Like many small business owners, I’m faced with a daunting task, purchasing–and more daunting, learning–Quickbooks. I’ve been dilly-dallying about it over the past couple of days, trying to figure out what the best value is, since they all seem to be the same price (roughly $200). Here are my choices:
Quickbooks Website
If I buy it from Quickbooks, I can get roughly 6x American Advantage Miles, 5x some others, or 7% cashback on TopCashBack.
Courtesy of CashBackMonitor
Amazon
I just checked Amazon because its simple, and I generally pick up a few Amazon giftcards per month. Additionally, I can get ~2% more if I get Amazon credit from some cashback portals (e.g. TopCashback). So lets conservatively call this a 7x (5x Ultimate Rewards Points, plus 2% more cashback from a portal)
Staples
Staples was my first choice, the problem is, that I got rather excited when I saw such high numbers for Quickbooks–in fact, an increased payout–on this morning’s Frequent Miler’s Portal Alert. But luckily, I calmed down and took a wider view (thus the post title). Yes, I could get 6x American Advantage miles (a whopping 1250!), but, is that the best I could come up with? No! In fact, I could do better. I took a quick look at the Staples Cashback options:
Courtesy of CashBackMonitor
Ok, maybe I can’t do way better, but going through Staples (with my Chase Ink Plus card), rather than 6x, I can do 5x Ultimate Rewards points, and 5% cashback. Or, if I really wanted the points, I could still do at a minimum, 7x Ultimate Rewards Points. Since I value Ultimate Rewards Points at, While I’d love 2 more Ultimate Rewards points per dollar, I’m totally going for the Upromise 5% cashback. Its a no-brainer.
Wrapping up
Shopping Portals are great – if you’ve been reading TaggingMiles for any time at all, you probably know that I love shopping portals. But you have to take a wider view of things, in order to really be sure, that you are getting the best value.
If you’ve not made your purchase yet, I highly suggest QuickBooks Online through Costco (if possible). I believe it’s simply a URL to a link to sign up, so no cashback, but IMHO QB Online is a superior product to QB Desktop (as a small business owner, I FULLY realize QB Desktop is a more robust product, it just doesn’t offer enough over the Online version to sway my opinion).
My reasoning for Quickbooks PC was because of the one-time cost, vs. monthly/annual costs. Do you think the value of QuickBooks online justifies the cost, vs. like a once every 3 year buy?
take a look at xero.com. We use it in our rather large small business; Xero is much easier to learn (IMO) than QB.
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