Quicken and Quickbooks are perhaps two of the most popular accounting software options for small businesses. Both financial software solutions are popular, used by thousands of businesses around the world, with both claiming to be industry leaders. So what makes one better than the other? Which is easier to use: Quicken or Quickbooks? This article will explore how each piece of software operates and determine what may be best for your business.
Which Is Easier to Use Quicken or Quickbooks
Quicken and Quickbooks are both financial management software programs that help you
organize your finances. They are both easy to use, but they have different features and may be better suited to different people.
Quicken is easier to use than Quickbooks because it’s designed for people who want to manage their personal finances. It has a user-friendly interface that makes it simple to set up accounts, track spending, see bills due soon, and more. Quicken also includes features like bill reminders and the ability to set up budgets so you can keep track of what you’re spending on each category.
Quickbooks is more complicated than Quicken because it’s designed primarily for small businesses. It has much more advanced features than Quicken does such as inventory management tools and reporting capabilities that will help businesses get organized and make sure everything is running smoothly.
Quicken is a software program that’s been around for a long time, and it’s still very popular. It’s a good choice if you’re looking for something that will help you organize your finances, but Quickbooks has some features that make it easier to actually do business. For example, Quickbooks lets you create invoices and track sales tax — both things you can do with Quicken, but not without some extra work on your end.
If you’re just looking for an easy way to keep track of your personal finances, then Quicken is probably the best choice for you. But if you’re looking to start a business or take on more serious business-related tasks, then Quickbooks may be the better option.
What Is the Difference Between Quicken Home and Business and Quickbooks
There are two well-known accounting software packages: Quicken and QuickBooks. While QuickBooks is focused on small enterprises, Quicken is made for personal money. Both programs provide the ability to track earnings and expenses, make budgets, and produce reports.
There are, however, some significant differences between the two. Compared to QuickBooks, Quicken is less priced and simpler to use. Additionally, it provides more personal finance functions, such the capacity to monitor investments, maintain tabs on rental properties, and design debt repayment strategies.
More capabilities are available in QuickBooks for small businesses, including the ability to track inventory and generate invoices. The ideal accounting program for you ultimately depends on your unique requirements and financial constraints. Pick Quicken if you’re in charge of handling your personal finances. The greatest software for operating a small business is QuickBooks.
You can manage your personal finances using Quicken’s cheapest plan for less than $3 a month. However, a monthly payment schedule is not provided. No free trial is offered, however there is a 30-day money-back guarantee. Therefore, you are not obligated to stay for the entire year that you previously paid for if you don’t like it.
You can use QuickBooks to make monthly or yearly payments. It offers a 60-day money-back guarantee for its desktop applications. Its online version gives you the option of a free 30-day trial or three months for the price of two. Unless your small business entails being a landlord, using either the QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Online plan is best for small business finances. In that instance, benefit from Quicken’s Home & Business plan’s rental property features.
Even if you own many properties, you can track renters and rent with this plan. You can also generate tax schedules for your accountant, track company and rental income and costs, issue customized invoices with payment links, and even keep an eye on your cash flow.
Payroll processing is only possible with QuickBooks; it is not possible with Quicken’s Home & Business edition. However, both goods include smartphone apps for cloud access. The mobile app for QuickBooks Desktop isn’t quite as feature-rich as its Online plan. Instead, it primarily serves as a tool for uploading and organizing receipts to simplify tax season.
The number of users able to access the same account differs significantly between the two services. With QuickBooks, you can have up to 40 users, but Quicken only supports one. It’s crucial to realize that QuickBooks offers a variety of options, some of which just let one user or demand that they purchase their own access. The more expensive options include several users.
What Is QuickBooks?
Accounting, inventory, payroll, tax preparation, invoicing, bank account tracking and reconciliation, cost management, budgeting, payment processing, and management of accounts receivable and payable are all included in the full-featured QuickBooks business and financial management suite.
This feature set does not encompass everything QuickBooks is capable of. It can also be plugged into a variety of other software applications to add functionalities. In a nutshell, QuickBooks is the Swiss Army Knife of business financial software; it is capable of almost everything your company would require. However, there are several capabilities that many businesses won’t ever need, and QuickBooks Professional’s expensive cost can be a good incentive to look elsewhere.
QuickBooks will not let you down if you manage a small to medium-sized business and need to make sure you can monitor all financial data and produce reports describing any part of your firm. Just be aware that there is a learning curve when you first start off and that not all features are obvious when you first start the application.
Additionally, QuickBooks provides a desktop version for a set price as well as an online version that can be accessed through a web browser on a tablet, smartphone, or other device for a monthly or yearly subscription. Regardless of the version you select, some capabilities, such payroll management and payment processing, have an additional cost.
What Is Quicken?
