QuickBooks Online Plus vs. Advanced: A Side-by-Side Comparison in 2023

QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced are both powerful accounting software, but they are designed with distinct features and functionalities to cater to different business needs. While QuickBooks Online Plus has all the core features of QuickBooks, Advanced offers additional and more enhanced tools and benefits, such as higher user limit, customer user permissions, a dedicated success manager, and more. 

In this article, we will compare QuickBooks Online Plus and QuickBooks Online Advanced to help you decide which QuickBooks Online version is right for you in 2023.

Pricing and Scalability

QuickBooks Online Plus is priced lower than QuickBooks Online Advanced, making it a more budget-friendly option for businesses with simpler accounting needs. However, as your business grows and requires advanced features, you’ll benefit from Advanced’s enhanced scalability. Advanced allows for a higher user limit, with up to 25 users, compared to Plus, which supports a maximum of five users only. This scalability is particularly valuable for businesses with expanding teams or multiple departments that require access to the accounting software. 

Feature Comparison 2023

QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced offer many similar features, such as income and expense tracking, invoicing, inventory management, and class and location tracking. However, QuickBooks Online Advanced is more feature-rich, as seen in the comparison table below.

Advantages of QuickBooks Online Advanced

Batch Invoicing & Expense Management

Batch invoicing in QuickBooks Online Advanced is a time-saving feature that allows you to create and send invoices to multiple customers in one go. This helps you streamline your invoicing process so that you don’t have to create individual invoices for each customer separately. This feature is particularly useful if you have multiple customers who purchase the same products or services from you. Instead of sending each invoice one by one, simply select the customers from the dropdown list and send the invoices to all your clients in one go.

In addition to batch invoicing, QuickBooks Online Advanced offers batch expense entry. This feature allows you to enter multiple expenses at once instead of entering each expense separately. This is particularly useful for businesses that have a high volume of expenses to record, such as those with numerous transactions or recurring expenses.

You can easily set up batch invoices and expenses on the Batch transactions screen, which you can access by clicking on +New on your QuickBooks dashboard.

Batch transaction entry in QuickBooks Online Advanced

Learn more about Batch Invoicing in QuickBooks Online Advanced.

Custom User Permissions

Custom user permissions in QuickBooks Online Advanced allow businesses to have precise control over what each user can access and perform within the software. This means you can customize user roles and permissions based on the specific needs and responsibilities of each user or team member. You can grant or restrict access to various areas of QuickBooks Online Advanced, such as sales, expenses, banking, reports, and more. This ensures that sensitive financial data and critical operations are only accessible to authorized individuals, enhancing security and maintaining data integrity.

Advanced Reporting

QuickBooks Online Advanced offers enhanced reports in addition to the standard reports available in QuickBooks Online Plus. With advanced reporting in QuickBooks Online Advanced, you can analyze and visualize your data in a way that is specific to your unique reporting needs. You can select the data fields you want to include in the report, arrange them in a logical order, and apply filters and criteria to refine the data set. This flexibility allows you to generate reports that provide insights into specific aspects of your financials, such as profitability by product line, customer sales trends, or expense analysis by department.

Some of the advanced reports available in QuickBooks Advanced include Profit and Loss by Product, Expense Analysis by Department, and Sales by Customer Summary. You can also create custom reports, whether it’s on invoices, expenses, sales, or bills.

Advanced reporting feature in QuickBooks Online Advanced

Spreadsheet Sync

With Spreadsheet Sync, you can connect your QuickBooks Online Advanced account to Microsoft Excel and sync data between the two platforms. This means you can use Excel’s tools to manipulate your data and then transfer them easily to QuickBooks Online Advanced. This feature is especially useful for creating multi-company reports. If your business has multiple subsidiaries and you want to create consolidated financial reports, you can easily do it with Spreadsheet Sync.

Estimated vs. Actual Reporting

This new feature of QuickBooks Online Advanced allows you to track and analyze the financial performance of your projects by comparing estimated project costs and revenues with the actual amounts incurred and earned. This reporting functionality is particularly useful for businesses that undertake projects with defined budgets and need to monitor their progress and profitability.

To utilize Project Estimate vs. Actual Reporting in QuickBooks Advanced, you can set up project estimates in QuickBooks Online Advanced. Estimates can include projected costs, revenues, and other relevant financial metrics associated with a specific project. These estimates serve as the baseline against which the actual project costs and revenues are compared.

QuickBooks Online Plus vs. Advanced: Which is Better?

Whether QuickBooks Online Plus or Advanced is better depends on the size and unique needs of your business. For instance, if you are a small business with up to five accounting users and only need QuickBooks’ standard features like invoicing, class and location tracking, and reporting, then Plus might be enough. However, when you outgrow the features of Plus, and you start needing enhanced features for customization and scalability, you will realize that QuickBooks Online Advanced is worth the price.