QuickBooks is an accounting software program released in 1992 by Intuit. It is widely used by small businesses across various industries from retail, construction, and manufacturing to the legal and restaurant industries. Many use QuickBooks to track and monitor expenses, send invoices, receive payments, manage payroll, and prepare taxes. Whether for one’s own business or to manage others’ businesses, it can be useful to add QuickBooks to your professional toolbox. Enrolling in an instructor-led class or bootcamp is the best way to learn QuickBooks easily and quickly.
What Can You Do with QuickBooks?
QuickBooks software has many different applications and uses across a wide variety of industries. Many small and medium-sized businesses use QuickBooks for its record-keeping features as it was originally designed for businesses without a dedicated accounting department. QuickBooks allows someone to track and categorize many things such as expenses, sales, transactions, and customer, vendor, and inventory lists. This makes QuickBooks a great option for those needing to keep all of their business records in one place.
Additionally, many people use QuickBooks to create and send invoices, manage employee payroll, help prepare their taxes, maintain a budget, and automate tasks. QuickBooks includes features to automate accounts payable and receivable. Many use QuickBooks to automate sending customer invoices or payment reminders or even keeping employees updated on crucial tasks and sending deadline reminders. These features of QuickBooks allow you to increase productivity and maintain efficient workflows so that you do not constantly need to task employees with work that can be done by the QuickBooks software itself.
Not only do businesses use QuickBooks, but QuickBooks is often used by self-employed people like freelancers and independent contractors. QuickBooks offers a specific version of the software called QuickBooks Solopreneur (formerly QuickBooks Self-Employed or SE). Many people find that once they link their accounts, it is easy to import their transactions and the QuickBooks software will automatically work to tag one’s income. Self-employed users will likely need to do a bit of extra work to categorize their transactions more effectively for their own needs, but QuickBooks can do much of the bookkeeping work automatically and make tracking finances easier for individuals.
How Do You Download QuickBooks? How Much Does it Cost?
To download QuickBooks, one first needs to pick the version and monthly subscription plan that will work best for themselves or their business. While Intuit is phasing out all but one of its desktop versions of QuickBooks, users can still choose from different plans of cloud-based QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Solopreneur for those who are self-employed. QuickBooks Solopreneur is only for individuals who are tracking and monitoring their own work as freelancers or independent contractors and is the cheapest option at $20 a month. The most costly version of QuickBooks is QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise which ranges in price between $1922-$4668 per year, aims to be all-inclusive, and is customizable to a business’s particular industry.
QuickBooks Online has simple, plus, and advanced plans. The lowest-cost option for QuickBooks Online is called Simple Start and it is $30 a month for one user and one linked sales channel and offers most features except for things like bill pay, inventory tracking, employee management, and support services. The QuickBooks Online Plus plan allows up to five users, all sales channels, and adds things like multi-currency transactions, bill pay, and inventory tracking that the Simple Start excludes. One can add payroll and other support services to both the Simply Start and Plus plans. QuickBooks Online Advanced adds all features, including payroll, employee management services, support services, and more customization and automation options. Alternatively, for those not yet ready to pay for QuickBooks, you can sign up for a free trial of any of these versions or plans.
What Are the Benefits of Learning QuickBooks?
Whether for one’s own finances or to manage the finances of another small business, it can be useful to learn how to use QuickBooks. QuickBooks is an easy-to-use accounting and bookkeeping tool, so many people learn how to use it to track and monitor finances for their own business or to act as a Bookkeeper, Financial Manager, or Accountant for other businesses. Regardless of the size of one’s business, it is important to keep track of when and where one spends and makes money. QuickBooks will allow someone to monitor transactions, sales, and expenses. QuickBooks users can also use the software as a central place to store information about customers, vendors, inventory, employees, and orders and automate tasks like sending invoices and payments.
While the user interface for QuickBooks is designed to be easy for users to navigate, it is still important to learn the optimal techniques and strategies for using QuickBooks’s various features. Many need some initial guidance on how to set up their business profile, link accounts, integrate their sales channels, and use other important features of QuickBooks. However, once everything is set up it is fairly easy to operate. Learning Quickbooks can also be an entry point into learning more about accounting or financial management, for those who are interested in pursuing a career as a Bookkeeper, Accountant, or Financial Manager. Even those within these professional roles might need to have familiarity with QuickBooks, given its global popularity as a financial management software that is used across a wide variety of industries.
Read more about why you should learn QuickBooks.
QuickBooks Careers
QuickBooks is used in many industries for bookkeeping and accounting purposes. Those using QuickBooks for industries such as construction, retail, and the restaurant industry will likely use more of the features that allow businesses to track their expenses, record sales and order receipts, manage inventory, or even set up point-of-service systems. Legal industries using QuickBooks, by contrast, may use QuickBooks to keep track of active cases, current or prospective clients, and any pro bono work that they are engaged in. Different industries will find certain features of QuickBooks more relevant and there are also third-party applications users can integrate to enhance QuickBooks’ functionality for their own business’s needs.
Not only will different industries use QuickBooks in different ways, but so will those using QuickBooks within different professions. A Bookkeeper using QuickBooks is likely to be involved in more of the day-to-day record keeping by tracking expenses, transactions, and budgets, making sure the books are balanced, and reconciling accounts with one’s bank. Even for those without bookkeeping training, QuickBooks can help do a lot of this work for individuals or small business owners. An Accountant, by contrast, is more likely to monitor a business’s expenses and transactions, fix any mistakes that they may see, and be able to offer actionable financial advice. Financial Managers, likewise, will also be more focused on offering advice and helping their clients to continue to grow their business than doing much of the record keeping.
