QuickBooks Online Plus

Plus is the plan Intuit itself flags as the customer favourite, and for South African businesses that sell products or run jobs it is usually the right answer. Five users work in the books simultaneously, your accountant gets free access, and the price is R708 per month in rand with the usual 30 day free trial.

Two features justify the step up from Essentials. The first is inventory: proper stock tracking with quantities on hand, cost of sales calculated as you sell, purchase orders to suppliers and alerts when items run low. The second is project profitability, which answers the question every services and construction business asks: did we actually make money on that job? Labour, materials and overheads are tracked against each project so the margin is visible while the work is still running, not months later at year end.

Class and location tracking, up to forty of them, lets a business with branches or divisions report on each one separately from the same set of books. Budgets are included at this level too. The honest caveat is that QuickBooks inventory is built for straightforward stock, not for serial numbers, batches or multiple warehouses; a business with real warehousing needs will outgrow it. For an agency, a contractor, a small importer or a retailer with a manageable product list, Plus hits the sweet spot between capability and cost.