QuickBooks Desktop Is Going Away. Now What?

If you've been using QuickBooks Desktop, you already know what's happening. Intuit has been winding it down for a while. No new licenses for sale. Existing users pushed toward QuickBooks Online with increasingly aggressive prompts. The writing is on the wall.

For a lot of small business owners, this is frustrating. QBD had problems, the interface was dated and it could be clunky, but it worked offline, it was fast, and your data was on your computer. QBO takes all of that away and replaces it with a browser tab that loads slowly and a monthly bill.

So what are the options if you want to stay on desktop?

GnuCash is free and open source. It's legitimate double-entry accounting software. The tradeoff is the interface, which is functional but not friendly. If you're comfortable with accounting concepts and don't mind a learning curve, it's worth a look. It doesn't do invoicing well, and there's no bank reconciliation workflow in the way QBD users would expect.

Manager.io has a free desktop version. It's more modern than GnuCash and handles invoicing. The catch is that the company pushes you toward their cloud and server editions, and the desktop version sometimes lags behind on updates.

Wave is web-based and free for bookkeeping, but it makes money on payment processing and payroll. If you were on QBD specifically because you wanted desktop software, Wave moves you in the opposite direction.

Spreadsheets are always an option. Some people run their entire business on a well-organized Excel file. It works until it doesn't, usually around tax time or when you need to reconcile a bank account and you're sorting through hundreds of rows trying to figure out what matched.

AllMy Ledger is what we built to fill this gap. Desktop app, runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Your data is a single file on your computer. It does double-entry bookkeeping, invoicing, estimates, bank statement import and reconciliation, and 12 reports including Schedule C. One-time purchase, no subscription.

If you're migrating from QuickBooks Desktop, AllMy Ledger imports your General Ledger and Journal CSV exports. The process takes about five minutes. We also import from QuickBooks Online if you've already moved there and want to move back to desktop. There's a step-by-step guide in the docs.

The QBD discontinuation is pushing a lot of people toward cloud subscriptions they don't want. If that's you, there are alternatives. Pick the one that fits your needs.