How to Learn QuickBooks
One of the best ways to learn QuickBooks is by taking an in-person or live online class. These types of classes are led by expert instructors who will teach students everything they need to know about the topic. Live, instructor-led classes provide students with a structure to learn the most important QuickBooks skills and guidance on the best strategies and techniques for those wanting to do their own financial record keeping or who want to do bookkeeping and accounting for their clients. Taking an instructor-led class ensures that you receive up-to-date examples and practice using the latest version of QuickBooks. Use Noble Desktop’s free Classes Near Me tool to find the QuickBooks classes in your area or to find only live online QuickBooks classes near you.
Another great training option is taking an on-demand class. These are asynchronous online or self-paced classes where students are given access to course material, often video lectures or tutorials, practices, and skills quizzes, and can move through it at their own speed. This option is useful for those with busy schedules or who cannot commit to attending an instructor-led class either in person or live online. While on-demand classes are often low-cost, and some are even free, students will not receive the same level of guidance or practice in an on-demand class that they will in an instructor-led class. Find on-demand QuickBooks classes that will for your needs and schedule.
QuickBooks learners can also find myriad free resources online. For those unfamiliar with QuickBooks, Intuit does offer a free interactive demo of the software along with several other tutorials for new learners. Additionally, prospective learners can readily find other online guides, YouTube tutorials, blog posts, eBooks, and maybe even QuickBooks or accounting classes through their local library. Noble Desktop’s comprehensive guide to accounting is one such free resource that covers essential information about a related topic, accounting, and how to learn the skills necessary to make this one’s career.
Read the full guide on how to learn QuickBooks.
A Brief History of QuickBooks
QuickBooks was first released in 1992 by Intuit, a software company founded in 1983 by Scott Cook and Tom Proulx. Before QuickBooks’s release, Intuit launched Quicken which is a financial management application intended for personal use rather than for small businesses or self-employed people. As Quicken customers started to use this software for their small businesses, Intuit saw a gap in the market and decided to develop QuickBooks specifically for small businesses. Intuit designed QuickBooks to be an easy-to-use software program for businesses lacking a dedicated accounting department and for those with no accounting background.
QuickBooks would continue to evolve over the years as Intuit updated the software to add more features and developed different versions for specific markets. In 2000, Intuit released the first Basic and Pro versions of QuickBooks and launched the first iteration of QuickBooks Online, which is now their main offering for both small businesses and individual entrepreneurs. They followed these releases up three years later in 2003 with the first industry-specific versions of QuickBooks, something they have continued to develop into their QuickBooks Enterprise editions. In addition to specific version releases, Intuit has added or streamlined features over the years making it more usable for Accountants and adding features like bill and time tracking, sending batch invoices, automatic payment reminders, and integrating ecommerce channels and applications.
Comparable Applications
A common application that many compare to QuickBooks is Excel. Whether to use one or the other depends on what you need to use the application for as QuickBooks is best for any double-entry accounting and Excel is useful for basic invoice and payment tracking. For small businesses or cash-only businesses that just need a way to collect and organize their data, Excel can be a useful and potentially more cost-effective way to do so as long as someone is already paying for the Microsoft 365 software suite. Additionally, someone using Excel for their simple bookkeeping can download accounting templates that others have created to make Excel easier to use for financial record keeping.
QuickBooks, or another accounting-specific software, will be better for small or medium-sized businesses that need the ability to send invoices, track expenses, see real-time cash flow projections, manage payroll, or prepare taxes. In other words, the features that QuickBooks offers cannot be replaced by Excel but not every business or individual will need to use all of these features. These applications can also be seen as complementary, as one can upload Excel spreadsheets into QuickBooks. While QuickBooks is intended for those with little to no accounting background, to use Excel it is best to have some knowledge of math, how to use formulas, and even how to do some light to moderate data analysis.
For those interested in learning more about Excel, Noble Desktop has a free comprehensive guide to Excel that is useful for Excel beginners and those who want to use Excel professionally.
Learn QuickBooks with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop
Noble Desktop offers expert in-person and live online training for those interested in learning QuickBooks. Noble Desktop’s classes all include expert, hands-on guidance, small class sizes, and free retake options and many classes offer both part-time and full-time options so that one can find the QuickBooks or finance class that works best for their schedule. For fast and comprehensive training in QuickBooks, consider enrolling in Noble Deskop’s QuickBooks Bootcamp which teaches students everything they need to know about how to use QuickBooks to track and manage a business’s finances. This bootcamp uses hands-on training to teach students the basics of QuickBooks like configuring a company profile, working with customer, vendor, and inventory lists, and invoicing and processing payments as well as the more advanced management and customization features. Noble Desktop offers this bootcamp live online from any location and it can be taken in person at Noble Desktop’s training facility in New York City.
Noble Desktop also has accounting classes and bootcamps which are a great option for anyone interested in developing their skills or learning more about finance and accounting. The Intro to Financial Accounting & Financial Statements class uses hands-on exercises to teach students the fundamentals of analyzing financial statements and reports. After completing this introductory class, students can progress to the Intermediate Financial Accounting class which teaches more complex topics like earnings per share and deferred taxes. For those who want a comprehensive, accelerated class that tackles both beginner and intermediate topics of accounting, consider the Financial Accounting Bootcamp which teaches everything students need to know in two class sessions.
Noble’s finance and accounting classes are great for those who want to grow their financial literacy beyond learning about QuickBooks. These classes are also useful for those interested in turning their knowledge of QuickBooks into the first step to becoming a Bookkeeper or Accountant. If this is something that interests you, you can learn more about the career path of an Accountant by reading Noble Desktop’s comprehensive guide to accounting, a free resource that covers essential information about accounting and how to learn the skills necessary to make this one’s career. For those who want to work in finance in some capacity but are not entirely sure which direction they want to go in yet, Noble Desktop’s guide to finance is a useful way to read about different career options.