Quickbooks Desktop vs. Online

Know before you go!

August 2024

EnvioAg Integration Recommendation: QuickBooks Desktop  

Like many of you, we rely on QuickBooks Desktop for accounting. After extensive research from many sources, and discussing with the QuickBooks sales team, we have decided to stay on the desktop version and are recommending the same for our EnvioAg client base.  

Q: Isn’t the desktop version going away? 
A: Maybe someday, but not anytime soon. QB Desktop is still available for the foreseeable future.  

You can purchase at this link:  
QuickBooks Desktop, Compare QuickBooks Desktop to Online (intuit.com), or 
Buy QuickBooks Enterprise, Purchase Enterprise Online | QuickBooks (intuit.com)  

Q: Isn’t the cost about the same, or less than my annual desktop license? 
A: Not necessarily, and in many cases, no. You will need to purchase the package right for you, number of users, size of database, feature set, etc. Once you exhaust your limitations in any of these areas, you will need to upgrade your package or remove users, purge data, etc. Be sure to read the fine print. *Pricing is listed in the link above and should be discussed with a QBO Sales Professional prior to purchase.  

Q: Does QBO have the same feature set as the desktop version?  
A: No, QBO offers limited functionality as compared to the desktop version. Here is a really good overall comparison of the two versions: QuickBooks Online vs. Desktop Comparison for 2024 — Katana (katanamrp.com) 

Q: Does my data import from desktop to QBO? 
A: Not exactly in all cases. Data integrity is a main source of frustration for companies who have migrated. Here is an article that discussed data migration, specifically #2, #3, #5, #7, and #9 Are There Disadvantages of Using QuickBooks Online? – Consero Global 

After doing your research, we strongly recommend calling the QBO Sales Team for the deep dive conversation. In our discussion with a sales rep, we learned that due to the age of our file and file size, we might be better off starting a new file, from scratch, resulting in managing a historical accounting file(s), and a new one.  

As a technology company, we know technology changes every day and look forward to revisiting a move to QBO in the future, but for now, we’re happy to stay with what we know works for us. For these reasons, we have also pushed the development of integration to QBO to 2025, at a minimum. We will continue to research and monitor QBO and look forward to bringing it to EnvioAg  soon.  

Updated on December 9, 2024