A Quick Guide To The 6 Industry-Specific Editions Of QuickBooks

So you’re considering QuickBooks Enterprise or QuickBooks Premier? That could be a very good decision, depending on the size of your business and your specific accounting needs. But one of the biggest questions you should be asking yourself is: Which edition of QuickBooks Enterprise or Premier should I use?

There are seven versions of QuickBooks Enterprise. We cover the all-purpose Standard Edition in our comprehensive Quickbooks Enterprise review, but there are six other industry-specific versions of QuickBooks Enterprise: Contractor Edition, Manufacturing and Wholesale Edition, Retail Edition, Nonprofit Edition, Professional Services Edition, and Accountant Edition.

You can choose any one of these editions at zero additional cost. Each industry-specific edition comes with the same features as the standard QuickBooks Enterprise and includes a few extra features designed to fit each industry.

We’ll go through the extra features you get with each edition. By the end, you should be able to make an informed decision about which version of QuickBooks Enterprise or QuickBooks Premier is right for you.

QuickBooks Contractor Edition

The Contractor Edition of QuickBooks is ideal for contracting, construction, and any business needing advanced job costing and project management. With every QuickBooks Enterprise purchase, you also receive an Intuit Field Service Management subscription for a single user, which could be very handy to contracting businesses in need of scheduling.

In addition to the Standard Edition features, the Contract Edition also offers:

• Job Costing Center: The Contractor Edition comes with an actual Job Costing center that displays your three most profitable jobs and three least profitable jobs. A section called ‘Job Costing Highlights’ also shows your actual costs, expenses not assigned, and your outstanding bill totals.
• Change Orders: Change orders allow you to adjust an existing estimate. If a customer changes their mind on an estimate or a certain material isn’t available to complete an estimate, you can simply create a change order that will show up at the bottom of the estimate. You can have customers sign the change order section to approve the agreed-upon adjustment. This adds an extra layer of protection and clarity to estimate changes.
• Custom Billing Rates: You can set custom billing rate levels for different types of employees within your organization — apprentices, masters, and journeymen, for example. You can set fixed hourly rates or custom hourly rates by service item.
• Disallow Negative Inventory Quantities: The Contractor Edition permits you to disallow negative inventory quantities; however, QuickBooks does not recommend this.
• Customized Chart of Accounts: QuickBooks Enterprise Contractor Edition comes with a default chart of accounts specifically designed for a contracting business.
• 19 Contractor Reports: In addition to the 140+ reports that come with Enterprise, you’ll receive access to 19 other reports. Most of these reports revolve around job costing to give a contracting business a clearer idea of each project’s profitability.

QuickBooks Manufacturing & Wholesale

The Manufacturing and Wholesale Edition of QuickBooks Enterprise is ideal for manufacturers and wholesalers needing many users and strong sales reports. The Platinum version offers advanced inventory tools, which could be incredibly beneficial to these businesses.

In addition to the Standard Edition features, the Manufacturing Edition offers:

• Basic Sales Order Fulfillment: You can send basic sales orders with the Standard Version of QuickBooks Enterprise, but the Sales Order Fulfillment Worksheet takes things to a new level. This worksheet shows the sales order date, ship date, number, job, open amount, amount to fulfill, and whether or not the sales order has been partially invoiced.
• Item Receipts: You can send item receipts and create bills specifically for received items.
• Back-Order Tracking: Easily track customer and vendor back-orders.
• Worksheets & Forms Reports: The Manufacturing and Wholesale Edition offers several key forms, including a Physical Inventory Worksheet, a Customer Return Materials Authorization Form, a Non-Conforming Material Report, and a Damaged Goods Log. All of these reports are made available through Microsoft Word. You can edit them directly in Word or print them for physical use.
• Building Assemblies: While building assemblies are available in the Standard Version, the QuickBooks Enterprise Manufacturing and Warehouse Edition will create a default set of manufacturing-specific building assemblies.
• Customized Chart Of Accounts: QuickBooks Enterprise Manufacturing and the Wholesale Edition come with a default chart of accounts specifically designed for a manufacturing and wholesale business.
• 11 Manufacturing Reports: In addition to the 140+ reports that come with Enterprise, you’ll receive access to 11 other reports. These reports revolve predominantly around sales, such as Sales by Class and Item Type or Profitability by Product.

