QuickBooks accounting software review: pros, cons and pricing

Alongside our research team, in January 2025 we completed 57 hours of testing across seven top accounting software platforms, and found QuickBooks to have sophisticated cash flow projection tools and extensive, customisable reporting. 

QuickBooks offers five distinct pricing plans tailored to different business sizes, from sole traders to advanced enterprises. QuickBooks pricing is straightforward and competitive, and, to make matters even better, you can currently get 90% off your first year (when you pay for an annual plan).

Quickbooks is relied upon by small businesses across the UK for its usability and tremendous depth of features, but is it the right option for you?

What’s the user experience of QuickBooks’s interface?

The well-organised overall layout is what stood out most to us when we tested QuickBooks. The essential features are logically categorised.

We also appreciated QuickBooks’s dashboard, especially how it highlights key metrics, like overdue payments.

QuickBooks continues to update its interface and make further improvements, including updated navigation and usability.

Users can view and work in multiple tabs, and there’s now the inclusion of a powerful search bar.  It also allows for further customisation, as you can tailor the menus to your preference.

Is QuickBooks easy to use?

Automated workflows really help to reduce manual effort with QuickBooks, but we did find that the learning curve was quite a bit steeper than we had anticipated.

In particular, we found tasks such as creating expenses and setting up taxes were very complicated. We spent a significant amount of time trying to do the latter, the process of which could have been much clearer.

We’d also highlight to users that the bank categorisation feature, while powerful, can be easy to make mistakes with. Errors can be tricky to undo if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.

In our testing we found that the QuickBooks dashboard clearly displayed the key metrics like invoices, expenses and mileage. Source: Startups.co.uk

The AI categorisation suggestions are solid, but it’s still improving.

QuickBooks does involve some rather extensive setup in places, and there’s a reasonable amount of configuration needed to get the best out of it. While it has a steep learning curve, QuickBooks is highly functional once fully understood. You need to regularly use it to get the most out of it.

Expert opinion: Dan Heelan on QuickBooks

The sheer range of features you get access to on the plans (excluding the sole trader, that’s a little restricted) means you have many powerful tools at your disposal. Everything from customisable invoices to automatic bank feeds, and a great mobile app.

Dan Heelan Accountant and Business Services Director at Heelan Associates Ltd

How much does QuickBooks cost?

QuickBooks offers five pricing plans starting from £10 + VAT to £123 + VAT per month, depending on your business requirements.

If you’re self-employed and just need a plan that’s HMRC-approved for MTD, you can go for the cheapest Sole Trader Plus tier.

However, if you’re running a more advanced business and you need multiple users and sophisticated features to help manage an inventory of stock, you’ll be looking at spending £56 + VAT per month for the Plus plan.

Currently, you can get 90% off your first six months if you pay monthly, and 90% off for the year if you pay annually. 

You can find more detailed information in our full guide to how much QuickBooks costs.

These are the plans QuickBooks offers, who they’re aimed at, and the standout features:

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	Plan	Cost	Best suited for:	Features
Sole Trader Plus	Simple Start	Essentials	Plus	Advanced
Paid monthly: £10/month (+ VAT) You can currently get 90% off for the first 12 months	Paid monthly: £16/month (+ VAT) You can currently get 90% off for the first 12 months	Paid monthly: £38/month (+ VAT) You can currently get 90% off for the first 12 months	Paid monthly: £56/month (+ VAT) You can currently get 90% off for the first 12 months	Paid monthly: £123/month (+ VAT) You can currently get 90% off for the first 12 months
Sole traders not registered for VAT, single property landlords, and those who want to be MTD for Income Tax ready	Sole traders and small business owners who are managing income tax and VAT	Small, growing limited companies	Small businesses that are managing projects and inventories of stock	Businesses that need more sophisticated support like custom permissions and tailored insights
AI-powered bank feeds Receive income tax estimates  Send out invoices	AI-powered bank feeds for quick categorisation Checks your VAT return for errors Gives you VAT deadline reminders	Bill management Multi-currency support (over 145 currencies) Employee time tracking so you can invoice your clients accurately	Track your products, and see what’s selling the most See the profitability of each of your projects Smart budgeting	Version control Automate workflows Custom charts and customised dashboards

Is there a free plan?

QuickBooks doesn’t offer a free plan. However, if you do need a free option, we’d suggest taking a look at our breakdown of the best free accounting software for your small business.

Just keep in mind that if you go for a no-cost option, you might be sacrificing some of the more advanced features that will ultimately make your life easier.

