What You Won’t Read Online about QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise Pricing

There’s inflation, and then there’s SaaS pricing. 

After years of offering more modestly priced Pro and Premier versions alongside its Enterprise offering, QuickBooks and parent company Intuit sensed an opportunity. Come 2027, the company will pare down its business accounting software to two main products: 

• QuickBooks Online, a service for one or two-person teams with basic accounting needs 
• QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise, the service pretty much any sophisticated accounting team is going to need manage bookkeeping

Skip to the comparison chart 👇

You may find yourself saying “Well, that makes sense. It’s not a cash grab, just an opportunity to simplify the buying process.” If that’s you, please, keep that sweet innocence and look away now. Because once you pick a product, the choices multiply.

QuickBooks Online v. QuickBooks Enterprise Isn’t The Only Choice

For most Pro and Premier users, only Enterprise can match the functionality needed to keep their businesses running. QuickBooks Online doesn’t support the inventory management and payroll functionality that more complex businesses need, and charges extra for features that are built into QuickBooks Enterprise. Then there’s the fact that QuickBooks Online is, as the name says, online. For some businesses, keeping company data in the public cloud is a non-starter. 

Once you make the choice to go Enterprise, however, you’re not done. You are immediately faced with additional questions: Gold, Platinum or Diamond. Plus add-ons.

That’s where we can help. At Summit, we can see how the options differ, because we provide cloud hosting for 10,000+ of businesses using QuickBooks Desktop products. We can’t make the license cheaper (sorry), but we can provide you with an overview of the options. And, we can remain unbiased. Our rate for cloud hosting stays flat — and lower than QuickBooks’ own — regardless of the precious metal or stone that best suits your business.

Some Things Never Change: Basic QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise Functionality

The first thing to know — all three versions are running on the same core. Quickbooks would have you believe each option is completely different, but only QuickBooks Online is truly a different piece of software. Going diamond over platinum or platinum over gold will open more features and change pricing, but even the gold version provides a full suite of tools. 

Here’s what CPAs and accountants can do with any level of QuickBooks Enterprise Desktop:

• Track Inventory, Sales, Income and Expenses: To be fair, if you’re reading this, you’re probably aware of all that
• Run Payroll: All of it, sending checks, making deposits, generating W2s and 1099s — even offering 401(k)s
• Pull Reports: Enterprise offers more ready-to-run reports than QuickBooks Online — 250 at last count, some of which are tailored to specific industries — as well as built-in budgeting and forecasting tools
• Enjoy a Better User Experience: Few people on the internet have good things to say about the parent company (ex: “I hate Intuit with the power of a thousand suns.”), but most agree that QuickBooks Desktop is a better product.
• Backup Data
• Access Anywhere*
  Emphasis on the asterisk. While any computer can run the desktop version of QuickBooks, if you want the program to be accessible online and synced across users, you have to either host it yourself, hire a third-party provider like Summit, or pay QuickBooks a premium.

What Else Is New: Features Added to QuickBooks Enterprise 24.0

Users on Reddit are quick to point out that the annual “upgrades” rarely bring new features to QuickBooks, and often bring new costs. Still, they’re mandatory, so it is worth pointing out a few new or expanded features in QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise 24.0. 

• Track prepayments and apply them against final invoices
• Run inventory turnover reports
• Link sales and purchase orders to better forecast inbound and outbound product delivery
• Calculate landed costs (please extend this to QuickBooks pricing)
• Include expiration dates, lot numbers and categories in inventory reports
• Other touted changes — like the ability to zoom in or add gridlines to reports — that are almost too depressing to mention

Improvements, maybe, though many of these “24.0” features are only available to the highest-paid tier of QuickBooks Enterprise users. QuickBooks can slap on a high version number, but that doesn’t mean the necessary cycles of investment and iteration have actually taken place.

An Honest Comparison: QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise Gold v. Platinum v. Diamond

First off, metallurgy nerds, we see you. Diamonds have no place in this list. The logical tiers are gold, platinum, titanium. A real strike against Quickbooks, marketing to the lowest common denominator with a shiny object instead of sound science. We won’t be distracted. We have a Table of Truth^TM.

	Gold 🏅	Platinum 💿	Diamond 💎
Minimum Cost	$1,922, billed annually +incremental cost per user up to 10 users	$2,363, billed annually +incremental cost per user up to 10 users	$4,668, billed annually + incremental cost per user up to 10 users
Maximum Cost	$10,191, billed annually, for up to 30 users	$10,656, billed annually, for up to 30 users	$17,148, billed annually, for up to 40 users
Cloud Access	$	$	$
Manage Multiple Business	❌	✅	✅
Automated Inventory Management	❌	✅	✅
Automate and Schedule Pricing Rules	❌	✅	✅
Auditable Bill and PO Approvals	❌	✅	✅
Employee Time Tracking	❌	❌	$5 per employee per month
Connect to Salesforce	❌	❌	$150 per company file per month

Want to know what your total costs would be, with 24x7 Summit hosting support? 

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How to Choose the Right QuickBooks Enterprise Desktop Tier

At the end of it, despite the big chart, the three tiers really are more alike than they are not. There are only really a few questions you need to ask to choose the right version: 

• Do you manage multiple businesses? Choose Platinum
• Do you have a complex inventory requiring automation? Choose Platinum
• Are you audited often and need a clear approval chain? 1. That sounds tedious. 2. Choose Platinum
• Do you need time tracking? Choose Diamond
• Do you need to connect to Salesforce? Choose Diamond

For everyone else, the Gold tier of QuickBooks Enterprise should serve as a one-to-one replacement for QuickBooks Pro or Premier (should). 

So when you do have to make this choice, sometime before the end of 2027, we hope this helps you choose well. Because, in typical QuickBooks fashion, once you pick your tier, it is hard-to-impossible to change. Downgrading isn’t supported at all, so if you’re not sure, start a level down.

There may not be a lot of options available within QuickBooks, but don’t feel like you’re locked into everything QuickBooks offers. Working with a third-party provider like Summit to manage your Enterprise cloud hosting can save you money over what QuickBooks offers and give you better service.