QuickBooks Online vs Enterprise: Features, Security & How to Transition [Expert Opinion] 

Choosing between QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Enterprise Desktop has become a critical decision for many firms, rather than just a software preference. As accounting teams navigate shifting technology trends, this choice can significantly impact cost, security, and long-term workflow efficiency. So, which platform truly aligns with your firm’s needs? 

Ace Cloud Hosting spoke with Randy Johnston, CEO and Co-Founder of NMGI (Network Management Group, Inc.), and Seth Fineberg, an accounting industry consultant, content strategist, and speaker.  With decades of experience guiding firms through software decisions, technology changes, and security requirements, they’ve seen firsthand how the wrong platform choice can disrupt accounting workflows. 

In this informative video, Randy and Seth share their perspective on QuickBooks Online vs. Enterprise, including what firms should consider, key differences, security factors, and best practices to choose the right direction for your business.

Transcript: 

Seth: Hi there. I am Seth Fineberg. I’m from Accountants Forward, a content marketing and PR business that I started after years in the profession. I genuinely want to see the profession move forward.  

And one of the ways we do that is through really meaningful content and having great conversations like the one I’m about to have with the one and only Randy Johnston. Randy, just briefly introduce yourself, and we’re going to get into it.  

Randy: Well, Seth, good day, and welcome to all the listeners as well. So, I am Randy Johnston from Hutchinson, Kansas. I have worked in the accounting profession for decades, starting in the 80s, actually, 72 for the first time I was working in a CPA firm, and I founded Network Management Group Inc., which supports CPA firms 24/7 from Boston to Honolulu.   

We do a lot of consulting in that organization, but most of the listeners, Seth, probably know me from our K2 Business, where we produce about 1,600 CPE events a year to about 100,000 CPAs in the US and Canada.   

So, we’ve taught continuing professional education or professional development in Canada for 38 years this year, as a matter of fact. So, it has been a pleasure through the years to deal with so many software publishers and help develop so many of the technologies that are used by accountants in both public practice and industry.   

Seth: Excellent. So, we’re going to get into it here on behalf of Ace Cloud Hosting. This is one of the many issues that Ace Cloud Hosting sort of wants to be associated with and help to address, I think, from a thought leadership point of view and a practical point of view. 

There are a lot of things that Ace Cloud Hosting sort of does directly, but this isn’t really directly about that; the issue is one of the things that they tend to address in their line of business, which is the issue of QBO, as we know, and QuickBooks Enterprise Desktop.   

Now, as firms and businesses really start to kind of grow and transition, they start realizing maybe certain things either don’t exist in it or they’re just having other needs.   

So let’s kind of dive into some of the things, maybe some of the red flags or the light bulbs that need to go off, when you’re starting to begin to make these decisions as a business, and, obviously, having the accounting firms alongside them. They’re involved in those decisions as well, hopefully.   

Randy: Yeah. So, Seth, just a point of disclosure for the listeners, I’ve had the good fortune through the years of helping with both QuickBooks Desktop evolution and the creation of QuickBooks Online.  

So, I know the platforms pretty well, and probably tipping points that are occurring right now were first the discontinuance of the sales of the QuickBooks Desktop Pro and Premier lines, and really only selling Enterprise at this point. Pretty radical price increases in the desktop products and the convenience of the collaboration of the QuickBooks online product.   

So, there’s some twist with QuickBooks Online that we need to talk about as far as security goes. And really, you correctly called out that part of the reason some businesses have not transitioned from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online is the lack of costing and inventory features that are sophisticated enough.   

It really evolved into the whole third-party add-on marketplace. A big deal. And let’s face it, a lot of the hosting companies, Ace Cloud Hosting included, really came into existence because of the need for collaboration and the ability to host QuickBooks Desktop.   

So, when we first designed the desktop hosting licensing, I did that for paid engagement at Intuit. So I’m actually the guy who came up with that program externally as a consultant, and that really led to all of these hosting companies not only hosting QuickBooks but a lot of the other legacy platforms.  

Seth: Yeah. I mean, look, we’ve been speaking for years about, and I’ve seen multiple articles written about just the general like when do you know it’s time to transition to just basically upgrade yourself.   