Is QuickBooks worth the money?

The depth of Quickbooks’s customisability combined with the strong set of accounting features on each plan justifies the price, and you’ll also get one of the best mobile accounting apps on the market.

We’d recommend the Essentials plan (across the five plan options) as the best value for money, in regards to cost versus features. However, only if you’re willing to put the time into learning its complexities.

For example, the bill management feature will be essential for limited companies. While technically there are workarounds for this on the Simple Start plan, it’s certainly not optimal. If you want to be able to see a list of who you owe what to at any time, you’ll need the Essentials plan.

Are there any hidden costs?

QuickBooks has no hidden charges for storage or exit fees, though some plans have a cap on the chart of accounts (this is the amount of categories you can create for expenses and accounting lines):

•  The chart of accounts is capped at 250 on all plan levels, except the Advanced plan which is unlimited.

Many users prefer to make various different categories and expense lines for reporting, so this could be quite limiting. Make sure to keep an eye on the amount of categories you are using.

Does payroll functionality cost extra?

Yes, there is an additional charge for adding payroll:

• Payroll Core: £5 per month, plus £1.30 per paid employee, per month
• Payroll Premium: £10 per month, plus £2 per paid employee, per month
• Payroll Elite: £15 per month, plus £3 per paid employee, per month

Core payroll is aimed at director-only businesses and smaller businesses who just need to pay a small team either weekly or monthly and have the ability to generate payslips.

Premium payroll is for slightly more advanced businesses with larger teams that need HR features, an employee portal and tools like automatic pay runs.

Payroll elite is the comprehensive solution aimed at established businesses that need geofencing technology for mobile teams and detailed project reporting.

QuickBooks’s key features

One of QuickBooks’s core strengths is its wide range of useful features, which now includes the Intuit Intelligence AI tools. 

What are the core features of QuickBooks?

• QuickBooks provides strong support for invoicing, including multi-currency support. It allows you to see when a client has viewed an invoice you’ve sent them, so it’s great for staying on top of your accounting.

Here’s an example of how your invoices will appear on QuickBooks. Source: Startups.co.uk

• The software can sync up with multiple bank accounts (the number will depend on your specific tier, though) and we found that it did this effectively – the reconciliations provided by QuickBooks matched our bank transactions.
• The software can also help you successfully calculate, add, and deduct tax (on all the plans except for Sole Trader Plus). This is now assisted with the AI-powered VAT feature which is designed to catch errors for you.

Financial planning: tools for long-term sustainability

• QuickBooks allows you to track upcoming monthly bills and expenses, as well as offering detailed cash flow projection tools that factor in both incoming and outgoing revenue.

QuickBooks’s cash flow projection tools can help you plan your finances. Source: Startups.co.uk

• All plans allow you to create custom reports – you can modify an existing report or even create these from scratch. If you want to set budgets for specific customers, just keep in mind that you’ll need to be on either the Plus or Advanced plan as this capability is not available on the cheaper tiers.
• QuickBooks helps support data accuracy by automatically flagging duplicate invoice numbers and mismatched balances.

What other apps can QuickBooks integrate with?

QuickBooks has a huge marketplace of third-party integrations to help you improve your efficiency and, impressively, it has over 750 applications to choose from:

• Connect with apps like Greenly or Zero Carbon to measure your business’s carbon footprint. You can use these types of apps to connect your QuickBooks account with your smart energy meter to track your operational overheads (especially important for retail and hospitality).
• You can also integrate seamlessly with some of the best POS systems for small businesses, like our top recommended option Square POS. Connecting your POS easily with your accounting software is especially important for staying compliant with MTD regulations.
• The Shopify Connecter app can be used to link up your Shopify ecommerce store with your accounting software or you can connect to TikTok Shop.

Is QuickBooks MTD-ready?

Yes, QuickBooks is HMRC-recognised and ready for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment (MTD for ITSA).

The Sole Trader Plus plan is MTD-ready (£10 per month + VAT), and will help you stay compliant with HMRC regulations. You can find more information in our dedicated review of QuickBooks for the self-employed.

All sole traders and landlords with a qualifying income of over £50,000 will need to ensure they are MTD-ready by April 6th 2026. If you’re unsure if you’re fully MTD-compliant, you can refer to our full guide to MTD for Income Tax.

Is there a mobile app?

QuickBooks’s standout mobile app is one of its key features, and is arguably the best one on the market.

