The short answer
The four main QuickBooks Online plans differ mostly in users and tracking. Simple Start allows one user, Essentials three, Plus five and Advanced 25, each with room for outside accountants. Class and location tracking, inventory, project profitability and budgets start at Plus, which caps classes and locations at 40 combined. Advanced adds unlimited classes and locations and custom user roles. Choose by the reports you need, not by the longest feature list.
Start with the reports you need
Plan pages list dozens of features, and most of them will not decide anything for you. What usually decides it is a short list of questions. How many people need to sign in? Do you need reports by department, fund, campus or job? Do you sell products you keep in stock? Does a board or lender expect a budget-versus-actual report?
Answer those first, then read the plan limits. This comparison uses Intuit's own pricing page and help articles as of November 2026. Intuit changes plans and features often, so check its current page before you buy. Prices are left out on purpose; Intuit's pricing page lists them, along with any promotion running at the time.
Intuit also lists a Free plan for one user. Its pricing page says the Free plan does not include accountant access, so a business or church that works with an outside bookkeeper would need one of the paid plans below.
Users and outside accountants
Intuit counts billable users, the people with regular roles, separately from accountant firms and a few limited roles. The limits from Intuit's usage-limits article:
- Simple Start: 1 billable user and 2 accountant firm users. Reports-only and time-tracking-only users are not available.
- Essentials: 3 billable users, 2 accountant firm users, and unlimited time-tracking-only users. Reports-only users are not available.
- Plus: 5 billable users, 2 accountant firm users, and unlimited time-tracking-only and reports-only users.
- Advanced: 25 billable users, 3 accountant firm users, and unlimited time-tracking-only and reports-only users. Advanced also lets you create custom roles.
| Plan | Users and accountant firms | Classes and locations | Also included at this level |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simple Start | 1 user, 2 accountant firms | Not available | Core income and expense tracking, invoicing and standard reports |
| Essentials | 3 users, 2 accountant firms | Not available | Recurring transactions and multi-currency |
| Plus | 5 users, 2 accountant firms, unlimited reports-only users | Up to 40 combined | Inventory tracking, project profitability and budgets |
| Advanced | 25 users, 3 accountant firms | Unlimited | Custom user roles, workflow automation, batch invoices and expenses, Excel sync |
Classes, locations and why churches care
Class and location tracking let every transaction carry a second label, such as a department, a ministry, a campus or a fund. Intuit says Simple Start and Essentials do not have class or location tracking. Plus allows 40 classes and locations combined, split however you like, and Advanced allows an unlimited number. Only active classes and locations count toward the limit.
In Plus and Advanced you can assign one class to a whole transaction or one to each line, and you can ask QuickBooks to warn you when a transaction is saved without a class. For a church that tracks funds with classes, that warning is worth turning on.
This is the line that matters most for churches. A church that tracks designated and restricted funds with classes needs Plus or Advanced, and a church whose funds and campuses together pass 40 needs Advanced or a different kind of software. The setup itself is covered in QuickBooks for church fund accounting, and QuickBooks or church accounting software compares the alternatives. When to use classes, locations or a separate company file is the subject of classes, locations or separate files.
Inventory, projects and budgets
Three common needs also start at Plus. Intuit says only Plus and Advanced include inventory tracking, and QuickBooks Online values inventory first in, first out. Intuit's pricing page lists project profitability at Plus, which lets a contractor or service business see income and costs by job; the site's guide to job costing for contractors explains the bookkeeping side.
Budgets are also a Plus and Advanced feature in Intuit's budgeting help. You can build a profit and loss or balance sheet budget, and a profit and loss budget can be split by class or location, which is how a board sees budget versus actual by fund or department. Advanced adds a sync with Excel for budgets and other data.
Essentials adds recurring transactions and multi-currency over Simple Start, according to Intuit's plan-change article. Advanced adds workflow automation and batch invoices and expenses, and it removes the 250-account cap on the chart of accounts that applies to the other three plans.
Changing plans later
Moving up is simpler than moving down. Intuit says you can upgrade between Simple Start, Essentials and Plus. Moving to a smaller plan can take work first: Intuit says you must delete classes or locations before changing to Simple Start or Essentials, turn off inventory tracking before moving below Plus, and pause recurring transactions before moving to Simple Start. Once multi-currency is turned on, it cannot be turned off, and the file can no longer move to Simple Start.
The practical lesson is to choose the plan your reporting needs now and for the next year or two, and to turn on features such as multi-currency only when you are sure you need them. If you expect to add staff, funds or locations soon, check those limits against Plus before you settle on it, because hitting a cap later means either an upgrade or trimming your lists.
When a different answer fits better
QuickBooks Online is not the only reasonable choice. Intuit itself points multi-entity organizations toward Intuit Enterprise Suite, and offers QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise for businesses that want desktop software. A church with many restricted funds, several entities or grant reporting may find dedicated fund accounting software less work than a QuickBooks setup. A very small business with one owner, no inventory and no staff may never need more than Simple Start.
If you are coming from QuickBooks Desktop, the plan choice is part of the move; see moving from QuickBooks Desktop to Online. Danielson Bookkeeping works in QuickBooks Online and sets up files with class or location tracking where it helps, as described on QuickBooks services. If you want help matching a plan to your reports, request a consultation.
