Intuit Updates QuickBooks Online Accounting Tool With Customizable Features Aimed at Small Businesses The popular web-based program now supports payment and payroll integration, and CRM services.
By Benjamin Kabin •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Financial software company Intuit has made significant changes to QuickBooks Online, allowing users -- especially small-business owners -- to do more than simply prepare their taxes. Intuit has released a revamped version of the popular web-based accounting program, making complicated bookkeeping tasks manageable for novice accountants and building in common sense integration for payroll, payment and other merchant services.
With today's release, the cloud-based software now works in conjunction with customer relationship management (CRM) apps for iOS and Android and supports third-party app integration. The new QuickBooks Online allows business users to simply customize the software to their needs and manage things like billable accounts, payroll, profits and losses and other business information all from one central dashboard.
"We've thought about how we can make it a product that's accessible to the smallest of the small businesses, the people who get a little overwhelmed by the idea of accounting," says Dan Wernikoff, senior vice president of Intuit Small Business Financial Solutions. "It has the power of QuickBooks with an experience that a small business can grasp."
Related: Intuit to Give One Small Business a Free Super Bowl Ad
Just three years ago, Wernikoff says, many customers were wary of doing their finances online. Most customers stuck with the traditional desktop based QuickBooks. But by the end of the year, Intuit expects it will be bringing in more new customers on QuickBooks Online than on its traditional desktop version for the first time, Wernikoff says.
With its new mobile apps, QuickBooks can also be used as a customer relationship management tool, Intuit says. Instead of simply replicating its core offering for mobile the QuickBooks Online iPad app is a complement that gives businesses access to their vital customer information when they're in the field. The app gives users access to their customer information, lets them create estimates and invoices, manage accounts billable and receivable and send all that information back to the office -- with no data entry to do later.
"We feel like this gives QuickBooks another role to play other than financial management," Wernikoff says.
The new QuickBooks Online will become available to new customers in late October. Current users will begin to receive the updated version in January.
New users can test-drive QuickBooks Online for free for 30 days. After that, subscriptions are $12.99 per month or $124.99 for one year. Subscriptions include access to all of Intuit's integrated features and free access to all Intuit mobile apps.
Related: 10 Essential Steps for Getting Started With QuickBooks Accounting Tools
