QuickBooks Online is a great piece of accounting software for both accountants and businesses. What we love most about QuickBooks is its extensive line up of top apps which helps accounting practices and businesses do everything from process payroll to collect bills. But with so many top apps out there, how do you know which ones to choose? We've curated our list of the best QuickBooks apps. We've chosen the top QuickBooks app from each of the most popular app categories:

TSheets is a QuickBooks-owned app, and given its availability directly with QuickBooks, it has become the most-utilized QuickBooks app for tracking time. The app's functionality is divided into two parts, time tracking and job scheduling. From a time-tracking perspective, TSheets helps simplify payroll by allocating time to specific tasks or projects, which ultimately saves you time when running payroll. Your team members can track their time from any work location using the web or TSheets mobile apps.

Allocated time automatically syncs to your QuickBooks Online account, which can be edited, reviewed, and approved. An unusual and lesser-known feature is that the app can confirm work hours using facial recognition, which is helpful for large, mobile teams!

From a job scheduling perspective, TSheets help to build work schedules and assign them to your team so you can remove any confusion regarding shifts and the associated responsibilities. You can create repeat schedules (a useful feature in the food trade) and set notifications, so your team is always up to speed.

TSheets has two pricing plans: Premium and Elite. Pricing for both plans includes a flat fee plus a per-user fee, and both time tracking and job scheduling are included.

The critical additional features in TSheets Elite include tracking progress vs. plan, estimates vs. actual reporting, and time sheet signing. For most accountants and businesses, Premium is the best option.

Click here to visit the Track time category in the QuickBooks app store and here to visit TSheets.

Syft is a simple yet powerful analytics and reporting app for QuickBooks Online. Syft helps accountants and businesses uncover insights into financial data and automate monthly management accounts. Syft has some neat features, including the ability to brand PDF reports (which can be sent to clients, investors, and staff) and visualize data in easy-to-understand graphs. Syft's AI-powered insights engine automatically uncovers insights in your visualizations to help you quickly understand what's happening.

Syft has other bells and whistles, including the capability to consolidate entities (combine two or more entities into a single entity), forecast financials, and create budgets. Benchmark is another unique feature that allows you to put your financial performance alongside your industry and competitors. Benchmark helps you understand how your business compares from a revenue, expense, and accounting ratio perspective so you can get a sense of whether or not your financial performance is good.

Syft has a range of pricing plans for accountants and businesses, from Standard to Scale.

For more information, visit our Pricing Page.

Click here to visit the Perform analytics category in the QuickBooks app store and here to visit Syft.

Gusto is an app that lets you run payroll, manage employee benefits and support HR. Gusto's payroll capability enables you to automatically calculate and file employee tax returns whether your employees are full-time or part-time. The user interface and reports are particularly easy to use vs. competitors which is a refreshing improvement over other payroll apps. Gusto also helps you manage your employee benefits such as medical insurance, retirement savings and pension contributions. Gusto will incorporate your employee benefits and the tax advantage that comes with them directly into the payroll process so you don't have to.

Gusto has extended it's core payroll functionality to include other tools that support HR processes. These tools include generating offer letters for prospective employees, building organisational charts, onboarding employees with digital contracts and anonymous employee surveys (wow!). These Gusto tools are incredibly useful for any small business and really reduce the admin associated with hiring and managing a team.

Gusto has three pricing plans: Core, Complete and Concierge. Pricing for all three plans include a flat fee plus a per user fee.

Click here to visit the Run payroll category in the QuickBooks app store and here to visit Gusto.

Dext is still our favorite app for tracking and managing expenses (it could also be the most used app of all time!). Accountants and bookkeepers can scan receipts, bills and invoices with the Dext mobile app which is available on the Apple App Store or on Google Play. With a single touch, you can capture invoice data which is then uploaded to your personal secure cloud storage and pushed to either Xero, QuickBooks or Sage for review. You can also review and search for receipts, bills and invoices directly in the app which is an added benefit and particularly useful to view exactly what was expensed.

Dext has plans for accountants and businesses. For accountants, there are two plans: Streamline and Optimize. Dext doesn't publish the pricing for each accountant plan on their website. Both plans are fixed fee plans that include unlimited users and entities. Streamline is the entry level plan with core features such as receipt submission and workflows (for allocating receipts and assigning expense categories) while Optimize provides additional features such as premium support and analysis of receipts.

For accountants, there are three Dext plans: Business, Business Plus and Premium. In contrast to the accountant plans, Business plans have user and receipt limits.

Functionality for the Dext Business plan is limited and only includes capturing and sending receipts to accounting software. Additional features for the Business Plus plan includes data extraction from bank statements, submitting and allocating receipts to accounting software as well as the reconciliation of transactions with bank feeds. Lastly, Premium includes faster extraction speed and automatic employee expense management. Most businesses will be just fine with the Business Plus plan.

Click here to visit the Track Expenses category in the QuickBooks app store.

We hope you enjoyed our review of the top QuickBooks apps.