using it for certain businesses. (For example: if you’re heavy into using Stripe as a payment processor, Xero is probably a better option for you.)
That said, there are some features and integration for Quickbooks that I REALLY like. Let’s dig in.
Note: some of these are features that other bookkeeping systems like Xero and Wave have as well, so they are no means ONLY available in Quickbooks books. But that doesn’t really matter does it? A great feature is a great feature, regardless of what software it’s a part of. If you’re looking for a head-to-head comparison of the different softwares, check out this post, or take the free quiz to see which might be the best fit for you.
Automatic bank feeds/syncs
No hand entering transactions, or even downloading files from bank websites for you! Once you sync your bank with Quickbooks, all the transactions are brought in automatically into the software. So when you sit down to do your monthly bookkeeping, everything is right there waiting for you to categorize. Quickbooks syncs with ALL major banks and almost all smaller ones. In fact, it’s been at least 3 years since I’ve come across a bank didn’t sync with Quickbooks.
Customizable categories
Every business is a bit different, amiright? Graphic designers have different tracking needs than energy healers, who in turn have different tracking needs than stationers.
Quickbooks makes it easy to customize the categories (the “chart of accounts” in accountant speak!) you want to track for your business. So coaches can differentiate the income they get from 1:1 coaching vs a group program, and energy healers can have an expense category just for ritual supplies. Beautiful.
Better yet? It’s super easy to nest categories so reporting makes sense for your brain.
Rules for categorizing transactions
Let’s face it, there are a LOT of recurring transactions in bookkeeping. Your monthly software subscriptions, the payment you make each month to your VA, the office supplies you buy from Staples a few times a year. The monthly payments your clients make to you. Yes, categorizing each transaction only take a second or two, but why not make it faster, and take even LESS brain space?!
QuickBooks allows you to create rules for these types of recurring transactions. A rule might look like this:
When there’s a credit card charge to “Squarespace”, set the vendor to “Squarespace” and categorize it as “Domains and Hosting”.
Then, the next time that type of transaction occurs, you can simply click a single button that says “Apply Rule” and BOOM! You’re done!
QuickBooks is all sorts of fancy and even suggests rules FOR YOU! So if it sees that the last few times a transaction from Zapier came through you categorized it as “Software & Software Subscriptions”, you’ll get a pop-up that says “Would you like all charges to Zapier to be categorized as “Software & Software Subscriptions”? Why, yes, QuickBooks, yes I would, thank you for asking!
NOTE: There is an option to “auto-add” transactions. Meaning, you don’t even need to click “Apply Rule” for each transaction. Instead, QuickBooks will do everything behind the scenes and you don’t even see the transactions. As tempting as this might be, I personally don’t like it. I like seeing each transaction that comes through, even if it’s just for a second as I click “Apply Rule”. This keeps my finger in the pie, so to speak, and is a quick check-in along the lines of “hey, you’re paying for Zapier - are you actually using it?” And for income rules, it gives me a chance to appreciate each time someone pays me! While I’m all for efficiency, I don’t want my expenses or income to become completely invisible!!
Easy to use bank registers.
The bank register feature is really helpful in QuickBooks. There’s a separate register for each bank account, savings account, and credit card. They:
Let you scroll quickly through all your transactions for a given account and see each transaction, including the vendor and how it was categorized. You can update both the vendor and the category without having to click into a new screen. It definitely saves time if you realize you made a mistake! (P.S. Xero, if you happen to read this, please update your software to include this feature!)
Display a running balance so you can keep an eye on how much money you have in your bank account without having to log into each bank website - another way to catch mistakes. If your balance is suddenly showing as negative $3,481.29, you can catch it quickly and fix whatever wonkiness caused it!
Clearly show which transactions have been reconciled against a bank account and which haven’t. And if you try to change any transactions that HAVE been reconciled, it gives you a little warning, which is always helpful.
User-friendly bank reconciliation process
QuickBooks has a really thorough bank reconciliation feature. (For quick context, reconciling in this instance means making sure that what Quickbooks has matches what your bank has in terms of transactions. It helps catch mistakes like accidentally deleted or duplicated transactions, etc.)
When you’re ready to reconcile your account, you tell Quickbooks the ending date and balance of your bank or credit card statement, and they bring up a screen with all the transactions for that account in that date range. The goal is to have the balance in QuickBooks match the balance your banks statement shows. QuickBooks does their best to match everything, and 9 times out of 10 you get a lovely green checkmark that says everything is hunky dory. If something doesn’t match, they make it as easy as they can to help find the error.
Receipt management
If your business has a lot of receipts (especially physical receipts), Quickbook’s receipt management feature is pretty neat. You download the QBO app to your phone, snap a photo of the receipt, assign a category, and hit submit. Then, when you’re sitting down at your desk to do your monthly bookkeeping, Quickbooks automatically pairs the receipt with (for example), the credit card purchase that it matches. The image of the receipt is attached to the transaction in the bank register, and everyone is happy!
There’s also an option to forward emailed receipts to Quickbooks, and while it works a bit differently, it’s still a good system, and keeps everything all organized and in one place. (You know, instead of random “receipt” folders in Google Drive or labeled emails in Gmail.
Now, everything I’ve been talking about is native to Quickbooks itself. But what about integrations and third-party apps? Well, my friend, I have two that I absolutely love, and both are free!!
Free Etsy integration
Yup, you read that right. Quickbooks has a free integration with Etsy, and it’s REALLY good. (I know, I’m a bit surprised myself, but it’s true!) You connect your Etsy shop to Quickbooks and EVERYTHING gets imported. Every sale, listing fee, refund, etc gets logged into an Etsy “account” that the integration sets up for you in Quickbooks. I’ve been using it with a client for about 3 years now and have only ever had a minor glitch or two. (And that’s saying something, my friends.)
Seriously. This integration is fantastic. And it’s FREE. It’s why I recommend Quickbooks to ALL my Etsy folks, assuming their revenue is at a place where it makes sense to pay for a Quickbooks subscription. (If you’re not at that point in your business yes, that’s okay! There are lots of Etsy-specific bookkeeping spreadsheets out there that are probably a better fit for where you currently are.)
Free Shopify Integration
Okay, this one comes with a bit of a caveat. The free Quickbooks/Shopify integration is fabulous if you ONLY use the Shopify payments option in your store. Meaning, you don’t give people the option to pay via PayPal, Apple Pay, Klarna, etc.
If that’s the case (Shopify payments is the only payment option you have turned on), the QBO/Shopify integration is amazing. It creates a sales receipt in Quickbooks for each Shopify order, down to the penny, including sales tax, and shows the funds as deposited to a “dummy” bank account in Quickbooks. All you have to do is record the deposits from Shopify as transfers from that dummy bank account. (Don’t worry, it all makes sense when you go through the setup.) It’s *chef’s kiss* at its best.
If you DO give people the option to pay via PayPal, Apple Pay, etc, I recommend Quickbooks Bridge by Parex. It’s a paid integration, but it works beautifully and it is worth the money, in my opinion.
And there you have it - my favorite Quickbooks features for small businesses.
