Intuit's QuickBooks Solopreneur aims to build on the success of QuickBooks Self-Employed, which is no longer available to new users. The small business accounting application targets sole proprietors, offering basics such as customer and product records, income and expense management, invoices and estimates, and mileage tracking. It doesn't go particularly deep in any one area, but it's still a worthwhile choice if you want to keep operating costs down for your one-person business. If you run a company with more employees or complex needs, however, you look to Editors' Choice winners FreshBooks or QuickBooks Online.
How Much Does Solopreneur Cost?
Solopreneur costs $20 per month, but you can get a discount for your first year if you pay annually. A free 30-day trial is available. The software handles customer and product records, growth goal tracking, income and expenses, invoices and estimates, mileage tracking, tax preparation, and more.
The starter versions of Patriot Software Accounting and Xero cost the same, though Wave Pro ($16 per month) charges less. Solopreneur's price seems reasonable until you consider that Wave Pro offers more (including vendor and bill management and standard financial reports) for less. But it’s not scalable like Solopreneur.
QuickBooks Online Plus is among the priciest plans I tested, at $99 per month (including five users), though the FreshBooks Premium tier can cost even more, depending on the number of people who need access ($60 per month, plus $11 for every user).
Similar Products
Intuit QuickBooks Online
Xero
FreshBooks
Sage 50 Accounting
Wave
Zoho Books
Patriot Software Accounting
What Happened to QuickBooks Self-Employed?
If you already use QuickBooks Self-Employed, you can continue to access it as normal. Just note that the mobile app is no longer available to download. Intuit encourages prospective subscribers to explore its other financial applications and will even help you switch to Solopreneur. The only caveat is that some of your data might not transfer over.
Getting Started With Solopreneur
Like its competitors, Solopreneur starts by asking you a series of questions. How do you do accounting now? What industry are you in? Is this your main source of income? Do you have employees? What’s your business structure? It also asks about your primary goals (more on that later). Of course, it also wants you to connect your bank accounts so you can start importing transactions.
Not all of Solopreneur’s features are on by default, so you should visit the Account and Settings pages before you start working. Here, you can specify your preferences for automated payment reminders, online payments, and sales form content (including discounts, late fees, and preferred invoice terms). If you run into problems or have questions, Solopreneur offers chat and phone support.
How Do You Manage Transactions?
Once you connect your bank accounts to Solopreneur, you can see imported transactions in registers. The site displays basic details for each, including category, date and account, payee and amount, and type (such as business or personal). Because Solopreneur helps you prepare for taxes (more on that later), it offers a thorough list of both business (including Schedule C) and personal categories. You can add notes, attach files, and split transactions.
The Transactions page can also show receipts that you upload from your phone. Or you can create a new receipt on the site and attach a file from your computer.
Simple Customer and Item Records
You can enter customer and product records manually or import existing lists from CSV, Excel, and Google Sheet files.
Customer record templates aren’t as expansive as in Xero, but you can at least enter and store contact information. Completed records, which I think are sufficient to support the site’s capabilities, get dedicated pages with customer information, late fee details, and a transaction list.
Solopreneur doesn’t track inventory like FreshBooks and others do, but you can create simple records for products and services to use in sales transactions.
How Does Solopreneur Manage Sales and Receivables?
Solopreneur supports two kinds of sales transactions: invoices and estimates. You can create retainer invoices, much like in FreshBooks, though customization options are limited. It lets you add and remove some fields (such as Ship to and SKU) but not alter the design template apart from the font and color. QuickBooks Online offers greater flexibility here. In Solopreneur, a panel on the right has options for the current form. If you’re creating an invoice, for example, you can adjust automatic invoice reminder and payment preferences.
Four views of each invoice are available: Edit, Email, Payor, and PDF. Solopreneur integrates with ShipEngine, which provides shipping comparison tools and USPS discounts (you pay for labels but not additional subscription fees). Completed invoices appear in a list on the Invoices page, where you have multiple options for managing them. For instance, you can view each form’s history, void a form, and record a payment. QuickBooks’ payment service supports ACH, Apple Pay, credit and debit cards, PayPal, and Venmo transactions. Fees are roughly comparable with those of industry leaders.
