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Looking for QuickBooks for trucking companies?
Looking for the best accounting software for trucking companies? Want an alternative to QuickBooks Online? Fintruck’s real-time cash flow and accounting solution is the leading option for trucking and is to become “QuickBooks for trucking companies, but much better.”
Selecting accounting software is a significant decision for any accountant or users as it can influence owner's experience and efficiency, compliance, and success— or create inefficiencies and challenges.
By contrasting Fintruck's innovative AI-powered solution with QuickBooks' legacy capabilities, this guide will give a greater understanding of the two platforms, enabling you to choose the one that best suits your trucking needs and goals.
We've assessed both options to enable you to make an informed decision confidently. Read on to learn why Fintruck is the preferred solution for trucking.
QuickBooks Online vs. Fintruck: the foundational difference
Fintruck is built for fast moving, ambitious trucking who care about speed and accuracy and weekly reports. Fintruck is designed to help accountants/users do more in less time, and helps trucking professionals feel empowered about their business.
There are many differences between Fintruck and QuickBooks Online (QBO) listed in the guide, but the key differences is the underlying technology, which creates key new capabilities:
1. Fintruck is built for trucking. QBO is not.
2. Fintruck is the first real-time solution built for trucking and is the first accounting solution to reach Level 3 Autonomous Accounting. QBO is not real-time.
3. Fintruck's dashboard was built to provide trucking metrics like weekly reports, cash flow analytics, spend management, money burn and operating ration, cash profit and loss, that are useful for owners of trucking company. QBO does not provide trucking metrics.
4. Fintruck offers simultaneous accrual and cash accounting. QBO does not.
5. Fintruck offers AI-powered workflows like AI Categorizer and AI Vendor. QBO does not.
Continue to read more.
Capabilities: Fintruck vs. QuickBooks Online
Design and User Experience
🧩 Fintruck:
· Fintruck comes with user-friendly workflows that are easy to use and learn for both non-financial truck business owners and accountants. Fintruck is designed for modern trucking and accounting teams who want a source of truth for all financial data and insights.
📚QBO:
· Some users call it clunky, complicated, and says it lacks ease-of-use functionality.
· On QBO’s ease of use, Dr. Lindsay Padilla, CEO & Co-Founder of HelloAudio recently stated, “it feels like QuickBooks is a tool that I pay for other people to use, not me. QuickBooks is a very anxiety-based login. I don't have confidence that I'm going to find what I need quickly or know where to go. Fintruck feels like it is for me.”
· Online reviews also state “although QuickBooks Online is user-friendly, there can be a learning curve, particularly if you’re unfamiliar with basic accounting principles,“ which may be a problem if truck owner wants to use the software too. Almost none of truck owners look into the inside of the Quickbooks.
Instant access to trucking metrics
🧩 Fintruck:
· Fintruck users access real-time trucking and fundraising metrics immediately in the dashboard, like burn, net burn, runway, MRR, and ARR.
· Trucking metrics are not available in dashboards. This must be calculated and maintained manually in spreadsheets.
Real-time financial reports
🧩 Fintruck:
· All of Fintruck’s reports are in real-time (balance sheet, income statement, cash flow report, spend explorer, revenue insights, and trucking metrics). All data is incorporated immediately into dashboard metrics and financial reports immediately, enabling real-time financial metrics and reports. Learn more about Fintruck’s real-time principles.
📚 QBO:
· QBO does not offer real-time financial reports. Data goes through a data quarantine and must be approved before being included in dashboard metrics and financial reports. This requires a lot more manual work from the user, resulting in slower reporting time.
Time commitment required
🧩 Fintruck:
· Autonomous Accounting features allow users to close the books faster. Closing the books faster means faster insights. In fact, some trucking owners have only needed to spend 30 minutes per month on month-end review.
📚 QBO:
· On average, finalizing one month of accounting and finances can take anywhere between 5 to 21 days. This is the same regardless of whether a founder or bookkeeping is maintaining the books.
Ease of onboarding and setup
🧩 Fintruck:
· A founder can set everything up in minutes before passing things off to a bookkeeper (or even managing their own accounting!) Select Fintruck’s self-serve option for onboarding or choose Fintruck’s high-touch onboarding process, which is led by CPAs.
