Moving Clients from QBO to Odoo
It’s time to find a QBO alternative.
I provide outsourced accounting and bookkeeping services to clients. I have an accounting background, and we provide bookkeeping, but it also feels like half of my job is being a software consultant to small businesses who want to streamline their documentation collection, account reconciliation and reporting.
I’m always looking for new apps that can automate the boring parts away, and get us to neat and tidy books more easily.
I used Quickbooks Desktop from 2014 to about 2018, and then became a committed user of Quickbooks Online for all of my clients after that. I’m sure many of you have been users of these products for many more years.
When the price is the problem
Intuit is working hard to add (unnecessary) features to QBO to justify big annual price increases. Most of my clients use QBO Plus, which is jumping from $115 to $140 per month on August 1st this year. That’s almost a 22% price increase.
I don’t swim in the QB Desktop world, but Intuit managed to switch even their desktop product to a subscription with ever-increasing prices.
QBO is certainly still a good solution for many of my clients, but for smaller clients with tight margins, or slow times of year, or just very little activity, paying Intuit subscription costs is getting harder to justify.
What are the alternatives?
I’ll jump to the conclusion right here at the start, but my current pick for best alternative to QBO is Odoo Online.
Why?
Because if you use only ONE Odoo app (accounting), then you get unlimited users for FREE.
AND Odoo Online is also a robust enough tool that it’s also sometimes a good fit for clients that need a BETTER tool than QBO, for example clients with inventory or approval workflows. These clients likely then need a paid subscription (inventory and purchases are separate apps from accounting).
What that means for me as an accountant working with multiple clients is that this is a software that is (probably) worth my time to learn how to use.
What else have I tried and discarded over the years?
Zoho Books
The free tier was too limited, even for a simple client.
On the paid tier, the inventory system had some serious flaws.
Wave Accounting
Not terrible, but I was frustrated that I couldn’t set categorization rules for commonly reoccurring transactions. I’d have to manually categorize each “Starbucks” charge as meals, even though QBO would already have guessed the write vendor name and category for me, even without a rule.
Xero
I tried Xero back in 2018 - 2019, and while it was cheaper than QBO, it lacked features I wanted. They also don’t have a robust free / super cheap tier like the other options I considered.
Xero of course has a lot of dedicated accountants using it, and it’s certainly cheaper than QBO (their highest tier now is $90/mo and I’m guessing that’s pretty comparable to the $140 QBO Plus), so it might still be a good option for those looking for a more economical paid solution.
Custom Books (previously called AccountingSuite)
I used this for a while as a free / cheap option for a client with very basic books, but I found the interface very clunky and hard to navigate and ultimately ended up trying another option (Zoho Books) that was a little cleaner.
Features of QBO that are hard to beat
QBO is used widely.
That means, if I set a client up on QBO and I am not the one doing the bookkeeping (maybe the client makes a full time hire, or does the work themselves), then there are a TON of experienced bookkeepers out there who are familiar with QBO. There are also a TON of youtube videos and help articles.
This is something I am keeping in mind as I make the switch to Odoo. They do have some training materials, but so far, I feel like I have a harder time finding the answers I need as a new user.
I’m using it so far with clients who have an active interest themselves in the product, so that they are also on board with learning a new tool
Everything connects to QBO.
Found a new fintech credit card platform you want to use? It likely has a QBO integration. Want to switch expense reporting tools? Pretty much all of the ones I know of will connect to QBO to allow automatic exporting of accounts.
Odoo Online? None of the software I use connects to it. But some of it can be exported and imported. And Odoo itself provides more built-in features I’m still learning about which make many of these outside tools unnecessary.
The first steps I need to take
As I get started in this world of learning Odoo Accounting, I’ll share with you what I find out.
Some points I’m actively working on getting comfortable with now:
Bank reconciliations
I think Xero had this set up too, but Odoo (very strange to me!) does not provide a bank reconciliation report. I asked a rep about it and she frankly did not even comprehend what I was asking about — the bank feed process is “doing the reconciliation” in Odoo-land. Which I get, I just think they are missing the final output—the reconciliation report.
I think they have multiple reports I can stitch together into a review process to accomplish the same goals, but I’m currently very confused as to why the company and existing users don’t find this to be a major issue?
P&L and Balance Sheet grouping customization
Another area where I’ve done some light research but haven’t found an easy answer. Odoo doesn’t seem to have an easy way to set up “child” accounts grouped under “parent” accounts. You can only choose the account type (Bank or Other Current Asset or Income, for example), and these are the only groups on the statements.
I’m hoping this is something I will look back in shortly and think “how silly I was, this is very easy to change!”
User access
QBO has lots of user access roles now, and I hardly use them, because pretty much all the software that requires controls of who sees what are the external apps we connect to QBO.
If we’re going to use Odoo’s own tools for things like receipt management for expenses, then I need to learn how to add users who can ONLY see their own assigned expenses, for example.
Stick around?
So, I might not have the answers yet, but I’m going to get them. And I’ll share them here as I figure it out.
If you’re frustrated with QBO pricing like me, and considering the switch to Odoo, I hope you stick around and we can share the journey a little. Even better if you figure out I’m trying to solve a problem with the wrong approach and you let me know!