Quicken provides for people and families what QuickBooks provides for small businesses. Your personal finances are tracked by Quicken, including account balances, transactions, investments, personal budgeting, loans, and other financial activities. Along with your personal information, the Home & Business version allows you to track rental properties and small businesses.
With the help of these capabilities, you can use your computer as your personal financial control panel, downloading the most recent data from all of your credit, investment, and bank accounts directly into Quicken. To better understand the tax ramifications of buying, selling, and how you are expanding your portfolio, you can track investments using the cost basis.
Difference Between QuickBooks & Quicken?
While Quicken concentrates on the finances of people and families, QuickBooks focuses on the accounting procedures of small enterprises. While Quicken focuses on delivering local software that is accessed on individual PCs, QuickBooks also provides an online version of their program that many businesses can use.
Quicken Home & Busines
Quicken Home & Business is an enhanced version of the Quicken personal finance program. While Quicken can create invoices and track business expenses, Home & Business adds limited accounting functions — including accounts receivable and payable tracking. It can also keep track of client jobs and your mileage log while also helping you create a business plan.
QuickBooks Pro
QuickBooks Pro has no personal finance functions, so you cannot use it to track your money outside of your business. It adds much more robust business reporting with more than 100 reports available as well as additional features in its accounts receivable and payable modules. QuickBooks Pro adds tools such as the ability to process payrolls, track inventories and support multiple users. Unlike Home & Business, QuickBooks Pro also supports traditional double-entry bookkeeping.
When to Use Quicken Home & Business
Quicken Home & Business could be an excellent choice for a small home-based business that provides services. Its limited functionality hides what could be a bigger benefit — ease of use. The program’s integration with your personal finances can also be helpful when you use your business as a source of day-to-day income.
When to Use QuickBooks Pro
QuickBooks Pro becomes a necessity if you have employees who you need to pay or inventories that you need to track. Its enhanced capabilities let you create more complicated invoices, track more bills and analyze your jobs from a cost and time perspective. Its business-class accounting and reporting features also let you look at your business and its operations on a deeper and more strategic level.
Quicken Software
Quicken shines in terms of usability. You may easily create reports on your company’s finances, expenses, and net worth. Additionally, it enables you to divide receipts into different spending categories, making it simple to separate expenses if you made purchases for both personal and professional use during the same trip. These tools can assist in maintaining your financial flow so you can track where your money is going.
Although Quicken provides consumers four different membership options, business owners are probably most interested in the Home & Business bundle. The majority of the competition just addresses personal money.
A subscription to Quicken’s personal finance app, Simplifi, is one of the company’s additional types of plans. This app, which was first released in 2020, aims to give users insights about their spending patterns. But it’s not inexpensive. The cost of a yearly subscription is $47.88, but you may also choose to pay $5.99 each month. Overall, because it’s designed for individuals tracking their expenditure, it’s not a particularly beneficial asset for a business owner.
A backup disc can be added to any bundle for $4.99. Since you can get Quicken from the internet, purchasing this CD copy of the program is not at all essential.
Even if you simply use Quicken on a desktop computer and don’t use the mobile apps or the companion website, your machine still has a chance of being hacked and your financial information stolen. However, Quicken has implemented support for multi-factor authentication during login to boost protection against identity theft. Security is particularly important when accessing your information online. It’s still crucial to take independent precautions to safeguard yourself, such as creating a strong password and storing it in a password manager, and avoiding clicking dubious email links.
If you’re acquainted with Quicken, you’ll notice that it still functions and looks similar to how it did recently despite better performance and regular updates with new features. The user experience provided by Quicken’s most recent capabilities, particularly the mobile app companion, is cutting edge, making prior features seem antiquated in comparison.
The balances of your accounts, which are broken down into Spending and Saving, Investing and Retirement, Property and Assets, and Loans and Debt, are displayed in a vertical pane on the left. Any of these can be clicked to see a more in-depth view, typically a register or graphs. At the bottom of the window is a link to your credit score and your net worth. You must register for Quicken’s free service in order to obtain your credit score. Sadly, Quicken’s free credit score is not updated daily like Credit Karma, but rather every three months.
How Can Quicken Aid Your Future Planning?
For many years, Quicken has offered features like long-term planning tools and property/debt tracking that some users would never utilize. However, they are present and remain out of your way when not required.
If you’re unfamiliar with Quicken, you should browse around the program tabs sometimes (such as Planning), as you could discover something interesting. Nevertheless, the sheer number of tools is sometimes bewildering. However, no other company comes close to offering as many coaching and tracking capabilities in a software or web-based service as Quicken does.
Consider the Planning section, which offers a number of tool sets. You can construct various budgets with Quicken Deluxe based on the categories you select or those that Quicken suggests for you based on your spending and income trends. You can modify your budget as necessary by viewing your progress in an understandable graphical style. Quicken allows you to manage your budget down to the last penny. The program is extremely flexible and complex.