📚 QBO:
· A lengthy self-serve onboarding process can cause significant delays in getting set up due to complex navigation, and the need to manually create categorization rules.
Integrations: Fintruck vs. QuickBooks Online
Native integrations
🧩 Fintruck:
· Fintruck is the only accounting software built natively with direct APIs to the new fintech stack for trucking companies, including Datatruck, and more.
· Direct native APIs mean the integration with Fintruck is seamless, allowing automated workflows in accounting software that was not possible before. This enables up to 90-95% of categorization work to be put on autopilot. We integrate also with all other banks and cards via Plaid.
📚 QBO:
· QBO integrates with many more apps than Fintruck. They have over 750 popular business applications via their developer API. Note that some are not built natively. For instance, integrating Factoring or TMS or others to QBO requires a connection through a third-party connector or there is no such thing at all.
Banking integrations
🧩 Fintruck:
· Fintruck is built natively to Datatruck’s API. Fintruck integrates with all other bank accounts through Plaid.
· Building natively provides higher reliability of connections and higher robustness of data, which allow us to build source-specific rules. This eliminates the time-consuming task of importing PDF bank statements into the accounting system by automating everything and eliminating the need for manual downloads.
· 90% of banking transactions are auto-categorized in Fintruck. 10% of transactions are intentionally not auto-categorized as Fintruck recognizes the need to manually review certain vendors whose transactions may be more subjective.
📚 QBO:
· QBO syncs with most banks but does not have native integrations to Mercury and Brex as Fintruck does. In Fintruck’s data, we found that traditional bank feeds (not Mercury or Brex) that are connected via Plaid are not as powerful as direct banking integrations as there is limited metadata.
Features: Fintruck vs. QuickBooks Online
AI-powered workflows
🧩 Fintruck:
· Fintruck AI is transforming accounting workflows for everyone involved. Fintruck AI Categorizer is the first feature of its kind in any type of accounting software. Fintruck’s auto-categorizer, Fintruck AI, auto-categorizes 90-95% of a company’s transactions without requiring the user to set up manual rules. The last 5-10% of a company’s transactions require additional context, supporting documentation, or review from a decision-maker to finalize categorization. Gaining this context is a common frustration for all users involved, which is how AI Categorizer came to be. Watch this 50-second video to see how AI Categorizer works or learn more here.
· Fintruck AI Lookup is also the first feature of its kind in any type of accounting software. This is a feature within all transactions that enable a user to click on a button and “ask AI” for help in categorizing a transaction —without context switching between tools. AI Lookup syncs with OpenAI, and will provide suggestions on what the vendor is based on plain English prompts.
📚 QBO:
· At the time of writing, QBO currently has not released any AI-powered workflows that offer the same benefits as AI Lookup or AI Categorizer.
Auto-categorization
🧩 Fintruck:
· Fintruck's advanced categorization learning model auto-categorizes up to 90 to 95% of transactions. While other accounting systems have user-created and auto-suggested rules based on a company’s previous categorizations, Fintruck’s ruleset includes a more robust layer of global and system-based rules that is not limited to a company’s previous transactions.
📚 QBO:
· While QBO has some system-suggested rules, they are not global. This means the user needs to take the time to manually set up rules at the outset.
Collaboration workflows
🧩 Fintruck:
· Fintruck's in-app collaboration feature enables seamless communication within Fintruck, eliminating the need for tool-switching and keeping everything in place.
· Users can request specific actions from others within a transaction, such as category review, documentation, or more context.
· Notifications are promptly sent to recipients via email, streamlining the process and reducing repetitive cycles of searching for answers and supporting documents.
📚 QBO:
· QBO offers integrations with popular collaboration and practice management apps such as Karbon.
Spending Insights
🧩 Fintruck:
· Fintruck’s Spend Explorer helps users analyze spend by category, vendor, top purchase, and over time in easy-to-digest graphs.
📚 QBO:
· Graphs and charts are available in QBO, but they are not always easy to access. They are also not integrated into the main reporting dashboard.
