AccountEdge vs. QuickBooks Online

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
AccountEdge
Score 6.0 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
AccountEdge is a small business accounting software for Mac and Windows users. AccountEdge allows business owners to organize, process, and report on their financial information. Its features include accounting, integrated payroll, sales and purchases, contact management, inventory, and time billing. It was acquired by Priority Software in January 2018 to expand that company's small business portfolio.
$20
per month
QuickBooks Online
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
QuickBooks Online is a SaaS version of the QuickBooks product. It contains all of the features found in the local version. Higher-priced plans include greater automation, payment management, inventory and time tracking, and analytics features.
$38
per month
Pricing
AccountEdgeQuickBooks Online
Editions & Modules
AccountEdge Pro
$20
per month
AccountEdge Network Edition
$30
per month
AccountEdge Hosted
$50
per month
Simple Start
$38
per month
Essentials
$75
per month
Plus
$115
per month
Advanced
$275
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AccountEdgeQuickBooks Online
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AccountEdgeQuickBooks Online
Features
AccountEdgeQuickBooks Online
Payroll Management
Comparison of Payroll Management features of Product A and Product B
AccountEdge
6.6
Ratings
16% below category average
QuickBooks Online
8.4
Ratings
8% above category average
Pay calculation10.00 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Benefit plan administration8.00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Direct deposit files5.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Salary revision and increment management6.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Reimbursement management4.00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
AccountEdge
9.0
Ratings
8% above category average
QuickBooks Online
9.7
Ratings
15% above category average
Role-based user permissions9.00 Ratings9.70 Ratings
Single sign-on capability00 Ratings9.60 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
AccountEdge
9.0
Ratings
13% above category average
QuickBooks Online
8.1
Ratings
3% above category average
Dashboards9.00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Standard reports9.00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Custom reports9.00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
General Ledger and Configurable Accounting
Comparison of General Ledger and Configurable Accounting features of Product A and Product B
AccountEdge
7.2
Ratings
8% below category average
QuickBooks Online
8.5
Ratings
9% above category average
Accounts payable9.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Accounts receivable9.00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Cash management8.10 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Bank reconciliation6.00 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Expense management6.00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Time tracking6.00 Ratings6.90 Ratings
Multi-currency support9.00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Multi-division support9.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Regulations compliance7.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Electronic tax filing7.00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Self-service portal2.70 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Fixed asset management00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Global Financial Support00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Primary and Secondary Ledgers00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Intercompany Accounting00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Localizations00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Journals and Reconciliations00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Enterprise Accounting00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Configurable Accounting00 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Centralized Rules Framework00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Standardized Processes00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Inventory Management
Comparison of Inventory Management features of Product A and Product B
AccountEdge
8.0
Ratings
8% above category average
QuickBooks Online
7.5
Ratings
2% above category average
Inventory tracking8.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Automatic reordering8.00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Location management8.00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Manufacturing module8.00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Order Management
Comparison of Order Management features of Product A and Product B
AccountEdge
8.0
Ratings
3% above category average
QuickBooks Online
8.4
Ratings
8% above category average
Pricing8.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Order entry9.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Credit card processing6.00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Cost of goods sold9.00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Order Orchestration00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
End-to-end order visibility00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Order exception Resolution00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
AccountEdge
5.0
Ratings
42% below category average
QuickBooks Online
8.3
Ratings
8% above category average
Plug-ins5.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
API for custom integration00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AccountEdgeQuickBooks Online
Small Businesses
QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
Score 8.9 out of 10
QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Zoho Books
Zoho Books
Score 9.0 out of 10
Zoho Books
Zoho Books
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP S/4HANA Cloud
SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Score 8.6 out of 10
SAP S/4HANA Cloud
SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Score 8.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AccountEdgeQuickBooks Online
Likelihood to Recommend
6.0
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.8
(0 ratings)
1.9
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(0 ratings)
2.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
1.1
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.0
(0 ratings)
3.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
1.3
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AccountEdgeQuickBooks Online
Likelihood to Recommend
If you are handling a large client list, and are selling services, it is dead easy. If you are managing/selling a physical inventory, it seems like it has great options to do that quite well (disclaimer, I do not use those functions, but I have paid attention as that functionality was built into the software). If you want to link your bank account to a bookkeeping platform, this is not the software for you (at least so far).
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I appreciate the ability to auto-generate invoices for recurring transactions, which saves time, as well as the option to set up auto-generated transactions. The report option is super helpful when reviewing information, as you can click to view the details in the report without having to go back and forth.
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Pros
  • Complete Macintosh accounting software solution
  • Robust inventory with price levels, quantity price breaks, and item assemblies
  • Robust Job costing including progress billing, budgets, and profitability
  • Mobile and web apps to add transactions from anywhere to sync back to your company file
  • Integrated payroll
  • Retainers and escrow accounts
  • Three levels of transactions categorization-jobs, categories, and departments
  • Multi-currency
  • Network capable for multiple simultaneous users
  • Ability to see profitability on an individual invoice
  • Company file can be transferred back and forth between Mac and Windows with NO conversion needed.
  • Can import text files of practically any kind of transaction
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  • It enables me to do a P&L for each specific program as requested by the county for the grant money that they give us.
  • It enables me to do [an] organizational budget as well as a budget for each specific program
