GnuCash vs QuickBooks:Features

Both these programs are built on top of a double-entry accounting system. You won’t see it in QuickBooks unless you look under the hood, but it’s more visible in GnuCash. While it’s possible to keep simple business accounts without double entry, we think you need double-entry – and your accountant will probably tell you so too.

But in terms of the functionality offered, GnuCash and QuickBooks are rather different.Let's find out which Software Is Right for Your Business in 2021 by doing GnuCash vs QuickBooks comparison based on features-

1. GnuCash is very simple. ts original mission was to compete with Quicken as a personal finance management system, but it has expanded its scope to include business features as well.
2. So you’ll find it can handle your brokerage accounts, home loan, and investments, as well as invoicing and expense tracking. It also offers multi-currency support.
3. Until just a couple of years ago, GnuCash wasn’t a contender in business accounting. But it’s added more and more features, and it’s done so quite fast.
4. It can link to your bank account and do bank reconciliations, saving you the hassle. 5. And it’s quite good at invoicing and managing customers; you can add credit limits to each customer, give them discount rates on their orders, and so on.
6. The program will also help you calculate the appropriate sales tax. You can track quantities of items sold and adjust pricing levels within the program, too.
On the expenses side, GnuCash has robust functionality. You can print checks out from the program, and track your expenses under various headings. It even sends you bill payment reminders.
7. Accounts receivable and accounts payable (customers who owe you money, and bills you need to pay) are well managed. That’s often where small businesses need a helping hand – if you’re focused 100% on marketing and sales, it’s easy to forget that as well as closing the sale, you need to collect your money.
8. It also offers recording and tracking for employee costs, though it doesn’t offer a full-service payroll system (practically no account software does). And it handles backups well, so as long as you don’t trash your hard disk, you’re never going to lose your data.
9. But GnuCash has a downside. One that will exclude it from consideration by many freelancers and service businesses is that it doesn’t include time tracking or billable hours.
10. It also doesn’t have full support for inventory; though it accounts for inventory items, it won’t let you track how much inventory you have on hand.
11. Because it’s a desktop installed software, you don’t get multi-user or remote capability. And the killer? There’s currently zero tax support. If you’re a small business owner or freelance,the last thing you want is to have to do your accounts all over again when it comes to tax time. Given GnuCash’s origins in personal finance, we would have expected it to do better here.
12. Compare QuickBooks, and you find that almost all the gaps are filled, though to get the full functionality, you may need to move up to one of the higher-priced packages.
13. QuickBooks is much better at asset accounting. For instance, if you have fixed assets used in the business, it will handle depreciation. With the higher priced plans, it also offers really good inventory tracking and management, a godsend for retailers, e-commerce, and manufacturing companies.
14. While very different, both GnuCash and QuickBooks Online are easy-to-use applications, although you cannot access GnuCash remotely. But you can access QuickBooks desktop remotely.
15. QuickBooks also integrates your payments with your accounts system. For instance, it will process credit card payments from your customers, or it can connect to Paypal. That’s a feature well worth having.
16. It also supports recurring payments and invoices, though the way it forces you to create the transaction first as a one-off, and then label it recurring, is a bit clunky.

GnuCash vs QuickBooks
1. Budgeting is a strong feature with QuickBooks. You can make monthly budgets for up to five years, and the system will track your performance against budget.
2. This is full business budgeting, which you can use to drive your business forward – while GnuCash offers a budgeting function, it’s still struggling to emerge from a household budget style that focuses on your regular outgoings.
3. And thank goodness QuickBooks has full tax support, including suggestions for maximizing your tax deductibles and tax reports for your accountant. It may have helped that QuickBooks’s owner Intuit also owns leading tax software TurboTax – and the two integrate directly, which can save you lots of time when you need to file.
4. GnuCash continues to build in new functionality. But because it’s open-source, how fast new functionality arrives depends on how many developers feel impelled to add it.
5. There’s no centrally driven strategy, so you can’t depend on features being implemented. Of course, if you happen to work in IT and you fancy implementing them yourself, you’re very welcome to do so!
To learn about System Requirements for QuickBooks visit, Apps4Rent.