What is QuickBooks

QuickBooks was designed by Inuit and the earliest version of this program was deployed in the year 2002 as QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions. It is a set of accounting software developed to help small and medium-sized businesses manage payrolls, sales, inventory and additional support for different typed of institutions. It features a different set of tools in its software to make the workload easier, such as marketing tools, training solutions, product and supplies, and other merchant services. These solutions are developed as per the needs of each form of businesses. It offers an on-premise application for accounting as well as a cloud version.

QuickBooks Versions

QuickBooks Simple Start: 

It is the most basic form of the software available. As per Inuit Inc., it has a clear interface and is thorough in its bookkeeping and documentation process and uses testing data that helps the clients to start using it and an online community that helps with any queries of the customers. It meets all the basic financial needs of its users such as billing and paying, creates a customer-vendor address book, generates reports, print bills, tracks sales and expenses, checking, invoicing, etc., and follows other procedure to make the client's tax ready.

QuickBooks Online:

It is Software-as-a-Service based and the clients who need an immediate cloud based access can pay for an online subscription. The data are backed up and can be accessed anytime and anywhere with the help of internet connection. It also provides mobile supports, thus this version is quite portable. It has similar features to the QuickBooks Pro-2011 version and is quite popular among its clients as it is a part of the virtual machine. The online services further have five more versions, namely Online Simple Start, Online Essentials, Online Plus, Online Essentials with Payroll, and Online Plus with Payroll.

QuickBooks for Mac:

This version only supports Mac user interface. Support to sync with other Mac applications such as iCal, MobileMe, etc., is also provided. It can be used to create a professional invoice, track sales and expenses, manage accounts payable, and it generates one-click sales and tax reports. But users will have to pay additionally for phone support and a fee may apply to an automatic download of bank transaction report. It can support as many as three users. The recently updated versions are much more user-friendly and are designed to look like a Mac application.

QuickBooks Pro:

It is the most popular version among Intuit’s clients. It has features that are most necessary for any accounting software such as, it tracks bills and sales, print bills, generate expenses, track customer accounts, manages payroll, batches invoicing, accepts credit cards, tracks time and expenses of specific clients, develops estimates and reports. Most importantly this software can be used by three users simultaneously.

QuickBooks Premier:

This version possesses all the features of the QuickBooks Pro and also has some additional features on top of it. The additional features are:

• new e-mail sales order
• 150+ industry-specific one-click business reports (higher than pro’s number)
•  business plan and budgets can be created using the software
• inventory assemblies and bills of material are generated
• Develops industry-specific reports.
   

QuickBooks Enterprise:

It is mainly developed to support larger businesses. It has all the features available in the Premier version and includes an additional feature with it to support the large businesses. It supports more numbers of users, as many as 30 simultaneously and uses audit trails. It has a large number of inventory parts (100,000), provides optimization for large data files and network usage, tracks inventory in multiple warehouses, serial numbers, has bin location capabilities, bar coding capabilities and FIFO costing.

QuickBooks have other subversions that are industry-specific and works according to the needs of such companies.