These days, QBO seems to be the standard for businesses that need to have their books done. It’s their standard bookkeeping platform to use, and QuickBooks Enterprise Desktop does represent a lot of those, sort of necessary, features, but, really, lets you bring up some of the security issues. 

What are, a few that I think businesses, accountants, clients, what are they, what do they need to be aware of? What are some flags that kind of can pop up?  

Randy: Yeah, I think the big tipping point right now, Seth, is with QuickBooks Online; there currently is not an opt-out for the AI agents that Intuit is using. So that means all of the business data, or from a public practice perspective, all of the clients’ data in QBO and Payroll, is being ingested into its AI model.   

So, you just don’t have a way to opt out. Now, Intuit has innovated on June 2025 with some new agents. They released even more in July 2025. So, they really created four generative AI agents, which are quite nice. They’re handling payments, accounting and finance, and customer support with those agents. That’s a good thing.   

So, this is one of those situations where consumers appreciate some of the capabilities delivered by the AI, but they are trading a lot of confidential data for the benefits.   

Seth: And how would a business or how would accountants working with these businesses, how would they sort of go from an advisory point of view? I mean, that seems to be where a lot of things are heading. I know that accounting firms definitely want to lean in more from not only a product selection point of view, but revising on maybe when it’s time to start considering these things.   

Randy: Yeah. Well, that you just mentioned. Yeah. It turns out that, if in fact the clients are still legacy QuickBooks desktop with the need for costing an inventory, they’ve got a couple of paths forward. One Intuit would like the businesses to use is Intuit Enterprise Suite. 

But at the current pricing level of that platform, there are many competitors that are in the marketplace now that may make more sense, and those might meet new generation SaaS products, and I’ll just name a few that I frequently would recommend. The soft ledgers of the world, the X ledgers of the world, the Zoho Books of the world, plus the new AI products like Basis, Digits AI, or DualEntry or Puzzle. There’s a significant number of new CAS competitors that don’t have the same security issue.   

Plus, more importantly, actually offering the costing and inventory features. Well, if you’re offering client accounting services and your client needs that level of transaction accounting, it’s better to be inside a single system than adding a third-party product to get that done, a  Cin7 or whatever might be your add-on in that particular case.   

Now, when it’s advisory, Seth, I have a weird view of advisory on this. I always think about advisory as being client-centric. So, it’s always what’s in the best interest of the client personally and in the best interest of their business.   

And when you start doing advisory work, there are only a relatively few tools that can do advisory, but many of those advisory tools that are automated are hooked to the QBO platform or the competitors, sometimes hooked to Xero, sometimes hooked to Zoho, and a few of the others, right?   

Seth: Well, this is all very essential stuff when you’re considering just the idea of you choosing between QBO and the QuickBooks Enterprise desktop.  

When a business is actually ready to make that transition. What are some of the top things that you would say that they need to do to get in place from an organizational point of view, data point of view, what have you, security point of view? What are some of the top things they need to do to get ready? Or has it become a lot more seamless these days?   

Randy: Well, it probably is more seamless than it has been, but the security setup, Seth, is still pretty radical on this. Part of the issue now is that as you transition to these SaaS accounting products, you still have all of your platform for productivity that you need, whether that’s Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or the Zoho One productivity platform.   

And just think about your own experience in terms of trying to get your productivity software set up right. Most accountants and most industry businesses or entrepreneurs they don’t have the background in the security setup and unfortunately many of the IT providers also don’t understand proper setup and if we want to use the old way of talking about it you don’t have a firm foundation and you beyond the foundation of the productivity software then you want to make it easy to get into these other platforms.  

Single sign-on, for example, passing your credentials once you log in to all of your accounting software or all of your supporting software.  

So there are some mechanics today that security-conscious providers sometimes refer to themselves as MSSP (managed security service providers), or managed service providers. Yeah. And so you got an MSP or an MSSP.   

And so the vendors that have been doing hosting are often trying to do those services. But back to your real core question on the data cleanup. A good number of the new generation systems do not have an easy way to convert legacy files that have costing and inventory data. 

Seth: That’s key.  

Randy: It really is key. It means you’re probably going to wind up with a new chart of accounts setup. You’re going to have a new structure. You’re not going to be able to do comparative reporting for a while. And that’s where an accountant involved can actually help you structure the new setup correctly to get the management information that you need.  

