Is Quickbooks Better Than Excel?

Both QuickBooks and Excel are considered two of the most powerful software solutions in the world. But they are designed to solve uniquely different problems.

While many business owners would prefer to opt for Excel as their accounting solution, we recommend spending the extra money and upgrading to QuickBooks. This is an all-around better product for full accounting support with a long list of available features to improve the way you run your company.

QuickBooks is considered the leader of the online accounting software market. They offer a range of different features and applications that make them unlike any competitor. Meanwhile, Excel is the preferred business tool for many other solutions but for accounting, it cannot match up with QuickBooks.

We have worked directly with business owners to understand better how a small business owner can improve internal accounting. After trying numerous software, we learned that QuickBooks ranks as the best solution for a reason. Keep reading to learn how QuickBooks and Excel compare.

‍QuickBooks vs Excel

QuickBooks is more widely used and more trusted by most small business owners than Excel. However, Excel offers some features that are not available in QuickBooks, such as the ability to create graphs and charts along with complete control of the data.

QuickBooks provides a lot of features that are not available in Excel but it doesn't mean that Excel for personal use cannot be useful as well. For example, one of the features included in Excel is pivot tables to create more extensive and complex data sets.

However, if you are looking for software that focuses on automating aspects of your accounting, then QuickBooks becomes the clear solution to improve your account processes within your small business.

QuickBooks

QuickBooks is a program that helps users manage their finances and organize their business accounting needs. It has many other features as well, such as financial reporting, payroll, and invoicing.

Even for low-tiered plans, you still gain access to many advanced features like custom invoicing and time tracking to handle business with clients much more professionally.

QuickBooks tracks your time, inventory, sales, and more. It ultimately simplifies the process of managing your payroll, expenses, and overall accounting needs. It's easy to use and comes with a variety of features that save you time and money.

QuickBooks offers cheap plans to get started too. They begin as low as $8/mo for freelancers looking to gain access to time tracking, invoicing, payments, and expense tracking. You can use QuickBooks for both business and personal financial needs.

Other critical features include recurring transaction tracking, multi-currency support, reconciliation reports, and more. These features make managing your money more effortless than ever before while also helping you save time with taxes.

QuickBooks can also integrate with tax tools like TurboTax to provide you with real-time accountants and make your life much easier when it comes time to file both your personal and business taxes.

The QuickBooks payroll feature automatically calculates deductions for withholding tax and state employment taxes. It also provides the user with an overview of the entire pay period's tax information. You can create rules to set up most of the payroll process automatically too.  

Pros

• Easy to learn the platform.
• Time tracking tools.
• Complete payroll with integrations.
• Affordable pricing at all levels.
• Customizable invoicing.
• Rule creation to automate transaction logging.
• Customer information looks up and filtering.
• Automatic vendor payments and invoicing.
• Project tracking.
• Inventory management.

Cons

• Limited reporting features besides basic accounting.
• Invoice design is limited.
• File size limitations.
• Poor integration with Ecommerce.

When You Should Use QuickBooks

If you are a freelancer, independent contractor, or business owner and need to find a new way to track your finances and prepare your records for tax season, then QuickBooks is the right tool for you.

Beyond just accounting, there are payroll, payments, invoicing, and other integrations available that make it a much more reliable tool than Excel.

Excel

Excel is a tool that is used for so many different purposes. It can be used for accounting, budgeting, organizing, and more. It is one of Microsoft’s oldest products to be released many years ago and still remains more relevant than ever today.

It is used as a tool to manage multiple types of data and as an application in business intelligence, analysis, and decision-making. It is used by companies of all sizes and industries for various purposes.

Excel spreadsheets are widely used for business accounting. They offer the agility and flexibility to make changes quickly on the fly. However, they require much more tedious bookkeeping and have limited features available when compared to a competitor like QuickBooks.

Excel is an amazing tool that allows users to do so much. It can be used to manage the business's finances, organize data, and keep track of time. Excel features include multiple sheets, formulas, charts and graphs, macros, pivot tables, and much more.

Excel is best treated as a daily business tool to manage important projects, but if you need a tool to run your accounting and finances through then, we do not consider Excel as the best option. QuickBooks significantly outranks it with many features to offer.  

Pros

• Easy to edit and manipulate data.
• Highly customizable.
• Sharing files is simple.
• Low cost and ongoing fees.
• Excellent data analysis and filter tools.
• A fast learning curve for a beginner.
• A common program that integrates well with many tools.

Cons

• Lack of extra accounting tools (invoicing, time tracking, etc.).
• Does not act like an actual accounting ledger.
• Extremely time-consuming to build reports and enter transactions.
• Lack of automation available.
• Data can easily be changed by a third party.

When You Should Use Excel

We recommend Excel as a primary business tool for creating reports, tracking data, and running analysis with different business functions. It is an excellent tool to create data and track important trends while keeping everything organized in one place.

Excel provides extensive data filtering, graph creation, and budget creation. All three are important use cases for the software but as an accounting tool, it falls short when compared to QuickBooks.

Why You Need Accounting Software

Accounting software is a must-have in today's world. It helps businesses maintain control of their finances and ensure that they are not losing money due to negligence.

Accounting software is an indispensable resource for any business and helps them run smoothly. The features of the software cover everything from basic bookkeeping tasks to more advanced features like tax preparation.

One of the best advantages of using accounting software is its versatility, as they are designed in such a way that you don't have to spend too much time repeating previous tasks. Instead, you can set up rules to automate some of the most tedious tasks, like categorizing transactions.

With the help of accounting software, businesses can maintain accurate financial records and maximize their profits. This is because accounting software allows companies to do things like automatically send invoices to customers and track costs.

By using accounting software, businesses can save time by automating tasks and reducing human error when manually recording transactions. This improves time efficiency and eliminates tedious errors.

QuickBooks or Excel

QuickBooks is a software that helps people to track their company's finances. Excel is an application that is used for building spreadsheets for a variety of different reasons. Both can be used as accounting tools too.

If you are a business looking to track your company financials, we always recommend QuickBooks because of the low cost and extremely beneficial features it has to offer.

However, Excel is a unique tool that can be used for many different business-related tasks and projects. But it cannot provide the same level of support like time tracking or payroll that QuickBooks can.

The decision is simple for all freelancers and business owners looking for an accounting solution.