Overall: If you need mileage tracking and expense tracking, this is a great option for you. If you need recurring or auto invoicing though - this version of QB isn't for you.

Pros: To have it automatically track all of my mileage for me is just amazing. However, now that I'm not traveling, it's almost worthless, and certainly not worth the $16/mo I'm paying. I know you can scan receipts and stuff too, but I connected my bank accounts so I just select what's business and what's personal through there. It's free to have clients pay invoices through ACH Debit though, so that's awesome. You also get your money way faster than through other means.

Cons: You can't do recurring, automatic invoicing. That's the main sticking point for me. So I end up doing 90% of my invoicing in PayPal and then I'm only using QB for expense tracking and the occasional ACH Debit invoice. It's just annoying. I'm also not crazy about the user interface sometimes it's just not intuitive.

Reasons for Choosing QuickBooks Self-Employed: I wanted mileage tracking and expense tracking. Thought I could use this in place of PayPal for invoicing too, but I'm still invoicing in PayPal.

Overall: Terrible.

Pros: Ease of setting up, including adding new customers, searchability (reasonably CRM-like)

Cons: Everything else. Only 50% of customers could see how to open invoices easily, maybe 20% of those didn't get an openable version at all and I had to give them my bank details. Appalling error rate with importing bank transactions - missing transactions, some duplicated. Many were given a ridiculous categorisation such as an incoming payment from an existing client categorised as a business expense with a negative value. Usually failed to tie up scanned receipts/invoices with the bank feed meaning huge numbers of transactions had to be edited. Customer service is unwieldy, hard to get to from within the online or app software, community based, and usually told "we'll suggest it to our team" and you see that over the years loads of people have made the same suggestion to no avail. Or you get "that would be a really bad idea" despite the fact their competitors do it. Mileage tracker is terrible - sometimes it turns itself off completely, other days it records some parts of journeys, sometimes clocking off when you're driving, other times clocking off while you're on an appointment. P&L and tax reports categorise quite a few categories as non-deductible so you have to recalculate. I'm sure there's more but it's too painful to recall.

Reasons for Choosing QuickBooks Self-Employed: Cost, ease of use for sole traders