Quicken vs Mint
Two of the most widely used software programs for managing personal finances are Quicken and Mint. How can you know which is the best for you?
While Quicken is best for more in-depth financial management, analysis, and bookkeeping, Mint is best for straightforward day-to-day money management.
We conducted a comparative test in order to determine which is superior (Quicken or Mint) in more depth. See the results below to identify the app that will assist you in managing your finances.
The way users access Quicken and Mint is the most visible distinction between the two apps. Although you may access your Mint account from a desktop computer, many people choose to monitor their finances using the Mint Apple or Android applications. You can simply monitor your spending, analyze your credit card balances, and assess how you’re doing with your budget from anywhere, whether you’re checking in from your phone, iPad, or Kindle.
With Quicken, things are a little different. The Quicken software is intended to be installed on your Windows PC or Mac, while there is a companion app that enables you monitor your accounts from your phone. Your checking, savings, and credit card accounts can be linked through the app, but if you’re using the desktop version of the program, you’ll need to manually sync in order to load the most recent transaction data. In essence, it functions nearly as well, but it requires more manual labor from you.
Based on how easy it is to use, Mint gets a thumbs up for accessibility. You don’t need to go through the extra process of syncing your linked accounts at the end of the day because you can access all of them from anywhere there is an Internet connection.
Today’s news is dominated by stories about security breaches, so users must be more vigilant than ever about safeguarding their data. Some people may find it strange that Mint keeps data in the cloud, but the app employs the same 128-bit encryption and security procedures as banks. Additionally, Mint’s servers store your bank login information separately, ensuring that even if your account were hacked, your user IDs and passwords would remain safe.
With Quicken, all of your account data is stored straight to the hard disk of your computer. Even while that does mean that it isn’t floating around in cyberspace, hackers might still manage to access it. Although it’s not a perfect solution, using security software and configuring a firewall can help keep your information secure. Similar to Mint, Quicken’s app processes data that is kept in the cloud, so there is an additional danger to take into account.
It actually depends on your personal preferences for security in this case. Although there have not yet been any complaints of Mint users’ information being compromised, it is still possible. But keep in mind that Home Depot, Michael’s, and Target also believed that storing your information on your own computer with Quicken would be safer.
Comparing the Features
The most used function of Mint is its budgeting tool, which enables you to create customized budgets. This makes it possible for you to track your expenditure precisely and set up distinct savings targets. The software allows you to set objectives for things like saving money or paying off debt and then connect those goals to your spending plan. You may set up reminders for when your expenses are due using the notifications tool, which will help you remain on top of your finances. (And now the app allows you to pay your bills as well, further simplifying your life.) Users of Mint may also keep track of their investments, check their credit score, and receive tailored advice on how to cut costs and boost savings.
While doing nearly everything Mint does, Quicken goes one step beyond. In addition to the fundamentals like creating a budget, Quicken allows you to anticipate your cash flow, record your tax-deductible costs, generate reports of your spending, monitor the performance of your investments, and pay your monthly payments (either online or by printing checks). Even if Mint doesn’t allow it, you can use the software to transfer money back and forth between accounts.
Quicken is the genuine deal if you’re seeking for full-service financial software. It’s a better option for folks who have a little more complicated financial situations and don’t mind taking extra time to review the activities in their accounts. However, if simplicity is important to you, you might prefer Mint because it provides you with the essentials without overwhelming you with everything else.
Comparing the Cost
One of the factors contributing to Mint’s attraction to such a huge audience is the fact that it is free. The only requirements for registration are the creation of a username and password, as well as the login details for each account you choose to link. Simple, easy, and most of all, free.
However, if you want to become a little more involved with your money, Quicken is worth the price despite having a big price tag. The software’s price range for 2020 is $35.99 for the starting version and $46.79 for the premier edition.
Depending on your demands, this category’s winner may change. Mint is the most affordable option if you just need a simple way to manage your money. And while some people might object to paying for Quicken, others could consider it a minor price to pay for a more thorough understanding of their financial condition.
Which is best for your business
Mint and Quicken appear to be rather similar at first glance, but as you examine closer, it’s clear how very different they actually are.
The free Mint app is excellent for tracking daily expenses and creating goals. With its cutting-edge mobile app, it’s also perfect for those who wish to manage their money while on the road.
In contrast, Quicken is more suited for tracking your investments, assessing long-term spending patterns, and logging expenses for tax purposes. Before you buy Quicken, it’s crucial to know what you need and what it can accomplish for you because all those extra features come at a cost.
Conclusion
People tend to have strong opinions about their financial software, and there’s a huge debate between Quickbooks and Quicken. With both of these software options continuing to improve their features each version most people aren’t sure which they should choose. Some people prefer the robust tools available with Quickbooks while others like the easy-to-use interface of Quicken.