quickbooks-online-vs-sage-business-cloud-accounting

QuickBooks Online and Sage Business Cloud Accounting are both online accounting software. Both subscription-based products are primarily designed for small businesses, with QuickBooks offering additional capabilities for larger companies as well.

Features

Both QuickBooks Online and Sage Business Cloud Accounting include core accounting functions that small businesses need, such as invoicing, income and expense tracking, and reporting. There are also some key features that set them apart.

QuickBooks Online emphasizes its support for tax preparation, management, and filing, including forecasting taxes ahead of time and streamlining the filing process. It also allows users to automate some routine tasks, reminders, and triggers to improve accuracy and save businesses time.

Sage Business Cloud Accounting offers features tailored to small businesses primarily needing accessible tools for cash flow management. These features include a mobile app for income, expense, and invoice management. It also provides robust connectivity with your banks to automatically match your transactions and save time on reconciliation and live financial reporting.

Limitations

While both accounting products offer valuable services for small businesses, there are limitations to each software.

QuickBooks Online’s reporting capabilities scale up with each pricing tier, but some users have struggled to achieve the level of insight they are looking for from the platform. The packaging and pricing structure QuickBooks offers can also leave some users paying for extra functionality that they don’t actually need or use.

Sage Business Cloud Accounting is more limited in its scalability. It lacks functions for larger organizations, such as multi-user role management. Sage is also very reliant on its marketplace of third-party integrations to deliver expanded functionality. This structure means that users could likely need to pay for third-party products in order to access additional capabilities they need as their business grows.

Pricing

Both QuickBooks Online and Sage Business Cloud Accounting offer a free 30-day trial. From there, QuickBooks offers 4 pricing tiers, while Sage offers 2 tiers.

QuickBooks Online’s Simple State base plan, for $25/month, the core accounting functions, as well as tax management and receipt management functions. The Essentials plan, $40/month, gives users 3 seats as well as bill management and time tracking. The Plus plan, $70/month, adds project profitability and inventory tracking. The Advanced plan, $150/month, adds additional analytics and automation capabilities, as well as online training and a dedicated account manager.

Sage Business Cloud Accounting’s base plan, Accounting Start, lets users create sales invoices, connect their bank, and track owed payments, for $10/month. The Accounting tier, for $25/month, adds on reporting and cash flow statements, estimate generation, and purchase invoice recording.