QuickBooks Live

About QuickBooks Live

QuickBooks Live is a bookkeeping service built by Intuit that pairs small businesses with dedicated bookkeepers who maintain their books directly in QuickBooks Online. Unlike QuickBooks Online itself, QuickBooks Live is a managed service where human bookkeepers categorize transactions, reconcile accounts, and handle month-end close work inside your QBO account.

The service is designed for small business owners who want professional bookkeeping support without hiring in-house staff. QuickBooks Live bookkeepers work remotely, accessing your QuickBooks Online account to categorize expenses, reconcile bank and credit card accounts, and ensure your books are ready for tax season. The service operates on a subscription model with pricing tiers based on your average monthly expenses.

Where QuickBooks Live Fits in Your Finance Stack

QuickBooks Live sits as a service layer on top of QuickBooks Online. It's not a software tool itself, but rather a human-powered bookkeeping service that uses QuickBooks Online as its working environment. The service handles the day-to-day bookkeeping tasks that many business owners find time-consuming or complex.

Typical use cases for QuickBooks Live include:

• Monthly transaction categorization and reconciliation
• Bank and credit card account reconciliation
• Basic financial report preparation
• Bookkeeping cleanup and catch-up work

Strengths and Common Pitfalls

QuickBooks Live's main strength is providing human expertise at a predictable monthly cost. You get a dedicated bookkeeper who understands your business and works directly in your QuickBooks Online account, which means your data stays in one place and you maintain full visibility. The service is straightforward to set up and integrates seamlessly with your existing QuickBooks Online subscription.

The tradeoff is that QuickBooks Live has clear limitations: it doesn't handle accounts payable, accounts receivable, inventory management, or provide financial advisory services. The service is also limited by bookkeeper capacity, which can become a constraint as your transaction volume grows. Pricing can add up quickly when combined with your QuickBooks Online subscription costs.

Common pitfalls include:

• Expecting A/P, A/R, or advisory services that aren't included
• Outgrowing the service as transaction volume increases
• Cost escalation when combining QBL fees with QBO subscription
• Limited scalability for multi-entity or complex operations

When You've Grown Into (and Out of) QuickBooks Live

Most businesses "grow into" QuickBooks Live when they've outgrown DIY bookkeeping but aren't ready for a full accounting team. If you have straightforward revenue streams, a handful of bank accounts, and monthly expenses under $50,000, QuickBooks Live can provide reliable bookkeeping support at a predictable cost. It's particularly well-suited for solo founders and very small businesses that value human support but don't need complex financial operations.

You start to "grow out" of QuickBooks Live as your operations become more complex than a single bookkeeper can efficiently handle. Signals include: transaction volumes that exceed bookkeeper capacity, multi-entity structures, complex inventory or revenue recognition needs, and requirements for accounts payable or receivable management. At that stage, you typically need either automated bookkeeping software that scales with volume, or a hybrid model that combines AI automation with strategic oversight.

How Omniga Works With QuickBooks Live

QuickBooks Live is more of a service provided over QuickBooks Online rather than a separate software platform. Since Omniga integrates directly with QuickBooks Online, we can work with businesses that use QuickBooks Live. Omniga complements QuickBooks Live by providing additional automation, workflow integration, and management reporting capabilities that extend beyond what the service offers.

For businesses that have outgrown QuickBooks Live, Omniga provides a path forward that preserves your QuickBooks Online ledger while adding the scalability, automation, and integration capabilities that growing businesses need. The goal is to keep your books accurate and tax-ready in QuickBooks, while using Omniga to get the kind of management reporting, workflows, and automation that neither QuickBooks Online nor QuickBooks Live are built to provide on their own.