Cloud Accounting with QuickBooks Online–The Details

Charlie Russell for Sleeter Group writes: I introduced you to QuickBooks Online (QBO) in our prior article (QuickBooks Online Overview), now let’s dig in a big deeper.  In our attempt to come up with a standard for comparing online accounting systems, we (Doug Sleeter, MB Raimondi and myself) came up with a list of features that we would like to see in a good business accounting system. It is hard to compare products when they offer such different features, but we have to start someplace. When it comes to managing accounting there are many features that a small business just cannot do without, and we are trying to focus on those.

As we review various online accounting products we will point out things that we like and things that we feel are missing. If a product has a whiz-bang exciting feature but it doesn’t cover the basics, there is a problem. So, we have our list of features that we will be using to compare any cloud (online) based accounting product that we look at.

I certainly don’t consider our list to be all-inclusive, and I’m open to suggestions as to what could be added. One of the dangers of making a list like this is that we tend to think of the features that we have in the product that we are the most familiar with (in my case, QuickBooks for Windows), without recognizing that an online accounting product is different than a desktop accounting product. Another consideration is that every business will have a business process that is critical, but not all businesses will have the same requirements. That makes evaluations complicated!

It is the nature of Online software products that they evolve constantly, so as time goes on some of the feature we say are NOT there may be added. If I miss something, please feel free to point it out.

Product Details/Capacity

OK, let’s start with some basic information.

Number of transactions	No Limit
Number of records in a list	No Limit
Database size limit	No Limit
Maximum number of users	25
Underlying database	Oracle
Web browser support	All major browsers although there are some functions (conversion from QuickBooks Desktop, for example) that might require a specific browser.
Is there an app for mobile devices?	Mobile access w/BlackBerry, iPhone or Android. Features via mobile are limited; currently you can edit, create and view customers, estimates, invoices, sales receipts and payments using QuickBooks Mobile. This list of features here continues to expand.There is a special iPad app also, which has a different set of features. See our review at: http://www.sleeter.com/blog/2013/03/quickbooks-online-for-ipad/
Is there an API that developers can use to create add-on modules?	Yes, although it does not currently support access to all data. The “QuickBooks IPP API” is evolving – some data is accessible, some isn’t yet but will be later.
Can you have more than one company file on one subscription?	No
Multiple companies	Yes, with separate subscriptions.

-SNIP-

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