Quickbooks Retail Edition

The Retail Edition of QuickBooks Enterprise and QuickBooks Premier is ideal for large businesses in the retail industry and offers strong sales reporting and inventory management. QuickBooks integrates with Shopify and QuickBooks POS, so companies already using these programs could benefit from direct integration with the QuickBooks Enterprise Standard Edition or Retail Edition.

In addition to the Standard Edition features, the Retail Edition offers:

• Sales Order Fulfillment: You can send sales orders with the Standard Version of QuickBooks Enterprise, but the Sales Order Fulfillment Worksheet is a whole new ballgame. This worksheet shows the sales order date, ship date, number, job, open amount, amount to fulfill, and whether or not the sales order has been partially invoiced.
• Vendor Returns: Manage vendor returns and bill credits.
• Receive Inventory: This module allows you to track and receive inventory with or without a bill.
• Disallow Negative Inventory Quantities: The Retail Edition permits you to disallow negative inventory quantities; however, QuickBooks does not recommend this.
• Worksheets & Forms Reports: The Retail Edition offers several key forms, including a Physical Inventory Worksheet, a Customer Return Materials Authorization Form, a Non-Conforming Material Report, and a Damaged Goods Log. All of these reports are made available through Microsoft Word. You can edit them directly in Word or print them for physical use.
• Building Assemblies: While building assemblies are available in the Standard Version, the QuickBooks Enterprise Retail edition will create a default set of retail-specific building assemblies.
• Customized Chart Of Accounts: QuickBooks Enterprise Retail Edition comes with a default chart of accounts specifically designed for a retail business.
• 14 Retail Reports: In addition to the 140+ reports that come with Enterprise, you’ll receive access to 14 other reports. These reports revolve predominantly around sales data. You’ll also find an appealing Sales Graph and Accounts Payable Graph.

QuickBooks Nonprofit Edition

The Nonprofit Edition of QuickBooks Enterprise and QuickBooks Premier is ideal for nonprofit organizations needing complex accounting, strong reporting, and many users. Unfortunately, there is no nonprofit discount available for QuickBooks Enterprise (and all of your donors and volunteers will be called customers and employees within the software). QuickBooks also has plenty of integrations specifically for nonprofit businesses.

In addition to the Standard Edition features, the Nonprofit Edition offers:

• Create Pledges: Managing pledges is easy with the Nonprofit Edition. The pledge feature is set up similarly to the invoicing feature. When creating a pledge, you can add an item, description, class, amount, and tax.
• Manage Donations: You can manage and record donations made by check, echeck, credit/debit card, or cash.
• Programs/Products Tracking: The Programs/Products Tool is a way of using the existing class tracking in QuickBooks Enterprise and applying it specifically to the programs or projects your nonprofit organizes.
• Create Donor Letters: Using QuickBooks Enterprise’s existing custom letter templates, you can create and send donor letters.
• Customized Chart of Accounts: QuickBooks Enterprise Nonprofit Edition comes with a default chart of accounts specifically designed for a nonprofit organization. QuickBooks Enterprise uses the Unified Chart of Accounts (UCOA) for nonprofits.
• Nine Nonprofit Reports: In addition to the 140+ reports that come with Enterprise, you’ll receive access to nine other reports. This addition covers crucial nonprofit reports, such as a Statement of Financial Position and Statement of Functional Expenses (990). You’ll also have reports — such as the Biggest Donors/Grants report and the Budget vs. Actual Programs/Projects report — that provide nonprofit insight.

QuickBooks Professional Services Edition

The Professional Services Edition of QuickBooks Enterprise and QuickBooks Premier is ideal for legal firms, medical firms, engineering firms, architecture firms, graphic design companies, marketing agencies, and other such services. The key difference between this version and the Standard Edition is the ability to send proposals and create a few extra reports.

