QuickBooks Desktop Pro doesn’t fall short in terms of A/P features, but we found the A/P module difficult to use. While you can enter bills and vendor credits easily straight from the A/P register, the process can be difficult to follow for nonaccountant users.

However, despite this minor issue, Pro offers almost all the A/P features we look for in accounting software. It allows you to enter bills as you receive them and then pay them later. You can record a new bill from the Enter Bills window from the Vendors menu.

QuickBooks will include the unpaid bills in your expenses if you choose to print an accrual-basis income statement—but not if you print a cash-basis income statement. You can track outstanding bills until they’re paid and set up recurring expenses, which is useful when you have regular monthly bills to pay, such as subscription fees.

QuickBooks Pro also allows you to record purchase orders, create bills from purchase orders, and short-pay an invoice. You can also set up reminders so that you’ll know when your bills are due.

Based on our subjective evaluation, QuickBooks Pro’s A/R module wasn’t as easy to use as we expected—hence the slight blow to its score. However, the program offers a solid A/R management solution.

There are three ways you can create an invoice in QuickBooks Desktop Pro: from scratch, a sales order, or an estimate. When creating an invoice from an estimate, you can either convert the entire estimate to an invoice or choose a selected item or percentage to invoice, which is called progress invoicing.

To help you stay on top of your A/R, Pro has an income tracker that monitors overdue and almost overdue invoices and sends email reminders of due payments to your customers.

You can set up invoices to send on a recurring basis, issue a credit memo to a customer, and accept short payments from customers. You can also track unpaid invoices and print an Aged Accounts Receivable Report to identify potential collection problems.

Using QuickBooks Payments, you can include a link with every invoice so that your customers can pay online using their credit cards. For customers who pay at the time of purchase or service, you can print or email a sales receipt instead of an invoice. Read our QuickBooks Payments review to learn more about the platform.

Another useful feature is the ability to track employee time, assign it to customers and jobs, and then mark it as billable to add it to a customer invoice. Time tracking can be integrated with payroll through QuickBooks Time, which you can read about in our QuickBooks Time review.

The platform earned a perfect score in this criterion because of its comprehensive bank reconciliation feature that’s comparable to QuickBooks Online. You can set up a bank feed for your checking and credit card accounts to transfer transactions automatically. After the transfer, you can review the information and make changes prior to adding it to your account register.

One thing we like about QuickBooks Desktop is that you can combine multiple cash and checks into a single deposit, which is a very useful feature if you accept multiple checks daily.

QuickBooks Pro has all the ideal project accounting features, including the ability to create an estimate, attach items (like inventory and sales taxes when creating an estimate), and allocate costs and estimates to a project. QuickBooks Desktop is better at project accounting than QuickBooks Online because of its ability to compare actual costs to estimates, which is an important feature for contracting companies.

You can create a project, or “job” as QuickBooks calls it, for a customer to track your income and expenses by job. You can monitor the progress of the tasks involved in a project and even compare your actual to planned costs and progress so that you can easily identify issues that might affect your schedule and budget. This provides project managers meaningful insights into what and how much work has been done and whether the project can be completed on time.

You can access the New Job screen from the Customer Center window under the Customers menu. The New Job screen menu includes four sections to complete: Address Info, Payment Settings, Additional Info, and Job Info.

Typically, the address info and payment settings are automatically filled in, but you can make changes on the fly if needed. You will most likely need to provide important details in the Job Info section, such as job description, job type, job status, and projected end date.

 

New job form in QuickBooks Pro

After creating the job, you can look at its progress by running job reports, such as Job Profitability Summary, Profit and Loss by Job, and Unbilled Costs by Job.

If you’re selling taxable products and services, you can use QuickBooks Desktop to track sales tax collections and remittances for each state and tax authority. Sales taxes can be added to receipts, estimates, and invoices.

You can run a tax liability report for a certain time period and track tax payment due dates to avoid late filing and penalties. In addition, you can monitor what you owe from the Sales Tax Payable register and the Pay Sales Tax window.

 

Tracking tax liabilities in QuickBooks Desktop Pro

We attempted to generate 16 types of reports in QuickBooks Desktop Pro, and the only missing report is profit and loss (P&L) statements by location. QuickBooks Desktop lets you run an array of reports, including P&L statements, cash flow statements, and balance sheets. There are more than 100 reports available, and you can find the list of present reports from the Reports Center:

 

Report Center in QuickBooks Desktop Pro

If you need to track P&L separately between two locations, you need QuickBooks Online. QuickBooks Pro or any version of QuickBooks Desktop doesn’t offer location tracking.

QuickBooks Desktop Pro’s inventory accounting isn’t as enhanced as QuickBooks Premier’s, but it does a great job of monitoring the COGS and calculating ending inventory. You can track the availability of inventory and the average and the total number of items, create purchase orders (POs) for vendors, and set up alerts when you’re running out of inventory.

QuickBooks Pro lets you set up inventory items so that you can track what you have on hand and how much you’ve spent and earned with it. When you sell a product, the program records both purchase (COGS) and sales revenue in a single entry. This helps you easily track and analyze your gross profit and gross margin and whether you are making enough money on a certain item to replenish your inventory. Also, QuickBooks will adjust your inventory in your balance sheet automatically, eliminating the need for manual data entry.

There are three types of items you can add in QuickBooks Desktop: noninventory items, inventory items, and services. Noninventory items are those you purchase but don’t track, such as office supplies, while inventory items are those you purchase, track, and resell. Service items are services you purchase or offer, such as consulting hours and labor fees.

When recording an inventory item in QuickBooks Pro, select Inventory Part and then complete the New Item form that shows up. To set up new inventory, complete important details, such as item name, purchase cost and description, and sales cost and description.

One of the best parts about inventory in QuickBooks Pro is that you can set reorder points. QuickBooks will alert you to replenish your inventory when the item’s count hits the reorder point you specified.

 

Adding a new inventory item in QuickBooks Pro

QuickBooks Desktop Pro can be cumbersome to use if it’s not set up properly, which explains its average score. We highly recommend hiring a QuickBooks ProAdvisor to set up your company and items, such as inventory. Spending the time and money to get your company set up correctly will make entering everyday activities a breeze.

With a little practice, you may find Pro easy to navigate. From the homepage, you’ll see the workflow navigation chart, which is grouped into Vendors, Customers, Employees, Company, and Banking.

 

QuickBooks Desktop Pro’s homepage

If you need help, you can talk to an agent through live chat or get self-help information with a chatbot. QuickBooks Desktop also has a vast help center with plenty of how-to guides, learning videos, and tutorials. While it offers phone support, you have to send a message first and then wait for a rep to call you. Some of the accounting software we reviewed, such as Zoho Books and FreshBooks, have better customer service, with the option to initiate a call.

Most of the positive QuickBooks Desktop Pro reviews are attributed to the program’s strong set of features and ample integration—some users said that inventory items can be categorized and tracked easily and that it integrates with many programs, such as BigCommerce and Magento. However, some reviewers said it’s difficult to set up and has below-average customer service.

Here’s how QuickBooks Desktop Pro is rated by popular review websites:

• G2: 4.3 out of 5 based on around 1,670 reviews
• Software Advice: 4.5 out of 5 based on over 1,700 reviews