Futurebooks green lights QuickBooks Online for Singapore

This week I took a close look at QuickBooks Online. I have a lot of experience using this online software, but it was great to see a live demo by Intuit.

What I liked.

It's fast for an online product. You can access anywhere, anytime. Soon it will have an iphone / ipad interface, so sales people can write cost estimates on the go.

Multi-currency. Unlike other SaaS solutions like Xero, it handles multi-currency neatly, integrating a live currency conversion.

Customisable templates. Brand invoices and quotes including uploading your logo and choosing from a set of default colour schemes.

Recurring activities. Pre-programme monthly cheque payments like office rent.

Project P+L. Intuit retained 'classes', a tagging feature from the desktop version which allows costs to be tracked against projects.

GST.Quarterly GST reports display like ACRA's. Although QuickBooks does not pass data to ACRA, the forms look similar enough to make cutting and pasting easy.

Improvements I'm looking forward to seeing.

Payroll. The system requires you treat staff as a supplier as their is no payroll tab.

Data uploads. The system does not permit old excel or quickbook files to be uploaded. Establishing historical data and opening balances is tedious.

Single login. This is not a problem for clients but for accounting firms managing hundreds of customers. A different login is needed for each client. QuickBooks Online is the perfect solution for many of our clients. It's ideal for services businesses which make up most our client demographic.

If you need to get setup on QuickBooks Online, contact us and I will sort it out for you.