In the event you stay as far away from your practice bookkeeping as possible, you may not be aware of an extremely popular accounting software called “QuickBooks” by Intuit. QuickBooks is a dominant player in the small business accounting software market, claiming roughly 85% of the market! Now QuickBooks has many versions, but they fit into one of two categories; “Desktop” (i.e. local) vs. QuickBooks Online (i.e cloud-based).

Earlier this year, Intuit stated that they will no longer be selling subscriptions to QuickBooks Desktop Pro Plus, QuickBooks Desktop Premier Plus, Quickbooks Desktop Mac Plus, and Quickbooks Desktop Enhanced Payroll (essentially, “QuickBooks Desktop”) to new users after September 30th, 2024.

Please Note: this change will not impact existing users for Quickbooks Desktop as they will be eligible to renew their subscriptions. This also means if you purchase QuickBooks Desktop before September 30th, 2024 you should be eligible to renew as well. But the question remains, should QuickBooks Desktop be renewed or should you make the jump to QuickBooks Online?

Whenever a small business owner asks us which accounting software we recommend, we always encourage them to adopt QuickBooks Online (also referred to as “QBO”). We find that value in collaborating with your accountant, tax preparer, and financial consultants to be worth the cost of subscription alone. We find that many of clients who utilize QuickBooks Desktop will routinely review their financials less frequently than our clients who utilize QBO. Forbes recently wrote a good article comparing QuickBooks Desktop vs. QuickBooks Online echoing a similar sentiment. For this reason, the fact that Intuit seems to be discontinuing their QuickBooks Desktop solution is not really a concern of ours or our clients as we see it, as we believe that Intuit’s remaining software solution, QBO, is the superior solution regardless.

We want all of our clients to review their financials as often as they’re able and willing to do so. Likewise, we want every member of our client’s financial team to have access to said financials, so they can dig into the expenses, look up vendors, etc. and QuickBooks Online is, without question, the easiest way to accomplish this.

Even though QuickBooks Desktop will continue to be supported for existing users who purchase and/or renew before the end of September, it does sure seem like the Desktop version is circling the drain. As such, it is our recommendation that if you are a small business owner shopping for a new accounting software, go ahead and make the jump to QuickBooks Online.

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