This is why we recommend QuickBooks to business owners who often find themselves managing their finances on the move. You can use it to perform functions on the go like:

• Creating and sending invoices
• Managing your expenses and cash flow
• Tracking mileage (a standout feature for a mobile app)

Crucially, the QuickBooks app has evolved beyond just simply snapping receipts and is now able to pre-map categories to the HMRC-approved Chart of Accounts for MTD for Income Tax (ITSA).

What AI features does QuickBooks have?

QuickBooks has now rolled out Intuit Intelligence, its AI-powered system, to users in the UK.

The AI tools you’ll get through Intuit Intelligence will depend on your tier level.

On Sole Trader Plus you’ll get:

• AI-powered bank feeds: quick transaction categorisation for fast approval

On Simple Start you’ll unlock:

• VAT AI Agent: helps flag differences between P&L and VAT reports

On Essentials you’ll get the above, as well as AI-powered collaboration, which identifies transactions that need addressing and prompts you to chat with your advisor.

On Plus, you’ll get everything in Essentials, as well as:

• Anomaly detection: potential errors in P&L reports and balance sheets will be flagged
• Customer Agent: an AI-agent that will help manage leads and proposals

Finally, on Advanced, you get all of the above, plus:

• Finance Agent: an AI-agent that can analyse progress towards KPIs and delivers proactive insights and provides proactive anomaly detection.
• Project Management Agent: this can create project management outlines with pre-filled key details

What customer support options does QuickBooks offer?

QuickBooks has an impressive help and support offering and provides assistance via:

• Phone: 8am to 7pm from Monday to Friday
• Live chat: human assistance from 8am to 10pm, Monday to Friday, and from 8am to 6pm on weekends
• 24/7 chatbot: especially important for newer businesses, who might need support outside normal business hours
• A user forum
• A knowledge centre
• Video tutorials and webinars are available as learning resources

The only thing missing from QuickBooks’s selection of support options is email assistance.

Despite its thorough list of support options, the QuickBooks knowledge centre provided inconsistent results during our testing. Some resource pages failed to load and sometimes it provided articles that weren’t helpful to our queries.

Who is QuickBooks best for?

Some specific use cases for business owners considering QuickBooks would be:

• If you operate bank accounts in multiple currencies but also don’t want to have to pay for extras that you might not use (competitors often bundle this in to more advanced plans)
• You need your accounting software to painlessly plug into other apps (Quickbooks is one of the market leaders when it comes to this)
• You want software that will be able to scale alongside your business
• If you’re often on the move and you need a first class mobile experience

Based on our extensive testing, we recommend QuickBooks to business owners who have the time to spend learning the software, as it will take dedication to master and get the most out of the depth of its features.

You can use QuickBooks to create custom reports. Source: Startups.co.uk

If you’re a time-poor business owner or sole trader, this isn’t a beginner-friendly software that will do all the heavy lifting for you. You should look at a competitor like Zoho Books if you want a short learning curve.

Expert opinion: Dan Heelan on QuickBooks

If you’re new to bookkeeping for your business, QuickBooks can be difficult to learn and sometimes a little overwhelming. It’s a detailed piece of kit that takes some time to get used to, but if you can master it, it’s an amazing tool. There are arguably more user-friendly options, such as Xero, but QuickBooks is absolutely a solid choice for most small businesses.

Dan Heelan Accountant and Business Services Director at Heelan Associates Ltd

Verdict: is QuickBooks the right accounting software for your business?

QuickBooks is a great choice if you’re a sole trader who wants a reasonably priced plan with an excellent mobile app, as we ranked it as one of the best accounting software platforms for self-employed people.

QuickBooks is worth the money if you need advanced insights into your finances, and customisable, AI-powered software to reduce your manual effort.

If we were going to give QuickBooks one key piece of feedback, it would be to provide an improved, more detailed onboarding experience.

How did we test and review QuickBooks?

We take our recommendations seriously here at Startups.

We strive to make sure we’re giving your business the most helpful, relevant, and up-to-date recommendations possible. This is why, at the start of 2025, our dedicated research department carried out a comprehensive evaluation of QuickBooks.

We tested QuickBooks and six other top accounting software platforms, undertaking detailed research, analysis and 57 total hours of actual, hands-on user testing. We evaluated QuickBooks on the six categories we thought were most critical to small businesses needing accounting software:

• Core accounting capabilities
• Financial planning and visibility tools
• Features that boost your day-to-day efficiency 
• Help and support 
• Pricing 
• Ease of use

We then worked alongside our external expert accountant, Dan Heelan, who has 19+ years experience in the accounting industry, to ensure the accuracy of our review.