Bob Gauvreau (YouTube) recommends QuickBooks Online as the preferred accounting platform. He argues businesses should choose software that integrates with their banking platform, is cloud/web-accessible, provides robust customizable reporting and budgeting (with Excel export), and supports add-ons for growth (payroll, inventory, specialized apps). He closes by noting QuickBooks Online’s market leadership and continued product evolution.
Chapters
Okay. A question that we get asked often is how do we choose the appropriate accounting software for our business? And I can make this short and sweet for you. You should use QuickBooks online. Now, that's our personal preference for a lot of reasons. And I'll outline the categories to show you how we get to that conclusion. And everyone's got to assess their own current situation. But for us, QuickBooks Online seems to be the most versatile platform that's available on the market. So the very first outcome that you want to achieve is that your accounting platform will tie into your business banking platform. So if your business banking doesn't tie into an online cloud accounting solution or vice versa, then you probably want to look at modifying which bank or which platform you use. So that's a first one. The reason is it allows you for efficient transaction recording in your bookkeeping system to ensure that you're not missing anything. So connecting your bank account to your bookkeeping software is very important. Second is whether it's cloud based. Now this is important for us because if I am running my business and I want to hop in, if I'm out of town and I want to easily access my bookkeeping information, I can easily log in to a Web browser platform. QuickBooks Online is a web browser platform. There's other ones that are out there that are as well, but that would be a significant area that, that I would be looking at. Thirdly, looking at the reporting features. Now I want to be able to look at and modify reporting features at all times so I can identify if my business is being successfully operating, am I making money, how's my cash flow? And QuickBooks Online again has a robust system with numerous different reports that are customizable and flexible. They can also be pulled out of QuickBooks and into Excel for easy maneuvering from one area to another, adjusting numbers. And also there's a great budgeting feature included in there as well that you can, that you can modify. So those would be the three key areas of how to choose the main accounting system. And then maybe the last one would be as you continue to build out your business, what add ons can we include in your accounting platform as you continue to grow and evolve? So payroll is an easy add on. Again, QuickBooks Online can do that for you. Inventory management, other analysis or specialized applications. You want to look at the system you're choosing and make sure that you know if you're continuing to grow and scale and build a business that needs more power, what solution do you need and what one can be added onto to give you the most power down the road. So, again, QuickBooks Online is our number one solution for all of those reasons. And also they're the number one in the market. They're the largest provider. They have the most resources to continue to evolve the system to be the best solution in the market.