Only upon rare occasions do I see situations where you can bring legacy data forward and actually, from a small business perspective, be able to use it usefully for management reporting.   

Seth: So once again, a real major case for consideration of an MSP going to kind of take it back just a little bit back to the products themselves. I would love to know just from a practical point of view when it might actually make sense to go, what, maybe QBO is kind of the right way to just kind of say, especially, now all things considered.   

And conversely, Randy, when might it be time? What are some of the top things to say? Yeah, it might actually be time to move. We all just went into what to consider when you do make that move.  

But so that’s why I said we’re going to kind of go back a little bit and say, well, what might make sense for you to stay with QBO in terms of its feature set and what it has, and then what might make sense, conversely, to go, yeah, maybe it is time to make that move.   

Randy: Well, QBO is a wonderful platform. And if your needs are simple, great. Remember, they’re the 800-pound gorilla in the US market, and they’re fairly dominant in several other markets as well.  

So, if you only really need straightforward general ledger accounting and accounts payable processing, you’re going to have a leg up using Intuit systems now that they’ve integrated  payables. That is also helpful. The payroll systems that they have been integrating are helpful.  So, you can have a straightforward solution, and the offerings from Intuit alone are too many add-on products. 

Seth: Yeah, let’s talk about that a little bit. 

Randy: Well such as let’s just say Bill.com, which I like that platform, or BILL, which I like for accounts payable approval, but in effect, you take QuickBooks, and you also have to add bill to get the workflows for approval.  

Or for AR management or if we just think about manufacturing inventory you might add a MYSIS or one of a collection of many other products pretty much Seth as I see it today. Fishbowl is another great example. In almost every category there’s six seven competitors that are trying to get let’s say the distribution piece or they’re trying to solve some specific problem. 

Well, if you start having a whole bunch of different add-ons, and you look at your subscription total costs, number one, the complexities, number two, and then often number three, workarounds that are in spreadsheets.  

If you find that you’ve got all of a sudden a whole bunch of different balls up in the air. 

Seth: Right, you’re starting to have to put things in. Yeah. 

Randy: You’re tracking things in lots of places. Now, it’s probably time to move on to alternate systems. And in the old days, I used to use and still do actually a five-tier model of accounting software, and I can sit this new generation do almost real-time information dashboards and other advisory guidance, and you can’t afford to buy, maintain, and build whatever if you’re an entrepreneur, you can go back and focus on running the business.   

Seth: When you have to make necessary transitions as you grow that business as an entrepreneur, you get to a point where you’re either good where you are, or you see sort of bigger things. Maybe you bought another company, or your business has matured to where you would maybe need something like QuickBooks Enterprise or something like this.   

And again you’re so used to sort of the certain level of automation but you mentioned also some of the security and transition needs that an MSP would provide it almost makes sense to kind of have that at your disposal as well because that’s just not something one thing we talked about years ago about cloud like one of the things that I thought that it kind of took way or transitioned was the traditional IT department.  

You don’t necessarily need people sort of physically there monitoring your servers and things like that anymore. It’s just not all that efficient for some businesses. They would much rather just go look for someone else who can take care of that. There are plenty of services out there.   

Randy: Yeah. Hey, but notice even on that comment, though, Seth, cloud doesn’t necessarily mean less expensive, but you’re not responsible for it, and you can focus on the core.   

Seth: That was kind of what I wanted to circle around with that whole, you know, idea of just being comfortable with, all right, look, there’s somebody that takes care of this. I got to run my business. I got to take care of my employees.  

I want to take care of all of the things that make this business what it is. IT security, back office functions, compliance, that’s not what I’m an expert in. It’s much better to have it in knowledgeable and secure hands.   

Randy: Exactly. The key is that with something like QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Enterprise, you either have to have the hosting expertise internally, or you have to outsource it to a cloud provider.   

On the other hand, if it’s a SaaS platform like QBO, you really can subscribe and start running it. Now, notice in both cases, you may not set it up right if you don’t have an accounting background, but you can get started. And that actually was the legacy of the QuickBooks desktop products; you just kind of did it yourself. Even if you did it wrong. 

Seth: You went to your Staples, you went to OfficeMax, you put it, you know, you installed it. Yep.  

Randy: And off you went.  

