Quickbooks Self Employed is part of the Intuit family of self-service financial products. Like other versions of QuickBooks, the program helps users prepare and file tax returns and handle basic accounting tasks. Quickbooks Self Employed includes additional benefits for self-employed workers.

QuickBooks Self Employed Pros and Cons As you decide on the right software program to track your self-employment finances, carefully consider these QuickBooks Self Employed benefits and a few reasons you may want to look elsewhere.

QuickBooks Self Employed Pros

Easy to Use. QuickBooks Self Employed features a clean dashboard interface. It’s intuitive and straightforward to find what you’re looking for. Information about your transactions, mileage, taxes and QuickBooks reports are all one click away.

Accessible from Anywhere. QuickBooks Self Employed is a type of online accounting software, which means you can access it from a Cloud Hosted Desktop connected to the internet. Another handy benefit of using the cloud is the ability to grant permissions to people like your accountant. Automated Banking Features. You can link all your associated business accounts to QuickBooks Self Employed, and once you’re up and running, automation features do most of the work. The program can record and categorize income and expenses as you pay and receive them, based on your preferences.

Quarterly Tax Payment Features. QuickBooks Self Employed will help you determine how much to send the IRS each quarter for quarterly taxes, which you can pay directly from the website or app. Invoicing Features. If you perform work for multiple clients, invoicing can be a challenge. QuickBooks Self Employed lets you create, send and track invoices all from the client portal. You can also receive client payments here. Organizing invoices is a simple process.

Expense Tracking Information. QuickBooks Self Employed helps you sort expenses into personal and business. As you build up a history, the program begins to learn about your behaviors. At this point, it will automatically categorize common expenses as you input them.

Third Party Merchant Account Integration. If you sell goods on Etsy or eBay or collect payments through PayPal, you can link your accounts to QuickBooks Self Employed. This will help you centralize your income by reducing the number of sites you need to log in and manage.

QuickBooks Self Employed Cons

Somewhat Intrusive Cross-Marketing. Intuit, QuickBooks’ parent company, places ads for other Intuit products at the top of the page, which can become annoying. Some of the ads are distracting or involve a pop-up that you’ll have to close to use the program.

Limited Invoicing Capabilities. Sending invoices is easy, but quite basic. You can’t set up recurring invoices or customize the way your invoices look. The main benefit to invoicing through QuickBooks Self Employed is centralization, however, and it’s much easier to just invoice through the program than record invoices you created elsewhere.

Limited Reporting Features. You can have QuickBooks Self Employed run a few basic programs — profit and loss statements and tax information, primarily. If you want to dive deeper into topics like inventory control, project management, billed hours and so on, you’ll need to find a more robust accounting program.

Inability to Buy the Program Outright. Like many companies, Intuit steers customers toward monthly payment plans for most of its products, effectively forcing you to rent the programs. You can’t download a copy and use it for years to come — you’ll need to keep paying by the month, quarter, or year for the foreseeable future if you want to use QuickBooks Self Employed for the duration. Alternatively, you could purchase more expensive desktop versions of QuickBooks accounting software, but these programs are not cloud-based (that is – unless you use a cloud-hosted QuickBooks service). They are also not as intuitive or geared toward self-employed workers.

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