Quicken vs QuickBooks: Deciding the Best for You

Quicken and QuickBooks are the two widely used accounting software. These accounting software were initially developed by Intuit Inc. While the former has been recently sold to H.I.G. Capital, QuickBooks is still owned by Intuit Inc.

Quicken, the 34-year old accounting software was first launched in 1983 and has around 1.5 million users. Currently, Quicken has its stable version Quicken 2018. After the massive success of Quicken, Intuit came out with QuickBooks in the year 1998.

QuickBooks, designed and developed specifically for small and medium-sized businesses, with 4.3 million users has around 74 percent market base. In comparison with Quicken, QuickBooks is loaded with almost all the accounting and bookkeeping features needed by SMBs and CPAs.

After a brief overview on Quicken and QuickBooks, any starter can get confused and have a tough time selecting the most suitable accounting software to manage their business finances.

To ease down your confusion, and help you select the best accounting software that ensures ease-of-use, high performance, and maximum ROI, in this blog post, let’s look at the key differences between Quicken and QuickBooks.

Quicken vs QuickBooks: Which is Best for You?

PARAMETERS	QUICKEN	QUICKBOOKS
Recommended for	It consists of features to manage personal finances along with few features to manage small business finances.	It is loaded with almost all the features needed to manage finances of SMBs.
Accounting Capability	Single entry	Double entry
Look and Feel	The only plus point of this software is its ease of navigation.	It has both - simple user interface and navigation.
Account Reconciliation	Account reconciliation process in Quicken is somewhat complex. You need to start from Account Register, and then, add or update changing transactions until the account reconciliation process isn’t complete.	Account reconciliation process in QuickBooks is intuitive.You just need to navigate Account Reconciliation, and then, follow few simple steps. You can update account reconciliation in QuickBooks without having much expertise.
Transaction Download	Downloading financial transaction for credit cards, bank statements, etc. in Quicken is complex.	It is much easier to download any type of financial transaction that you need with QuickBooks.
Payroll Feature	The most important accounting feature, Payroll isn’t available with Quicken.	QuickBooks provides the most advanced Payroll feature to take care all round payroll activities.
Invoice & Tax Feature	To simplify most complex accounting functions of invoice and tax feature, there is no specific feature or tool integrated with Quicken.	There are several features and tools available with QuickBooks that take care of your complex accounting functions of managing invoices and taxation.
Apps or Add-on Integration	Apps or add-ons can’t be integrated with Quicken to get customized accounting experience.	Over 500 business applications can be integrated with QuickBooks.
Multi-user Environment	This accounting software cannot be used in a multi-user mode.	QuickBooks Desktop hosted in a cloud environment can be securely accessed in a multi-user mode.
Integration with Microsoft Outlook, Excel, etc.	It can’t be integrated with Outlook or Excel to ease accounting and bookkeeping experience.	QuickBooks can be easily streamlined with MS Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc.).
Create Purchase Orders	You cannot purchase orders with Quicken.	Purchase orders can be easily created with QuickBooks.
Track Income/Expenses by Class	There isn’t any feature to track income or expenses using the different set of classes.	You can easily track income, expenses and even other financial activities of inventory management with QuickBooks.
File Format	Quicken has *.QDF file format.	QuickBooks has three different file format: *.QBM, *.QBA and *.QBW
Inventory Management	It doesn’t have any feature or tool to manage inventories.	QuickBooks Enterprise consists of tools such as Advanced Inventory to easily manage and track inventories.
Business Forecast	Quicken doesn’t have any feature to analyze and forecast future of your business.	QuickBooks provides comprehensive business forecasting to help you know where your business is heading towards.

Bottom-line

After comparing features of these two accounting software, we can undisputedly say that QuickBooks has an absolute edge over Quicken.

QuickBooks can be in fact termed as the Swiss Army Knife that  provides the most comprehensive and customized accounting and bookkeeping experience to different business domains, while Quicken has limited features and good only if you want to manage personal finances along with business.

However, you want to have an accounting software for your own personal needs then, you can go with Quicken.

What’s Next? 

After selecting QuickBooks to re-strategize accounting for your business, you have an option to get QuickBooks hosted on a cloud server.

QuickBooks hosting ensures enriched, powerful and advanced QuickBooks experience at an even more affordable price.

There are several benefits of QuickBooks hosting, which primarily include anytime, anywhere and from any device accessibility, 24/7 support, flexibility, scalability and optimal data security.

It is, however, important to select a QuickBooks hosting provider, who have exhaustive experience and equipped with the most advanced infrastructure for QuickBooks hosting. 

Techarex Networks, US based QuickBooks hosting provider have immense experience in delivering a seamless QuickBooks hosting solutions. In case if you have any query or if you want to know about our QuickBooks hosting pricing, feel free to contact us right now.

QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise 2017: Business Accounting Software

QuickBooks is all set to launch the successor of its 2016 version; all new QuickBooks Desktop 2017 as a latest business accounting software. All desktops variants of QuickBooks (Pro, Premier and Enterprise) are now available for users.

This latest Version will offer new features in order to simplify accounting and various improvements.

IMPROVED FEATURES IN QUICKBOOKS DESKTOP

1. MULTI USER EXPERIENCE IS IMPROVED IN QUICKBOOKS DESKTOP

No need to switch frequently between Single user and Multi user mode.Bill payments, printing and scanning checks, link estimation and invoices all can be done even in Multi user mode (Available only in Enterprise Version 2017).Even switching modes become faster and easier.

2. DELETED USER DETAILS ON AUDIT TRIAL 

Even when Admin user deleted user names associated with transaction, Audit Trial can retain and display them. Tracking of deleted users and marking.

