QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Online starts at £16/mo (Simple Start) for the Simple Start plan, which includes one user and unlimited bank feeds. The Essentials plan is £38/mo (Essentials) and adds up to three users and bill management. The top Advanced plan is £123/mo (Advanced) and includes project tracking, inventory, and up to 25 users. All plans are excl. VAT and month-to-month.

QuickBooks does not include payroll in the base subscription. Payroll Core is available as an add-on (£5/mo + £1.50/emp) that attaches to any accounting plan. This covers RTI submissions to HMRC and pension auto-enrolment, but it is priced and billed separately from the accounting subscription.

User allowances depend on the plan: Simple Start includes 1 (Simple Start), rising through Essentials and Plus. If you need more than 5 users, the Advanced plan supports up to 25.

Yes. QuickBooks Online is HMRC-recognised for Making Tax Digital and supports direct VAT return filing from Simple Start upward. VAT is tracked automatically as you categorise transactions, and the software also supports the Construction Industry Scheme for contractors and subcontractors.

QuickBooks' entry plan is priced similarly to Xero's Ignite plan, but QuickBooks includes only one user on Simple Start versus unlimited users on every Xero plan, and payroll is always a separate add-on rather than bundled. For a single-user sole trader the two are close; for a growing team, Xero's unlimited users and bundled payroll often work out better value at a comparable tier.

Yes. All QuickBooks Online plans include Unlimited bank feeds, which lets you connect multiple bank accounts, credit cards, and payment processors without restriction.

No. QuickBooks Online in the UK is available on a monthly subscription with no lock-in contract. You can cancel at any time. QuickBooks regularly runs promotional discounts for the first few months for new subscribers.

QuickBooks Online starts from £21/mo (sub + payroll), which bundles the accounting subscription and payroll together rather than pricing them as fully separate products. On top of that base fee, each employee is charged at £1.50/emp/mo, so total cost scales with headcount on top of the flat starting subscription.

Yes. QuickBooks is on HMRC's recognised payroll software list, submits RTI Full Payment Submissions for every pay run, and handles workplace pension auto-enrolment with major pension providers including NEST. Statutory pay and P60/P45 issuance are included as standard parts of the payroll module.

Yes. QuickBooks Online includes Construction Industry Scheme support for deducting and reporting subcontractor payments to HMRC, alongside standard PAYE payroll for direct employees, so a construction business can run both from a single subscription.

QuickBooks includes Intuit Assist natively, an AI assistant built into the platform for payroll and accounting tasks. Intuit is also rolling out an early-preview native MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, which would let AI agents connect directly to QuickBooks data; this is still an early preview rather than a fully released feature.

QuickBooks suits UK small businesses that want an affordable, widely recognised accounting platform with payroll built in. Rated 4.4 out of 5 on Capterra from 917 reviews, it particularly suits sole traders and small companies already in the Intuit ecosystem, with phone and chat support included.

Yes. QuickBooks includes an employee self-service portal where staff can view payslips and access payroll documents without contacting the payroll administrator directly, alongside leave and timesheet tracking built into the same platform.