I like how Solopreneur handles receivables. It’s simple to grasp and doesn’t ask for unnecessary details for a sole proprietor. It also offers progress invoicing (multiple partial invoices from one estimate).
Can You Track Bills in Solopreneur?
Solopreneur doesn't include the ability to enter or upload bills and mark them as paid. Of the services I reviewed, only QuickBooks Online offers electronic bill pay.
That said, QuickBooks Checking, a bank account available through GreenDot Bank (member FDIC), does support ACH payments for bills. It doesn't require a minimum deposit and is FDIC-insured for up to $5 million. You can fund it from an external bank account or set up paycheck deposits. Any money you move into a savings “envelope” through the account earns 5.00% APY.
Setting Goals in Solopreneur
Solopreneur offers a tool that's not common in small business accounting applications: goal setting. It’s a very simple concept. You set a goal (such as "make more money"), quantify it (how much more), and specify a target date. The software then makes several concrete suggestions for achieving that goal and helps you track your progress. This seems more suitable for personal finance software, however, since business development tends to be complex.
Using Solopreneur to Plan for Income Taxes
As mentioned, Solopreneur’s transaction categories support both personal and business income and expenses. The site keeps a running tally of your income and deductible expenses in a list and suggests other areas where you might be able to claim deductions. It uses that information, along with any W-2 wages and withholdings, to estimate what you might pay in federal quarterly taxes.
QuickBooks Live Tax is a new service that moves your Solopreneur data into Intuit TurboTax to prepare your income taxes. You have to subscribe to one of the TurboTax Live plans, which offer year-round, unlimited live help from one of the company's tax experts and cost more than the DIY version (the prices are not final as of this writing).
Automatic Mileage, But Few Reports
If you drive a vehicle for work, you can track your mileage in Solopreneur and get a deductible dollar total for your income taxes. The mobile app does this automatically as you drive, so long as you connect your phone to your car and turn on Location Services. FreshBooks offers a similar feature. Alternatively, you can enter trips manually.
Reports are slim. There are only five (three Profit and Loss and two Sales), but they’re quite customizable. A simple application like Solopreneur doesn’t require a ton of reports, but I still expected more. Wave Pro, for example, offers 14 (including standard financial reports).
Is Solopreneur Safe to Use?
Intuit’s fraud prevention technology constantly scans the company’s systems and blocks individuals who are up to no good. Employees proactively search for scams and frauds that might impact customers. Multi-factor authentication is a requirement, and the company safeguards your data using AES-256 (Advanced Encryption Standard with 256-bit keys) to ensure the highest level of cryptographic security.
Good Mobile Apps
Although Solopreneur’s mobile apps (available for Android and iOS) aren't as advanced as those for Zoho Books, they replicate enough of the browser interface to make them useful when you’re away from your office.
The dashboard provides a bird's-eye view of your most critical data, such as your cash balance, totals for Profit and Loss and expenses, and unpaid invoices. You can create, edit, and view customers, estimates, invoices and estimates, and transactions, as well as see your income tax information.
I snapped a picture of a receipt using the app, and it took only a few seconds to upload some of its content and extract key details (amount, date, and vendor). The app then directed me to link the expense to a transaction, though I wasn't able to complete this task in testing. Intuit suggested this might be because the amount in the register had a negative sign in front of it, while the matching expense entry in Solopreneur didn't. I couldn't change either, so I just took a picture of the receipt and attached it to the transaction in the register. Wave Pro also lets you take photos of receipts and upload them, filling in any empty blanks to create a new expense transaction.
Verdict: Accounting Basics for Single Owners
Solopreneur offers a smart combination of features for sole proprietors, and we like that it mirrors the top-notch UI of other versions of QuickBooks. We also appreciate that it can compile pertinent income information for tax season. If you’re still doing your accounting manually for your one-person business, Solopreneur is worth trying. But if your company includes several employees or requires comprehensive tools, you're better off spending for one of our Editors' Choice winners, FreshBooks and QuickBooks Online. Both are superbly capable, flexible, and user-friendly.
Intuit's user-friendly QuickBooks Solopreneur provides one-person businesses with basic bookkeeping tools, though it could use more reports and financial management features.
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