Note : You can get our QuickBooks Enterprise page. Let us guide you to the quickest answer or QuickBooks 2016 Enterprise expert. Contact us by QuickBooks phone number: 1-855-909-3300, post a question to the QuickBooks enterprise support Or Chat, Get Better Quickbooks Enterprise Solutions.

3. SECURITY IMPROVEMENTS

To keep your business safe, QuickBooks added a new feature called Multi-Factor Authentication.

4. REMINDER OF UNDEPOSITED FUND

Explicit view which deposits needs attention and notify about pending deposits.

5. QUICK FILTER SELECTION

 QuickBooks Added “SELECT ALL” and “CLEAR ALL” options in QuickBooks 2017.

WHAT IS NEW?

1. SMART SEARCH

Latest version will include Easy and fast search option. You can search while typing.

Also, you can now search for range of values.

2. SCHEDULED REPORTS

You can now set up a schedule for reports and have them automatically sent as PDF attachments email messages at scheduled time even if QuickBooks is closed.

3. ENHANCED CREDIT CARD STATUS

On Credit Charge Window, QuickBooks added a new CLEARED icon if the transaction has been cleared.

4. REPORT FILTERS

Now it is easier to reproduce memorized posts with visible filters. Also, in QuickBooks 2017 you can filter by customer type.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The latest version QuickBooks Enterprise 2017 is now available for purchase.

You can either purchase it directly through Intuit or its genuine resellers like Techarex Networks. 

Fixing Incorrectly Recorded Sales Tax in QuickBooks

The CDR feature not only identifies the errors with using the incorrect payment transaction, but it also fixes your transactions automatically!

Before starting the tasks that are listed below, you should review the settings of the client for sales tax. In addition to that, if the Sales Tax feature has not been enabled then the Sales Tax task group will not display in the CDR.

After reviewing and correcting the sales tax preference settings your client, then you are ready to begin the following CDR task.

Fixing Incorrectly Recorded Sales Tax:

QuickBooks uses a special 'Pay Sales Tax' dialog box to record the sales tax liability payments properly. When payments are made using other transaction types, such as Pay Bills, Write Checks, or Make Journal Entries, the 'Pay Sales Tax' dialog box might not accurately reflect the payments.

Fix Incorrectly Recorded Sales Tax task will help you in identifying and correcting the transaction when your client paid the sales tax liability outside of the 'Pay Sales Tax' dialog box.

The negative line entry that includes in the 'Pay Sales Tax' dialog box when the Write Checks transactions were created, assigned to the payable liability account of sales tax, and payable to the vendor sales tax.

The properly recorded sales tax payments will have the transaction type of TAXPMT in the checkbook register.

Word of Caution: This is may be a good time to review with your client about the vendor names that are associated with different types of tax payments. Some states may have the same vendor name for the multiple agency tax payments.

You have to suggest that to your client to use a unique vendor name for each different type of tax being paid. This will avoid the CDR which is possibly correcting a non-sales-tax type of the payment made to the vendor.

What exactly is this tool fixing?

The tool will identify and fix the non-sales-tax payable type transactions used to pay sales tax liability by using Void and Replace functionality. The tool can identify the transactions of any Write Checks where the payee is the same as an assigned payee for the sales tax item.

However, this tool will not identify any vendor bill payment checks, vendor bills, or the journal entries that recording payment for the Sales Tax Liability.

If this is your first incorrectly recorded sales tax transaction fixing solution, then you might want to change the 'to' date to the today’s date. This ensures that you are looking at all the sales tax payable transactions that were improperly recorded by using the wrong transaction in your QuickBooks.

Another word of caution: If your client has multiple lines that are recorded on the sales tax payable checks, such as an additional fee for the late payment penalty or other adjustment lines, then you might want to use the link to make a manual Sales Tax Adjustment.

The Incorrectly Recorded Sales Tax tool assumes all the lines of the incorrect transactions belong to the Sales Tax Payable account.

Follow these steps to fix incorrectly recorded sales tax:

1. If you are completing the changes as a part of a dated review, then from the menu bar select Accountant, 'Client Data Review' and then launch Client Data Review. Then select the Fix Incorrectly Recorded Sales Tax task in the Sales Tax group.

2. If you are not completing the changes as a part of a dated review, then from the menu bar select Accountant, 'Client Data Review' and launch 'Fix Incorrectly Recorded Sales Tax task'.

3. Now, double-click on any transaction to see the non-sales-tax payment transaction that is originally created to make sure that it should be changed to the Sales Tax Payment. Then make note of the check number or the check date.

4. Put a checkmark in each of the transactions to be fixed. (This is optional) Use 'Select All' button or 'Deselect All' button to streamline the process.

5. Click on 'Void & Replace'. Then CDR will create a new Sales Tax Payment transaction, and it voids the original 'Write Checks transaction' or can Make General Journal Entries transaction.

6. Now click on Proceed to the 'Fix Sales Tax' message that displays to continue with the change, or you can click on Cancel to return to the CDR tool.

7. To close the message indicating that the transaction has been fixed, click on Ok.

8. Click on the 'X' which is on the top-right corner to return to the CDR Center.

9. Return to your checkbook register icon on the Home page and look for the check number or date or both to view the original transaction that voided and then the new transaction will be created as a Sales Tax Payment type.

With the Void and Replace functionality which is included in the Fix Incorrectly Recorded Sales Tax tool, you will be assured that if your original transaction marked as cleared in a bank reconciliation, then the newly created Sales Tax Payment transaction will be marked as cleared too.

Apart from that with QuickBooks Cloud Hosting , you can have a hassle-free experience. Furthermore, you are not stuck with your office PC. Your data is securely stored in the cloud, not at your office system. So, it makes easier to access your QuickBooks and company data from anywhere, anytime if you have multiple locations or you are on the go.