Linda Artesani walks through choosing a QuickBooks Online plan for a small business. The three main tiers are Simple Start ($10/month for three months with a 50% discount), Essentials ($35/month), and Plus, each with different features like payroll, inventory, and multi-currency support. She explains which businesses fit each tier and how to avoid overpaying.
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Hi there, Linda Artesani, Artesani Bookkeeping. So I wanted to do a video about where do you start with QuickBooks Online, and I had a scenario this week with a new client to me. He's just starting, he's a young entrepreneur, his dad's actually helping him, and instead of just jumping in and trying to figure it out— he's very technologically savvy, but he wasn't sure where to start, so he reached out to me, which I have to say I really admire. It's nice to see that somebody's taking the time to learn the system, figure out what program or product works best for him, and reaching out to a professional to help them decide. He is a little on the rare side because most of the times I meet people and they just jump in, they figure out what they need or think they need without going to me and/or another professional, a ProAdvisor, and they might overbuy, and I do see that a lot. So let's go to the page That will take you through the pricing. So I'm going to come right over here. This is the Choose Your Plan. So if you logged into QuickBooks Online, this is the page you're going to come to. That's going to show you what's available. So we've got our small business plans. This is really— these are really the accounting programs. And then you have a freelancer plan, which is really for someone Schedule C. It's tied to the categories in its Schedule C. And technically, I would call this not an accounting program. It's great for tracking mileage. It's great for people who want to track their estimated taxes as they go along, but really not a program that is going to give you the accounting, what you want to see at the end of the day. So there's no bank reconciliation. It's for a specific person. And I have other posts on self-employed, so I will put links to them in the blog post. So going back here, small business. Where do you start? Which one do you pick? Most of the people that I talk to, I work with a lot of really small businesses, startups, they can start right here. And truly starting with Simple Start, they are people who pay their bills with a credit card. They don't have a vendor and accounts payable and billing. They don't have a need for that. They're really basic when they're first starting out. They might not even have an employee to start out. So these are really small, They don't have a requirement for a lot of users, so it's a great product just for them and it's relatively inexpensive. If you buy it at $10 a month, the $10 a month will be for 3 months. You're gonna get basically $30 off the 3 months altogether. If you try it, the trial, you lose that deal and it'll be $20 a month. So the deal only lasts 3 months, so know that going in that if you jump in and buy it now, put your credit card in, then you are going to get it for $10 for 3 months, and then on the 4th month it will jump up to the regular rate. There's no real way to get around that, so it's— that's what it is. That's your deal. So it's actually better to sign up and pay right from the gate so that way you get the $30, because otherwise you're only going to save $20. If you go with the free trial, you're going to get 1 month for free and try it out. So it's really It's a $10 difference, really not a lot to worry about or lose sleep over, but it's just know that going in that if you do the free trial, you're going to lose the deal. So let's go back to the 50% off. Essentials gives you that extra managing the bills, you have more users, tracking time. So those are things that are part of the Essentials product that I think fit most businesses that I run into fit this Exactly, and it— you all can have payroll, so payroll is not a factor. Tracking time can be done in TSheets, so you could have that if you wanted to track time on Simple Start. But know that if you select this one, it's, it's a pretty good fit for most businesses, and the pricing is really not that bad at $35 a month. Then we get into the big boy, the big player in the field, the Plus version. So Plus version is a great product for the business that's a little bit larger, has more employees, has a need maybe for an accounts receivable department, accounts payable department, so they need more users. It's a great product if you need to track inventory, track projects. It's the one that has all the features. So if you have a need for that, class tracking, any of those things, that is in this Plus version. So you would have to go to the Plus version. But you really have to sit down and say, okay, do I need these things? So there is another page, and I'll put this link in the blog as well, comparing the 2 directly so you can really see where Simple Start drops off. And it starts— drops off at the bills and managing and paying bills. Those are not included in Simple Start. So a lot of customers that I start off with, they just put everything through their credit card, they get their points, and they don't really have bills, or they pay their bills through the credit card, so they just bring it in as an expense after the fact. So it's a great product for them for that. And you get into the Essentials plan, then you start to get into multiple currencies. So that's another reason that you might want to go to that mid-tiered product because you have multiple currencies. And I do see that with a lot of companies now. Everybody's— we're kind of a global economy. So if you have a need to start to, you know, use paying with euros or paying payments to China, although there are apps that will do that for you, know that you'll need to be in Essentials. And of course, Plus has the inventory. 1099 contractors, I believe it's supposed to be in here. Might be wrong. But again, there's an app for that at the year end for both of these products that will cover you there that wouldn't cost you the difference in grabbing the Plus version. Budget's another thing that's in Plus that's pretty important, but if it's part of your business, it's very important. But if you don't need it, you can do a budget in Excel, or you can do budgets with— and there's apps for that as well. It sounds like a kind of a theme here. So I turned on Simple Start, and I created my company file. So it's really simple when you come here. If you want to do the trial, you're just going to click Try It for Free, and then you'll fill in some screens, create a user, and that will get you to the page where you come over here and you create your company file. And this is a Simple Start one. There's less reports now with the 3 levels. There's different reports. One has— this is the least amount of reports, but there's enough basic ones in there for your CPA. And of course, if you have a good CPA, you're going to invite them into the file anyway, so that's not as important. It's important to have the reporting, but you can get by with Simple Start and the reports that are in there. And then of course, you get into more reporting in the Essentials version, and the Plus has the most reporting, and it's growing. And these products really grow and change as you go through them, so you'll notice that there will be more features added as we go along. So that's basically where we're at with signing up, our first video on what you would do, the steps to decide which product to pick. And I think that's— I get asked that a lot. People call me and they'll ask me, which I encourage you, if you want to call me and ask me questions or even reach out to me on YouTube or Facebook, I can help you through picking the product that works best for you. But this is the first video. I'll get into more of how to set your file up in the next video on starting with QuickBooks Online. But I'm glad that we got a good groundwork done here for just where do you start, right? You click on that, you click on that website for QuickBooks and it's a little overwhelming. So this should help guide you in deciding where to go and what to choose. Thank you for watching. Bye now.