Auto-accruals
🧩 Fintruck:
· This is one of Fintruck’s unique features, that is not available on any other accounting platform. This means users can maintain both cash and accrual accounting books, if needed.
· Save time and eliminate the need for a manual journal entry with Fintruck’s feature that enables auto-reversing expense accruals based on a cash transaction.
· The auto-accrual is always tied to the original cash transaction, boosting traceability while saving time and boosting efficiency.
How Auto Accruals Works
1. The user receives an option to book an ‘auto expense accrual’ in each cash transaction, by clicking a box.
2. The user selects the date to book the expense accrual (e.g. June 30, 2023) and selects the box.
3. Two journal entries are recorded upon this selection. The expense accrual, and the auto-accrual on the following day.
📚 QBO:
· No auto-accrual workflow available. When accruals are recorded manually in other systems, including QBO, it becomes significantly more challenging to trace transactions to source data.
Bank reconciliations
🧩 Fintruck:
· Fintruck automatically adds bank statement data and includes integrity checks to identify transaction duplications, errors, omissions, unsupported transactions, linked transactions, orphan transfers, and more.
· Fintruck uses the bank statement data in Mercury or Brex via API to automatically pull relevant information directly into Fintruck’s auto-drafted bank reconciliations.
· Unlike QBO, Fintruck also runs automated pre-reconciliation validation checks before you run your bank reconciliations.
📚 QBO:
· Bank reconciliations work in a similar manner to Fintruck's.
Fixed asset ledger
🧩 Fintruck:
· Fintruck creates an automatic schedule for straight-line depreciation on all fixed assets.
📚 QBO:
· Depreciation for fixed assets is not auto-calculated.
Investment and Support: Fintruck vs. QuickBooks Online
Cost-to-value
🧩 Fintruck:
· Fintruck provides a 14 day free trial option with four pricing plans available. Partner plans are available for preferred accounting partners.
📚 QBO:
· Monthly plans start as low as $30 per month, with discounts available for partners. QBO also offers a 30-day free trial option.
Scalability
🧩 Fintruck:
· Fintruck is built to scale with a trucking as they grow.
📚 QBO:
· Not built to scale with trucking as they have been identified as best for industries like construction, farms, freelancers, property management, retail, and manufacturing.
Customer support
🧩 Fintruck:
· Have a question about the platform? Talk to real humans who are easily accessible via email or chat. Users can book a 1:1 support call or chat with our team through chat and email.
📚 QBO:
· Access help articles or engage in online community discussions. Founders can even access a live bookkeeper through QuickBooks Live. As of the time of writing, online reviews for QBO’s customer support were rated 4/5 on GetApp.
What companies say about Fintruck
Fintruck is the leading choice for trucking founders and accounting firms who value using technology for efficiency and productivity. More than 1,000 trucking founders currently use Fintruck for:
· Real-time data and crucial trucking metrics like burn, runway, ARR, and MRR.
· Real-time financial reports to drive growth and be prepared for fundraising.
· Effortless tax preparation.
·
Here are testimonials from trucking founders and accountants who have partnered with Fintruck.
“Fintruck is accounting software of the future." - Erick, S&D Global LLC
Fintruck and QuickBooks Online: a comparison of two different accounting software systems
When deciding between accounting platforms, ask yourself what capabilities are most important as your clients scale their growth and you scale your practice.
If you value the instant availability of trucking metrics, visual dashboards to understand spend and revenue, AI-powered workflows, and native integrations, Fintruck is a better choice. After all, Fintruck was built for trucking and proactively uses AI to empower accountants! Users can also access real-time access to metrics like burn, runway, ARR, MRR, and FDIC monitoring, at all times.
If your client is in an industry like retail, manufacturing, property management, or own your own small business, QuickBooks Online is likely a better choice. If you need features such as integrated invoicing, sales tax tracking, time tracking, inventory management, and deal with cash and paper checks, QBO is also likely the right solution for you.
Already on QBO and looking to switch? Using Excel? Email shohruh@fintruck.io for free and fast migration support to Fintruck or sign-up in minutes here.
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