  • It enables the accountant and the auditor access at any time for transparency
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Cons
  • Probably our biggest beef is the sales pitch a while back to incorporate their POS system Checkout that was supposed to integrate hand in glove with AccountEdge (it never really did.) Now the company has abandoned the POS program (even the website is now a 404 error page). Checkout is glitchy, and rather than improving it, they just dropped it and left users like us who bought into it unsupported. That doesn't reflect well on the company's customer service in our view. We've been AccountEdge users from back when it was MYOB, but our confidence in their future dependability has been strongly impacted by this move, and if something else came along, our hard-earned loyalty might not be as firm as it has been in the past.
  • Some tasks in AccountEdge take a long time to complete (go get a coffee while the spinning beachball turns).
  • Don't know the feasibility, but it would be nice to have access to older transactions, maybe even in some kind of read-only format.
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  • Purchase Orders cannot be linked to multiple bill payments which makes tracking purchase orders in QuickBooks Online obsolete. Without the function we have to track this within a different more manual spreadsheet.
  • Would be helpful if you could "split" bank transactions directly from the "review" downloads from the bank. Currently, to split transactions to multiple accounts we need to first categorize, then review after assigning to 1 account.
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Likelihood to Renew
Without a doubt, when you need to do accounting use the program that will get the job done in the least amount of time with the least amount of errors. Once you are using a program that works you stay with it year after year and you will find yourself even excited about the updates
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QBO needs better integration with non-Intuit products and developers need to use Intuit's open API to develop better add-ons. Clients are having a great deal of problems with their data importing from the bank and this takes time away from better revenue producing activities. Although the efficiencies are there, they are outweighted by the shortcomings of the product. When we ran a parallel of QBO versus other cloud accounting products, we had more issues with the QBO product than any other
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Usability
The intuitive interface does all the tasks we need our accounting software to do. Some tasks are slower to process than I would like but overall very usable. Customizable forms let us choose to either go with the easy ready-made out-of-the-box options or retool them to better fit our specific needs.
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I had very little trouble setting up the program and migrating from our old accounting system. The daily usage is also very intuitive and easy. Anytime we run into minor trouble with the program, there are always tons of help available on YouTube, so we don't even look up the online manual anymore.
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Reliability and Availability
One of the finer advantages of desktop software, it's always available. AccountEdge doesn't suffer from outages or sluggish internet like web based applications do. It's always there when you power on your device!
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We have rarely had outages in the last 10 years. I can only recall 2 times in the last 10 years where we were not able to access our client files.
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Performance
No answers on this topic
Everything process has its bugs lately with the new interface. Nothing has worked smoothly since this all began last month.
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Support Rating
On the few occasions we have needed tech support over the years, they were responsive and worked to get to the root of the issues. However, even though Checkout POS is a separate application, it was pitched to us as a natural extension of the functionality of our AE software that would integrate seamlessly. The company's support for Checkout has been minimal at best, and now totally abandoned. That colors our view of Priority's support unfortunately. And to be honest, that's why it's a 9 instead of a 10. So to be fair, AccountEdge's support itself has been very good over the years.
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In my experience, most representatives keep me on the phone for hours, literally, for a single issue and then usually cannot resolve it satisfactorily. I have 10 open cases that need resolution and, in my experience, there has been NO follow-up communication on any of them.
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Implementation Rating
unfortunately no.
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The person in charge of QB needs to be very accurate with record keeping and is recommended to stay on top of tasks. The biggest issue we have is reconciliation, and those issues occur only when too much time has occurred between reconciliations
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Alternatives Considered
My hands down preference is to keep my accounting off of the cloud but that is not always the case with my clients. So, to make this comparison somewhat fair I will consider only the items containing parity in cloud vs desktop. AccountEdge vs Xero. AccountEdge has superior interface and key response because an internet connection is generally not as responsive as localized software. Period. I also feel that AccountEdge is far more robust in features as well as how my data is presented (visually). I require uniform naming/wording conventions so I can better assimilate data. While this is possible in Xero, it's not as easy to accomplish because of screen response and keyboard workflow. Mouse oriented vs. keyboard oriented. AccountEdge vs QuickBooks for Mac. Succinctly put: cross-platform. AccountEdge data files do not require "saving as" Windows copies or any other such nonsense conversion. They just work equally well on either platform. So for users whose platforms do not match their accountant's, there is simply no issue. Additionally, Acclivity will give a user's accountant a copy of the software for free.
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QuickBooks Online is an accounting software package that allows companies to use a cost-effective and efficient software package. QuickBooks Online allows companies to prepare their balance sheets and income statements. It connects with a variety of other applications, which allows you to be efficient. We are very pleased with QuickBooks Online, and we would highly recommend it.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
As we have grown along our professional path, we have also expanded our use of QB. The scalability is easy and features seem to be waiting for you until you need them. We have increased profits by over 10x from our first year in business to the current and have yet to find a reason to look elsewhere
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Return on Investment
  • If I didn't have AccountEdge, I would have to make do with Excel spreadsheets, or go back to paper, as I did before 1995, and I wouldn't be able to access client information as easily as I can here.
  • It allows me to manage cash easily, so if clients are slow-paying, I can borrow funds to meet expenses, without incurring overdraft fees, until they come through.
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  • I think the help function is cumbersome and hard to use. When I go to refresh myself on a function, say quarterly, I feel like I have to cast about just looking for it.
  • The account reconciliation works, but in this place that could benefit from messaging, there are no easy helping functions flagging things like amounts that fit the discrepancy.
  • Even styling invoices and documents is more cumbersome than it should be.
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ScreenShots

AccountEdge Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of

QuickBooks Online Screenshots

Screenshot of the accounting and bank transactions interfaceScreenshot of an overview of the accounting inventoryScreenshot of book marksScreenshot of the business tax overviewScreenshot of the customer hubScreenshot of the dashboard