Seth: And off you went.  

Randy: So, you know, the other thing that I’ll just look back a little bit with you on this one is that the pandemic kicked in, and there was a lot of e-commerce. If you think about how much that forced businesses to be internet-ready, if you would, and that now it’s the expectation that you have online presences as well as a bricks and mortar type of presence in many of the businesses.   

But the fact of the matter is, you know, the mobility first type of approach, the, you know, tablet, smartphone, environment, the browser environment, that’s kind of expected from a customer experience at this point.   

And so, if you’re doing things the same old way, you probably don’t look as good as the competitors who have modernized.   

Seth: Yeah. There’s definitely that. And, you know, just the mentality these days, too, of, you know, on cost. I mean, obviously you want to, you know, as a business owner, or someone looking out for the finances, you do want to have some, you know, controls over spending, but what you’re spending on and what it’s doing for you, you’re used to maybe in some cases, you are going to pay for what you get.  

We see it all over the place with a whole subscription mentality of, when you subscribe to something, and or you pay maybe even a bit of a premium, what you’re getting back matters most.  

Randy: It does. I just reflected on the old cash is king phrase. But if you think about most businesses, we’re getting money in, so it’s the AR side, and we watch that. We’re putting money out typically in payables or payroll. So, we watch our spending, the cash in and out. 

But there is also a need to watch some of the recurring expenses because one of the things that is a common business mistake is getting comfortable with a particular spending level that’s unnecessary.  

And if we think about it, we’ll take it personally first, how many subscription services you have, and then do that with a business, and if you authorize, and let’s just say $10, that was the old cap. If you allow users to have as many $10 subscriptions as they want, they might have eight or ten or twenty, and all of a sudden, you’ve got real money tied up in all those little subscriptions, which don’t necessarily work together and don’t necessarily help the business in the same way.   

I’m amazed at how many times, when I analyze even small businesses, we uncover subscriptions to products that four or five people have, and they’ve built their own system outside the system in these subscription products. 

Seth: Randy, this has definitely been enlightening for me. There are a lot of things that we could really dive into on security and data management, and all of that. Perhaps another time.   

Final thoughts, though, on this issue of choosing between QBO and QuickBooks Desktop. Anything we might have maybe glossed over?   

Randy: And Seth, you’ve probably got the understatement, there are so many more things that we could talk about. Now, realistically, for most of the listeners, my hope is that they are dealing with an accountant who is well-informed on client accounting services or advisory services, and that they have a discussion around this.   

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen systems selected without due diligence. And the lack of due diligence right now is probably greater than ever before. And then that last final thought on this QBO versus QBD, Intuit is the tried-and-true 800-pound gorilla.   

A lot of the new products that look good, that you know, I’m very impressed with. It’s going to be interesting to see if they actually have staying power. So you have risk in some of the new, highly innovative technologies.   

And again, you didn’t hear me say avoid innovative technology. I just said be very cautious of your risk and have a backup plan just in case that’s needed. So you can often have providers, accounting firms, or hosting companies like Ace Cloud Hosting really be watching your back and be a sounding board, so you don’t make a decision in a bubble. 

Seth: Don’t go into it alone or feeling like you are alone. Partnering at this stage of the game is key with your accounting firm and with your service providers. Definitely lean into them for questions and answers. Randy, it is always a pleasure, my friend, to talk to you about any of this stuff. I love that we’ve spoken about the future, going back to our beginnings, and the future is now.   

We’re in it, my friend. We’re talking about it, and you know, we’re seeing about where things are going. They’re moving faster than ever. But just remember again, you’re not in it alone. 

Randy: Yeah. As a matter of fact, your advice to partner with somebody is quite good. And remember, we are in that future right now, but we can create a new future if we do it.   

Seth: I’m excited about where things are going. As much as you know on a knife-edge that things might seem, I’m pretty excited about where things could potentially go and the amount of control we actually do have from a business and technology point of view.  

Randy Johnston, thank you so much for your time. Also, thank you to our hosts, Ace Cloud Hosting. Definitely get in touch with them for any of these kinds of managed service level questions for QuickBooks Enterprise that you might have.   

Randy: So, Seth, thank you, and I appreciate spending time with you and the listeners today. Good day. 

Seth: Always. 

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