QuickBooks Solopreneur Review

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QuickBooks Solopreneur offers automatic expense categorization, which eliminates the need to categorize each transaction manually. Over time, as you review and adjust categories, QuickBooks Solopreneur will get better at suggesting accurate categories for future transactions.

However, automatic expense categorization isn’t foolproof. It’s crucial to review your categorized transactions regularly to ensure accuracy, especially early on as QuickBooks Solopreneur learns your spending habits.

Here’s a closer look at how it works:

• Bank and credit card integration: Connect your business bank accounts and credit cards to QuickBooks Solopreneur
• Transaction downloads: When you connect your accounts, QuickBooks Solopreneur downloads your transactions automatically
• Machine learning and rule-based categorization: It analyzes your previously categorized transactions and other transactions from similar QuickBooks Solopreneur users to make intelligent categorization suggestions. It also uses preset rules based on the merchant name, transaction description, and category patterns to assign categories automatically.
• Human review and override: While QuickBooks Solopreneur strives for accuracy, you can always review and change the suggested categories to ensure everything is categorized correctly.

While many of the expense categorization features are similar between QuickBooks Solopreneur and QuickBooks Self-Employed, one feature that QuickBooks Solopreneur lacks is the ability to assign tags.

The goal creation and tracking feature lets you track progress and make adjustments with recommendations and guidance to reach your goals. When creating a new goal, you have the option to specify whether you want to grow your income or obtain more customers. These are action items that solopreneurs have mentioned are most important to their business. Currently, goal setting and tracking are only available via web versions of QuickBooks Solopreneur and not in the mobile app.

QuickBooks Solopreneur offers a well-rounded invoicing suite for solopreneurs, focusing on ease of use, efficient client communication, and faster payments. However, while it integrates with popular payment gateways, there might be additional fees associated with processing online payments—so for more complex invoicing needs, such as subscriptions or recurring billing, you might need to explore more advanced accounting software, such as QuickBooks Online or Xero.

Here’s a breakdown of QuickBooks Solopreneur’s invoicing functionalities:

• Creating and customizing invoices
  • Design professional-looking invoices with your logo and customize them with relevant details for each client
  • Convert estimates into invoices, which saves you time if you already have project details established
• Sending and tracking invoices
  • Send invoices electronically through QuickBooks Solopreneur
  • Track the status of your invoices, so you know if they’ve been opened or viewed by your clients
  • Send automated or manual payment reminders to nudge clients if invoices are past due
• Payment options and integration
  • Integrate with popular payment gateways—this allows clients to pay online through your invoices and can significantly speed up your collections process
• Progress invoicing
  • Create progress invoices to bill clients for completed portions of the work (for projects with staged deliverables)
• Mobile accessibility
  • Create, send, and track invoices from your mobile device using the QuickBooks mobile app, offering flexibility on the go

While QuickBooks Solopreneur doesn’t directly file your taxes, it simplifies tax management for solopreneurs, especially those who file a Schedule C with their tax returns, such as sole proprietors and single-member limited liability companies (LLCs).

Here are some of its tax-focused features:

• Mileage tracking: Automatically track your business miles by using your phone’s GPS and categorize trips with a swipe, maximizing mileage deductions.
• Income and expense tracking: QuickBooks Solopreneur helps to categorize your business income and expenses automatically, making tax prep much easier.
• Maximized tax deductions: By separating business and personal expenses, QuickBooks Solopreneur helps ensure you don’t miss out on claiming legitimate tax deductions.
• Report generation: Generate reports to gain a clear view of your business finances and tax situation.
• Sales tax: Allows for auto-sales tax with a sales tax report and an automated sales tax envelope.

It’s important to note that it is designed for Schedule C filers. Other businesses like partnerships and corporations generally are required to use double-entry accounting systems that can produce both a balance sheet and profit and loss (P&L) statement. So if you’re not a Schedule C filer, you might need a different solution like QuickBooks, Xero, or Zoho Books. Also, while QuickBooks Self-Employed offered a direct export to TurboTax, this is unavailable with QuickBooks Solopreneur.

QuickBooks Solopreneur offers access to the QuickBooks mobile app for both iOS and Android. It acts as a companion to the web-based software, allowing you to manage your finances on the go. If you’re currently a QuickBooks Self-Employed user, you’ll still have access to the QuickBooks Self-Employed app, but it isn’t offered to new users since it has been discontinued. Here’s a summary of the QuickBooks mobile app’s key features:

• Income and expense tracking: Record income and expenses quickly and categorize them for easy organization
• Mileage tracking: Leverage your phone’s GPS to track business miles and categorize trips automatically
• Invoice management: Create, send, and track invoices directly from your phone. You can also view invoice status and send payment reminders
• Reporting access: Access key financial reports like your Profit & Loss to monitor your business performance

One feature that QuickBooks Self-Employed offered but that is no longer available with QuickBooks Solopreneur is the ability to capture or match receipts.

Not previously offered with QuickBooks Self-Employed, you can now create and manage estimates with QuickBooks Solopreneur. This helps you to present project costs to potential clients and convert them into paying customers. Once finalized, you can electronically send the estimate directly to your client via email within QuickBooks Solopreneur. You can monitor whether your client has opened or viewed the estimate and set an expiration date to encourage a timely response.

With a few clicks, you can convert approved estimates into invoices when the project begins, streamlining the billing process. For larger projects with milestones, you can also create progress invoices to bill clients for completed stages of the work.

Estimates present project costs in a clear and professional manner, making a good first impression on potential clients. They also clearly define project scopes and costs upfront, which can help avoid misunderstandings and ensure client approval before commencing work.

QuickBooks Solopreneur offers reports that focus on financial health and tax filing needs. It allows for some level of report customization, such as filtering dates, income/expense categories, and adjusting how the information is presented for better analysis. Overall, QuickBooks Solopreneur prioritizes user-friendliness and offers core reports to manage your business finances and prepare for tax filing as a Schedule C filer.

Here’s a sample of the available report types:

• Profit & Loss: This report summarizes your business income and expenses over a chosen period. It helps you to better understand your profitability.
• Sales Summaries: These reports include a sales by customer summary and a sales by product/service summary.

QuickBooks Solopreneur offers a combination of accounting software and a business bank account (QuickBooks Checking) designed specifically for solopreneurs. Having a dedicated business account helps to separate your business and personal finances, simplifying bookkeeping and making it easier to file your taxes. QuickBooks Checking offers features like free mobile deposits, high-yield savings options, and no minimum balance requirements.

You can connect your QuickBooks Checking account to the software, which allows for automatic transaction downloads and categorization, saving you time and effort. When your transactions are automatically downloaded, reconciling your bank statement becomes a quicker and easier process. Also, if you already have a business bank account you like, you can still use QuickBooks Solopreneur software without needing the checking account.

QuickBooks Solopreneur Dashboard