In addition to the Standard Edition features, the Professional Services Edition offers:

• Proposals: Along with estimates, you can create proposals in the Professional Services Edition. It’s possible to add items, item descriptions, estimated hours/quantity, rate, amount, markup, class, and total to proposals.
• Quick Invoice Display: This is a display screen of all projects and the time, expenses, mileage, items, and totals associated with those projects. You can invoice directly from this screen, making billing for jobs easier.
• Custom Billing Rates: You can set custom billing rate levels for different types of employees within your organization. For example, you can set different rates for a law associate, outside consultants, partners, and paralegals. You can set fixed hourly rates or custom hourly rates by service item.
• Customized Chart Of Accounts: QuickBooks Enterprise Professional Services Edition comes with a default chart of accounts specifically designed for legal, medical, and engineering-type businesses.
• 18 Professional Service Reports: In addition to the 140+ reports that come with Enterprise, you’ll receive access to 18 other reports. Most of these reports revolve around job costing, but several reports are specific to professional services, such as a Billed vs. Proposal by Project report.

QuickBooks Accountant Edition

The Accountant Edition is ideal for accountancy firms and offices that manage the accounts of multiple businesses and need a way of tracking their own business as well. QuickBooks provides Accountant Edition users with key accountant resources, including an accounting university, tips to become a “firm of the future,” training videos and events, a specific QuickBooks community for accountants, and other learning resources.

Note: The Standard Version and the other five industry versions have a user role for an internal or external accountant, whereas Accountant Edition is specifically designed for accounting firms.

In addition to the Standard Edition features, the Accountant Edition offers:

• Accountant Center: The Accountant Edition comes with an Accountant Center where you can view specialized tools and memorized reports. There’s a shortcut to reconciliation and a box called Accountant Updates, which features helpful blogs and resources for accountants, such as “Common QuickBooks Inventory Accounting Mistakes” and “Organization Hacks for Overworked Accountants.”
• Batch Transactions: The Accountant Edition offers the unique ability to batch enter and batch delete or void transactions.
• Journal Entries: While high-level users in QuickBooks Enterprise Standard Edition can view several journal entry reports, only accountants can create and send general journal entries.
• Working Trial Balance: Users in the Accountant Edition can view a Working Trial Balance, which will show your ledger accounts and any of their subsequent opening balances, ending balances, transactions, adjustments, and workpaper references.
• Client Data Review: This tool helps accountants with their year-end processes. With the client data review, accountants can reclassify transactions, fix unapplied customer payments and credits, clear up undeposited funds account, write off invoices, fix unapplied vendor payments and credits, find incorrectly paid payroll liabilities, and merge vendors.
• Set Closing Date: QuickBooks Enterprise Accountant Edition gives you the option to set a closing date after you’ve closed your books for the year. Closing dates are protected by a password of the accountant’s choosing.

The Bottom Line On The Industry Editions Of QuickBooks

Odds are you probably already have an idea which QuickBooks Enterprise or QuickBooks Premier product is right for your business, just based on your industry and business type. But if you’re still struggling to decide which edition is best, here’s another quick overview:

• QuickBooks Contractor Edition: This version of Quickbooks is best for independent contractors and individuals who may have many different types of jobs and, specifically, jobs with different billing and payment structures.
• QuickBooks Manufacturing & Wholesale: This edition is ideal for businesses with complex organizational needs, particularly with their inventory and reporting. This version has an extensive reporting suite that can help manage a wide variety of goods.
• QuickBooks Retail Edition: This option is best for more standard retail establishments. In particular, if you want your accounting to integrate with your point of sale or eCommerce platform, this is likely the edition for you as it also comes with a wide variety of reports.
• QuickBooks Nonprofit Edition: Nonprofits will see a number of benefits from this edition. There are unique features that help with pledges and managing donations, along with specialized reports for the nonprofit industry.
• QuickBooks Professional Services Edition: This is the best version of QuickBooks for places such as medical or legal firms. As you would expect, this comes with tools for billing and a number of customized reports for professional services.
• QuickBooks Accountant Edition: This is accounting software for accountants. This version has some very helpful tools for easily viewing client data and for end-of-the-year needs.

You will still likely need to do your own research, depending on your various individual needs. We recommend starting with a free trial of the QuickBooks Enterprise or Premier edition you’re considering so that you can see for yourself if you like the software or not. After all, if you don’t enjoy using the software, you won’t use it.