QuickBooks Self-Employed Reviews

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

Overall: I highly recommend QBSE to self-employed individuals who are looking for an affordable, intuitive, user-friendly way to do their accounting. I've been using it for 5+ years and it hasn't let me down yet.

Pros: Quickbooks Self-Employed is very easy to use. It has simplified my accounting significantly. I can track receipts, import transactions from my bank account, pay my federal quarterly taxes, create invoices, export all of my info to Turbo Tax, and do so many other key business functions from within the software.

Cons: While I love QBSE, I do wish there was an easy way to calculate and pay quarterly state estimated taxes. That would make the experience even better.

Overall: It really keeps me organized so I see exactly where my money goes and taxes owed.

Pros: Easy to access and store a lot of information in the app. I love how I can snap pictures of my receipts and instantly see purchases.

Cons: I hate that I have to use the desktop to look at breakdowns for specific months or quarters. I hate how the app logs expenses and incomes twice so I have constantly delete the double entry in the app.

Overall: Overall, not worth the cost to me. Especially with those who are self-employed or have small businesses.

Pros: This does what it is supposed to do and only that which is track money. It also can track mileage automatically and gives you an overview of the distance you have traveled each day.

Cons: It is basic, it lacks functionality that should be considered 'basic' such as being able to categorize expenses and income. You can also not utilize many needed integrations for other software which basically forces double entry. It is expensive considering there are other free alternatives that have way more features and integrations

Overall: This is a great tool for people starting their small business. A few more features would make it the perfect choice.

Pros: -Links to bank accounts and credit cards and categorizes transactions automatically. -Milage tracking is a great feature. -Send invoices to clients.

Cons: - When the milage tracking is turned on, it kills my phones battery and drains it in less than 10 hours. I turned it off and the result is shocking. - Invoice processing takes up to 3-4 day, and then I have to wait for the bank processing for another 2 days.

Pros: installed app in the iPhone, and link to the bank and credit card accounts, it automatically track your travel distance for business or personal, and expense for tax purpose.

Cons: need to spend time to identify the travel and expense either for business or personal usage manually, hopefully these's a way to do it automatically.

Overall: If you simply want to be able to keep up with the your expenses and mileage this is a good place to have it all together at an affordable price

Pros: Very easy and convenient for categorizing business versus personal and attaching receipts. I liked that you could put rules in that would help with time management.

Cons: Had tracking issues on several occasions where it was stop tracking. And it tracked rather short trips that weren't really trips.

Pros: I love the simple workflow for most things invoices, quotes, expenses, time, etc. I hate accounting, and book keeping so to be able to add these rapid fire with little effort makes me very happy. It also is very handy come tax time b/c I can easily grab all the information and hand it off to turbo tax or an accountant for them to deal with. I also really like the dashboard so I can quickly view the status of my freelance accounts.

Cons: Somethings feel almost buried. I wish there was some customization for more commonly used tasks. I'm more inclined to generate a bunch of quotes versus invoices so I wish I had a way to remove some drill down for more commonly used tasks.

Pros: Easy to use, all information in one place and the price is great. Also I do not have to have a separate mileage tracker which is great.

Cons: My bank no longer connects so I have to do a separate download which takes some time. This causes some issues when not done correctly as there can be duplicates.

Overall: Simple and easy to use, Quickbooks Self employed is a tool every freelancer and side-gig earner needs.

Pros: The automatic mileage tracking (other apps offer this but the QB implementation is better than any I've tried). Receipt photos makes record keeping simple. Invoicing is easy too.

Cons: When you are just starting, the monthly fee is an added motivation to make sales! You gotta make some money to pay that monthly fee!

Overall: Overall it had been a great experience so far, and I look forward to continue using it.

Pros: I am enjoying using this software because it helps me itemize deductions for tax season in advance. Now I can be ready to file instead of dreading it, I can see my expenses more clearly, and I have documented of everything. That feels so good. I may upgrade next year to the next level.

Cons: This software could use a bug fix on the transaction tags feature. Many times my tag will not register and I have to go back and do it again. It can be quite aggravating. Also the rules section didn't always work right.

Pros: I used this when I was a one-person operation. It is fairly simple to use & is great for keeping up with everything flowing in and out of your business. It is also great for checking on unpaid invoices.

Cons: Some of the integrations with upload information in batches. This can cause duplicate entries or missing entries. I've spent entire days sorting out those problems.

Pros: Very helpful and easy to get information about the financial situation and worth of the business. Categorization of expenses is easy with minimal data entry and easy to get details about eligible expenses (maximum deductions) at the time of tax return filing.

Cons: I have not faced any problem with this software yet. For me, it's a very helpful tool for maintaining financial records of the business.

Pros: Easy to Use No Hard Learning Curve: No Books Needed to Learn Self-Explanatory: You Just Point & Click.

Cons: I don't have cons to add to this review. I learned to use Quickbooks Online Self-Employed within an hour.

Pros: Very efficient! I love that it tracks my trips for me and links to my accounts so I don't miss anything. Since it links with Quickbooks, I am hopeful that taxes will be easy!

Cons: It wasn't obvious how to add a receipt instantly with one click. I figured it out, though. I'm also not sure whether to upload the itemized receipt or the final total receipt.

Overall: Frustrating. Thankful for at least something to invoice my clients, but this is a limited program that doesn't do some very common, basic things.

Pros: It gives me a template to enter line item invoices and get instant calculations.

Cons: Holes in basic needs, such as counter-intuitive button functions -- it's easy to send a premature invoice, inadvertently erase work, and you can't easily, or sometimes at all, send a copy of your invoice to another email address. Sometimes it glitches and won't send. If you want to re-invoice someone due to late payment, there's no way to write your client a note--the program just sends the same invoice with no explanation to your client. It's just a badly conceived program.

Reasons for Choosing QuickBooks Self-Employed: I didn't know it would be this poorly constructed. Bad assumption.